Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources (part 1)

A Facebook friend of mine recently started a TikTok series about reading the Qur'an as an atheist.  I commented on one of his posts that I had made an attempt to read the Qur'an (more properly a translation of the message of the Qur'an, as Muslim's see the only true Qur'an as the Arabic version as revealed to Muhammad), but that my attempt fell short as I had a hard time getting past the "us vs them" "believer vs disbeliever" black and white thinking that was so prevalent in the first few surahs (chapters) of the Qur'an that I read and common to so much religious and political discourse today. A Muslim responded to my comment that I should read a biography of the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam and he recommended "Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources" by Martin Lings. I ordered a copy and have been reading for the last week or so - about 100 pages in so far.

Martin Lings and His Earliest Sources

Martin Lings (1909 - 2005), also known as Abu Bakr Siraj ad-Din, was a scholar of Islam and close friend and contemporary of C.S. Lewis. He was a convert to Sunni Islam, so his biography is written from the perspective of someone who believed wholeheartedly in Islam and likely reflects the views of many Sunni Muslims. I'm also aware that the believing perspective will color the work to be a more generous perspective toward Muhammad, and it may be interesting after reading this biography to read other perspectives.

Muhammad lived from approximately 570 to 632 AD.  The main references for this biography are 

1) Biography of the Prophet of Allah - a biographical work from Muhammad ibn Ishaq ibn Yasār, who lived from 704 to 770 AD. This is known as the earliest surviving biography.
2) The Major Book of Classes - an eight-volume work on Muhammad and his early followers written by Ibd Sa'd, who lived from 784 to 845 AD
3) Book of History and Campaigns - a chronicle of Muhammad's campaigns written by Abu Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Umar ibn Waqid al-Aslami, 747 to 823 AD.

My first note on the sources used for the biography is that they were all written by believing Muslims, and all from individuals who were born at least 70 years after Muhammad's death, so presumably each of these was written at least 100 years after the death of Muhammad. It's not that surprising that the earliest sources relating to Muhammad's life come from believers in Islam - in fact, that's very similar to the earliest known sources for the life of Jesus coming from Paul and the authors of the Gospels. It seems that Jesus and Muhammad both share that there are very few contemporary references to them by secular historians.  But there are a few such secular and relatively contemporaneous sources sufficient for me to establish that they were each real people who played important roles in the formations of their religions and various offshoots.

Since the earliest sources for Muhammad are written by believers, presumably for believers, this certainly will color their history, which is seen in Martin Lings' biography so far. He describes events such as trees and clouds that physically moved solely to provide shade the future prophet or Muhammad splitting the moon in two as historical fact, without even a hint of skepticism about the reliability of the historical data.

All that being said, I'm overall very much enjoying learning about Muhammad. It's given me new insights on Islam and the Qur'an that can provide meaningful context in trying to understand the belief system that is held by about 1.6 billion people today.