Customer Reviews

The Eye of the Beholder: The Life of Muhammad As Viewed by the Early Muslims--A Textual Analysis (Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, Vol. 5)

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Putting aside the usual question of 'what really happened', Rubin's excellent study is a textual analysis of the themes found in the sira [biographical] literature written about Muhammad after his death. Dividing his analysis of tradition into five chronological themes (attestation, preparation, revelation, persecution, and salvation), he examines each to show how in writing the biography of Muhammad the Muslim community was in large part also working through its own identity vis a vis Christians, Jews and the Arabian, Islamic milieu. In his last chapter, he offers some truly unique insights on the sira material by examining the numerological component in later Muslim attempts to date both the life and events in the life of Muhammad.

Rubin demonstrates the broad consequences of his study in the conclusion by exmaning the relation of what he postulates to be the predominantly early, indepedent evolution of the sira and the later integration of the Qur'an into the sira as 'asbab al-nuzul' (occassions of revelation) literature and ends finally with a few comments against the Scachtian thesis about isnaads.

The initimate familiarity of Rubin with the source materials appears often in his keen insights into the evolution of the texts and their influences making a reading of this work worthwhile even if one in the end may choose not to swallow every argument put forward.