page_title: Historicity of Muhammad
section_title: Islamic sources
hierarchical_section_title: Historicity of Muhammad / Islamic sources
context_page_description: While the existence of the Islamic prophet Muhammad is established by contemporaneous or near-contemporaneous historical records, attempts to distinguish between the historical elements and the ahistorical elements of many of the reports of Muhammad have not been very successful. Hence the historicity of Muhammad, aside from his existence, is debated. How much reliable history there is about Muhammad is disputed, with some sources maintaining that "everything he did and said was recorded", while others insist that we do not have even "a scrap of information of real use in constructing the human history of Muhammad, beyond the bare fact that he once existed".
  The earliest Muslim source of information for the life of Muhammad, the Quran, gives very little personal information and its historicity is debated. Prophetic biography known as sīra; and records of the words, actions, and the silent approval of Muhammad, known as hadith, survive in the historical works of writers from the third and fourth centuries of the Muslim era, and give a great deal of information on Muhammad, but the reliability of this information is very much debated.
context_section_description: The main Islamic source on Muhammad's life are the Quran and accounts of Muhammad's life based on oral traditions known as sīra and hadith. 
  Most Muslims believe God has promised "to protect and preserve the Quran" from error,
  It is not possible for a Muslim to entertain doubts concerning the immutability of the Qur’aan, because Allaah has guaranteed to preserve the Qur’aan. Allaah says (interpretation of the meaning): 
  “Verily, We, it is We Who have sent down the Dhikr (i.e. the Qur’aan) and surely, We will guard it (from corruption)” (Quran 15:9)
   
  and that the Sunnah (or hadith) – "which is the words, deeds and approval that are attributed to the Prophet" Muhammad is, like the Quran, "divine Revelation" (wahy). (Non-Muslim historians have not shared this reverence.)
caption: 11th-century Persian Quran folio page in kufic script
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