Talk:Historicity of Muhammad

message: The statement "All or most of the Qur'an was written down by Muhammad's companions while he was alive, but it was primarily an orally related document" is not my understanding.  I have read that most of his sayings were transmitted orally for about 20-30 years before being written down.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.181.166.4 (talk) 04:34, 6 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Historical authenticity of the Qur'an 

message: I killed this section because it was unreferenced and seemingly unfactual. --Aminz 00:42, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Overview 

message: Like many other figures e.g. Jesus and Moses there is no evidence he existed other then his religious sources.  This I find very puzzling both because of the people in the region and the times he lived. I think reading this others are puzzled too.
BernardZ 23:47, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: BernardZ, historicity of Muhammad is almost certain. It is different from that of Jesus, not to speak of Moses. We know about Muhammad more than any other person from ancient times. --Aminz 00:44, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I beg to differ: we know much about Jesus. In fact, we know about a lot of people more than Muhammad. LutherVinci (talk) 21:35, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

text: As the article says, there are non-Muslim sources as well. In any case, you should support your statement through scholarly sources. --Aminz 05:55, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Summary 

message: There are major differences in it between the current Qur'an and it. I have not found any scholarly references yet to this but I think we should add something about what is an incredible find here. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by BernardZ (talk • contribs) 05:00, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That's not the mainstream view of academics. --Aminz 02:08, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Qur'an in the House of Manuscript in Sana'a. 

message: Why are what appear to be some fairly non-mainstream opinions about Muhummad the only items under the "Information on Muhummad" section? Definitely not neutral. 72.74.16.200 01:48, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  why are...

message: The years given in YOUR Hillenbrand cite, 645-690, do not match those at Qur'an in the House of Manuscript in Sana'a, 790-835, for exactly the same article. This should be checked in the original article by Hillenbrand and corrected at whichever page has it wrong. ThuranX 12:47, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hillenbrand cite 

message: Don't see the problem, assume it's a stale tag, opening this § for discussion. Lycurgus (talk) 21:30, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Propriety of the quotefarm tag 

message: This section states that there are:
"Non-Muslim sources written in Greek, Syriac, Armenian, and Hebrew by the Jewish and Christian communities".
However it does not go on to elaborate exactly what they are. Elsewhere in the article Harald Motzski is quoted saying:
"At present, the study of Muhammad, the founder of the Muslim community, is obviously caught in a dilemma. On the one hand, it is not possible to write a historical biography of the Prophet without being accused of using the sources uncritically, while on the other hand, when using the sources critically, it is simply not possible to write such a biography".
This suggests that there are no non-Muslim sources. Should this statement about the existence of non-Muslim sources be removed? --Pappa (talk) 13:08, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sources for the historical Muhammad 

message: I've added a rewrite template. This article really needs some work, but I wouldn't know where to start. --Pappa (talk) 15:12, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Rewrite

message: I've just smoothed this article a  bit - some of the English was a bit unfortunately phrased.  
I see that some contributors seem to think it should be a "why Muhammed never existed" article.  Since no reputable and qualified person holds such a silly view, it can't sensibly be the subject of a Wikipedia article; really, it cannot.  But I think this article has real value to everyone if it lists the source data for the life of Mohammed, and it is doing this fairly well.  Surely any *theories* about Muhammed should be those published by academics, and listed with references (as some are), or else omitted?  After all, who wants to read amateur hate-driven opinions, in which some wonk tries desperately to fabricate a lie?  (I should say that I'm not a Moslem, and interested in, but not at all sympathetic to Islam; but what *I* need is *facts* about this subject;-- i.e. what is the data on which any opinion must be based?  Opinion we can all do for ourselves, after all.  If I do have to enter a debate with someone, I would very much rather that I got my facts right.)
Now I see that someone put in stuff about non-Moslem sources "confirming" the Koran.  Surely such wording is liable to bring accusations of pro-Moslem POV? On this basis I've modified this to making it possible to compare accounts - which it is.  That doesn't express an opinion either way.  But if we do want to say that these sources confirm something in the Koran, we need to be more precise as to what it confirms --after all it certainly doesn't confirm the Moslem religion! -- and we should give references to western academic literature in each case.  Let's give hard data, eh?  Some of the points -- such as Muhammed being a merchant -- *do* confirm what the Koran says.
One other point: I did wonder whether all this stuff on the authenticity of the **Koran** is actually in the right place?  Surely it must be duplicating stuff in the Koran article?  I've not done anything to it, but it seems doubtful that it should be here.  I suggest that this page is basically a list of sources, and for reliability etc links to the individual page for the source? Roger Pearse (talk) 13:50, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Muhammed didn't exist (?) 

message: The article currently reads:
::According to Encyclopædia Britannica, Muhammad is "the only founder of a major world religion who lived in the full light of history and about whom there are numerous records in historical texts, although like other pre-modern historical figures not every detail of his life is known"
I added  to this because WP:RS says that says that secondary sources are preferred over tertiary sources.  It's true that WP:RS says that tertiary sources can be used to give overviews/summaries as long as secondary sources are given for the more detailed points.  However, the detailed points that follow seem to basically contradict the given summary ("when using the sources critically, it is simply not possible to write ... a historical biography of the Prophet").  Also, while I realize that a high-level summary can't be totally precise, phrases like "full light of history" seem unnecessarily vague.  Muhammad's life straddled the border between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, is that really what springs to mind when one says "full light of history"?
I'm not necessarily suggesting that this be removed (I would have preferred an inline version of  instead).  Rather, if it was possible to replace it with the secondary sources that Encyclopedia Britannica used, then this position could be given more clarity and reliability.  --Underpants 15:36, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Encyclopedia Britannica 

message: Shall we inlcude Muhammad's letters to the Heads-of-State? Shall we also include Relics of Muhammad ? Faro0485 (talk) 16:17, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Personal correspondence would have been a great primary source, but unfortunately these letters to heads of state you refer to were standard letters, rather resembling modern day direct mail, meant to advertise the Prophet's brand new-and-improved religion.  (Join now - double your rewards in heaven! Only while stocks last!)  The relics have the same problems as relics of holy figures in other religions - their authenticity is questionable and can't be relied upon to give much insight into the historical personality. Gymnophoria (talk) 21:11, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think they should be included because it mentions his name, and the end of each letter it is stamped "Muhammed the prophet of God"--BelalSaid (talk) 18:23, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Muhammad's stuff 

message: A picture of Mohammed to illustrate who is being talked about, as it is unclear to any casual reader what is happening in the article when one of the only pictures is just a stack of papers. 69.166.47.133 (talk) 15:18, 6 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: inb4 jihad.
-G  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.51.169.38 (talk) 13:18, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: This article could really use

message: A serious ommission is lack of mention of Doctrina Jacobi, a Byzantine anti-Jewish tract, dated to just two years after the accepted date fo the death of Muhammad, stating that a "Saracen Prophet" had arisen out of Arabia. The tract is cited by even sceptics Cook and Crone as proof of the historicity of Muhammad. Reference should also be made to the book "Seeing Islam as Others Saw it" by Hoyland, which reconstructs a Muhammad and Early Islam compatible in the broad strokes with that based on Muslim historiography.
Ybgursey (talk) 09:30, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Totally agree. Go ahead.Giordaano (talk) 12:22, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
replies: text:  I have included them in the "Non-Muslim sources" part--BelalSaid (talk) 18:24, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Doctrina Jacobi and Hoyland's ''Seeing Islam as others saw it'' 

message: According to a recent article by Barbara Köster in the austrian daily Die Presse, Orientalist schoolar Ignaz Goldziher questioned the historicity of Muhammad as the quran presents it. As she reports, Muhammad lived in the 6th or 7th century BEFORE christ, and Islamic tradition would rather have been established as a Jewish Christian cult of arabic tribes relying on bad translations of an aramaic primal quran. Does anybody know if this theory has any support in modern science? --Derbeobachter (talk) 07:21, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Nope, it is not supported. See Seeing Islam as Others Saw It--BelalSaid (talk) 18:17, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ignaz Goldziher and the non-historicity of Muhammad 

message: Yes, I am trying to support a video made by a Youtube user on this subject, if someone could please politely respond and I will explain the situation, thank you. ~EgyptKEW9~  — Preceding unsigned comment added by EgyptKEW9 (talk • contribs) 14:40, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Trying to support a video 

message: I am not sure if this belongs here; the theories "doubting" the "historicity" of Muhammad appear to be rather left-field, but here is an apparently serious suggestion that seems to imply that while Muhammad was a historical "prophet", the name "Muhammad" would have been an adopted title given to Christ in Arab Christianity, as was Ali (i.e. the historical Muhammad would have identified himself with Christ and his authority by adopting his title; Ali would be a metastasis of the same figure that became a separate "youthful hero" version in later mythology).This 2008 article seems to make the case based on early(?) talismanic inscriptions that may be understood as Christian invocations of God and Jesus Christ reinterpreted as Islamic invocations of God, Muhammad and Ali 
:(i.e. ya safi ya allah ya muhammad ya hannan ya mannan la fata illa ali  if interpreted in Islamic terms mingles up invocations of God, Muhammad and Ali; reading muhammad and ali not as proper names, it becomes "o healer, o God, o praised one, o merciful one, o graceful one, there is no youthful hero like the exalted [raised, risen] one", i.e addressing Christ). 
This seems all rather plausible, as of course Islam did start of as an imitation or regional spin-off from Christianity. The article goes on to identify the sword of "Ali", Zulfiqar, as a direct reference to the "double-edged sword" of Hebrews 4:12 and Revelation (1:16 etc.). It then all becomes a garbled reference to Christian eschatology, i.e the risen Christ ('ali') wielding the "double-edged sword" of judging between good and evil.
But this all hinges on the question of the antiquity of this talisman, and as I have no confirmation that this is solid scholarship rather than a random fringe view. It was published academically, but its tendency to cite online sources (including Wikipedia...) isn't very reassuring. It would help if there were comparable ideas expressed by other scholars as well.
So I'll not to try to insert it into the article just yet, but I thought it may be helpful to make note of it here for future reference. --dab (𒁳) 09:16, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Origin of the name "Muhammad" as a title of Christ?

message: The Historicity of Jesus article states "There is near unanimity among scholars that Jesus existed historically" in the final paragraph before the table of contents. Question answered.
This article quotes the opinion of a historian, however it doesn't say whether this opinion represents a consensus or a crackpot theory.
--holizz (talk) 03:21, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  So ... did he exist? 

message: This page should not be speedily deleted because this is an obviously spurious request. --Eperoton (talk) 22:46, 1 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contested deletion 

message: The article definitively needs editing. The opening section starts with a claim that the "existence of the figure Muhammad is proven" and mentions a debate about the "historicity of Muhammad, aside from his existence". Further down we can read that a minority of researchers does question not only the historicity of the tradition about Muhammad but his very existence. This should not remain as it is. Why not have a look at the Jesus article and how the very parallel question of historicity is handled there in the opening? A claim that "the existence of Jesus is proven" has no place there, for good reason. Kipala (talk) 13:56, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: have attempted to cleanup the problem in the lede. More work remains to be done. --BoogaLouie (talk) 22:57, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

text: Patricia Crone and Michael Cook challenge the traditional account of how the Quran was compiled writing that "there is no hard evidence for the existence of the Koran in any form before the last decade of the seventh century."
followed by several sentences attacking Crone and Cook.
Belongs in an article about the Quran.
I plan to trim this extraneous argument, which will be a lot of text.  --BoogaLouie (talk) 23:36, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

text: You've been potting in a lot of good work over the past couple of days. In reviewing your edits, the stuff you removed about the Quran look like worthwhile information that shouldn't be lost. I hope you can incorporate it somehow into the Quran article. ~Anachronist (talk) 19:44, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Article needs NPOV editing

message: The article is a mess in part because of tangents on  the Quran -- not the subject of the article -- for example 
:Patricia Crone and Michael Cook challenge the traditional account of how the Quran was compiled writing that "there is no hard evidence for the existence of the Koran in any form before the last decade of the seventh century."
followed by several sentences attacking Crone and Cook.
Belongs in an article about the Quran.
I plan to trim this extraneous argument, which will be a lot of text.  --BoogaLouie (talk) 23:36, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: You've been potting in a lot of good work over the past couple of days. In reviewing your edits, the stuff you removed about the Quran look like worthwhile information that shouldn't be lost. I hope you can incorporate it somehow into the Quran article. ~Anachronist (talk) 19:44, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: argument about the Quran

message: Hi. The citation for 'some sources maintaining that "everything he did and said was recorded"' seems to refer to the claim of one non-peer reviewed Muslim author who does not even make claims about what other sources say, whilst the following statement - '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' - cites two peer reviewed articles.
This strikes me as unequal footing (ie comparing a dogmatic opinion to peer reviewed articles) so I would suggest either qualifying the wording as 'Some Muslim sources claim everything he did and said was recorded, while other academic sources 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.' or simply removing the text 'some sources maintaining that "everything he did and said was recorded' altogether Daniel De Mol (talk)  — Preceding undated comment added 04:09, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Historicity of Muhammad citations 

message: The information regarding the historicity of the Qur'an places a disproportionate amount of doubt on the use of the Qur'an as an historical source. For example, Michael Cook and Patricia Crone, two well known members of the Revisionist School of Islamic Studies, are used to argue for doubting the Qur'an as an historical source, yet neither of those two scholars hold those same views anymore (as my citations show). Crone has since died, but both of them have affirmed, more recently, that there isn't any significant level of doubt as to the Qur'an's authenticity in the historical community. Crone's online article titled "What do we actually know about Mohammed," (which can be found on OpenDemocracy.net) shows this fairly clearly as she summarizes the general state of Islamic Studies. The original writing also included few quotes of scholars discussing the general consensus on the Qur'an and instead selects individual opinions of a few scholars and uses them to portray the scholarly community as being much more divided on the issue of the historicity of the Qur'an than it really is.Renegade4dk (talk) 22:01, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Historicity of Qur'an 

message: Christian and Muslims will inherently argue and spam changed to an article like this same as the jesus one… the public shouldn’t be allowed to edit this page …. It should be locked like all the others…? 109.181.2.7 (talk) 19:06, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  This page should be locked 

message: There are many quotations where it source is unclear because there are two or more citations following the quote. Further I think the author of the quote should be also named right after the quote. Ike9898 (talk) 19:03, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Any quote in particular? Most seem to be one source per quote. It is possible both sources have the same quote. Ramos1990 (talk) 20:05, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quotations