The problem of sources on the life of the prophet Muhammad

Abstract

This text is the first chapter of Harald Motzkiʼs book: Reconstruction of a Source of Ibn Isḥāq’s Life of the Prophet and Early Qurʾān Exegesis: A Study of Early Ibn ʿAbbās Traditions. The importance of this text rests in the fact that Motzki evaluated the results of research on early Islam, proposing an alternative approach  to studying the primary texts and sources of this period. Motzki examines the possibility of writing the biography of the Prophet on the basis of the primary sources available to us, through two main points: The first is to present a results of the studies that have dealt with the biography of the Prophet since the nineteenth century; while in the second he proposes his own methodology as an alternative that solves the problem of primary sources on the one hand, and the problem of  the new approaches, especially the approach of John Wansbrough and Joseph Schacht, on the other. However, Motzki did not present his methodology as an epistemic rupture with the historical approach, but asserted that what he produced was an accumulation of knowledge that would not have been possible to achieve without the efforts of all the previous studies, including Joseph Schachtʼs theory, which Motzki developed to be compatible not only with the study of jurisprudential sources, but also with the study of various traditions, including the traditions of the Prophet›s biography.