Did Muhammad really exist? Now you might think this is a silly question but in fact online now on
YouTube an increasing number of videos have been made mainly I think by missionary Christians from
a certain background questioning his existence so I thought I'd just do a brief video surveying
the historical evidence from a reputable historian just to see what the truth of the matter is.
I'll just turn again to the wonderful Jonathan A C Brown book 'Muhammad: A Very Short
Introduction. He's a recognized expert on this subject chosen by Oxford University Press
to share with its readers the truth about Muhammad from an historian's point of view.
So i'll just share with you this very question: 'Did Muhammad really exist?:
revisionist history' that's how this section of the book is entitled.
He gives a long survey at the beginning about the problems
that some people see with establishing the existence of Muhammad as an historical
person and then he concludes with what mainstream historians are saying about this subject.
'Modern historians have generally concluded that, by reading the Sira in light of the various
influences and agendas pursued within the text, we can sift out forged reports.
Looking at the material that remains, we can retrieve an authentic kernel that represents
the historical reality of Muhammad's career. According to this mainstream scholarly opinion
skepticism about the details of the Sira should not lead us to doubt its overall narrative.
Some western historians, however, have called for more extreme skepticism towards Muslim sources.
Known as revisionist historians, these scholars point out that we have no detailed history for
Islam or biography of Muhammad for some 150 years after his death. Moreover, what we do have
is all written by Muslims. These Muslims thus had over a century
to manufacture whatever history they wanted about Muhammad and his faith. How then can we trust
any Muslim version of his life or the origins of Islam? How do we know that Muhammad even existed?
In a controversial 1977 book entitled Hagarism the historians Patricia Crone
and Michael Cook argued that we can circumvent these challenges by relying on non-muslim
sources to reconstruct the origins of Islam. Not only were such sources not
biased towards glorifying Muhammad they were also much older than our earliest Muslim histories.
Using Christian sources such as the writings of an Armenian bishop named Sebeos from the 660s CE,
Cook and Crone contended that Islam was really a form of late messianic Judaism. Awakened to the
Abrahamic roots, Muhammad and the Arabs had joined with the Jews of the Hijaz in an apocalyptic
movement to retake the abrahamic homeland of Palestine. Crook and Crone conclude from
Christian sources that Muhammad was in fact still alive during the Muslim quest conquest of Syria.
The scholar John Wansbrough also argued that we can never locate the factual kernel of
the historical Muhammad. All we can discover is the sacred history constructed by the muslim community
as it gelled in the late 700s and early 800s. In his books Quranic Studies (1977) and The Sectarian Milieu (1978),
Wansbrough argues that it was at this time that the Muslims constructed the Quran and the Sirah
to create a religious vision anchored in 7th century Arabia.
The life of Muhammad and the Quran were merely cobbled together from elements drawn from the
Near Eastern religious heritage. Based on archaeological evidence, the Israeli
historian Yahuda Nevo argued that Islam was originally a form of vague monotheism which
only solidified into its 'Muhammadan' form after 692 CE. He points to a papyrus tax receipt from Egypt
dated 22 Hijri/642 CE which begins with the formula 'In the name of God' but makes no mention of Muhammad.
Nevo states that we do not see the phrase mentioning Muhammad until a coin minted in
Damascus in 72 Hijri with the phrase 'Muhammad is the Messenger of God' and then Jonathan Brown puts
in brackets (in fact, there is an earlier coin mentioning his name issued in 66-7 Hijri/686 CE). After
692 however, Muhammad's name appears regularly in Umayyad coins and monumental inscriptions. The
person of Muhammad before that time, Nevo concludes, must not have been a significant
part of Islam. So Neva concludes that Muhammad was not a significant part of Islam at all!!
Most modern scholars, however, object to the revisionist recasting of Muhammad
and the origins of Islam. In other words they reject these revisionist theories.
First of all, how were Muslims able to orchestrate a conspiracy as massive as rewriting the entire
first century of their history? We must remember that during this time the muslim community was
wracked by civil wars and sectarian strife. Warring Umayyad, Kharijite, Shiite, and Abbasid Muslims
could not agree on anything, let alone join forces to rewrite their collective history.
As for the absence of archaeological evidence naming Muhammad before 691, it is not conclusive.
Just because no earlier coins or evidence have survived does not mean they did not exist.
Perhaps the Arabs continued their tradition of oral commemoration and did not record such
things in written form. Finally the Quran itself is the most conclusive evidence that the muslim
narrative of Muhammad's mission is reliable in its overall structure. Unlike the
Sira, the Quran bears no traces of civil war or sectarian propaganda. It never mentions Ali,
Abu Bakr, or the Umayyads. Furthermore, there are no conflicting versions of the Quran.
If the quran was not affected by these forces, it must have taken permanent form *before* them. This
means that the Quran consists of material dating back to the time of the prophet or soon after his
death. One person the Quran does mention by name is Muhammad, urging his followers over and over
again to 'obey God and His messenger'. Muhammad thus seems to have been very important to Islam indeed.
We must also be cautious of uncritically accepting Christian descriptions of Muhammad's teachings.
Christian writers may not have been biased *towards* Muhammad, but they were certainly not
objective observers. They were describing the faith of the armies that had just steamrolled over them,
so it is not surprising that they saw Islam and Muhammad in an inexact
light. To rely solely on these Christian sources in writing the history of Muhammad would be like
writing a history of the Soviet Union during the Cold War using only American newspapers.
I think that's a rather clever analogy! More importantly, viewed together these early non-muslim
sources paint a picture of Islam that does not actually differ markedly from the major themes
of the muslim version. The Greek historian of the first century before the common era Diodorus
mentions a temple in the Hejaz honored by the peoples of Arabia,
and the second century AD Alexandrian geographer Ptolemy mentions the Arabian towns of 'Yathrippa'
and 'Mecoraba'. Sound familiar? We thus know that Mecca and Yathrib and most likely the Kaba
existed long before Islam. Moreover the jewish historian Josephus who died in the first century
AD tells us that it had long been held that the Arabs were the descendants of Abraham through
Ishmael. Non-muslim sources certainly leave leave no doubt that a prophetic figure named Muhammad
existed and they provide an unsurprising description of what he meant to his followers.
An anti-Jewish Christian text written in 634, just two years after Muhammad's death,
notes how the armies of an Arabian prophet had conquered Palestine. Writing in the year 687, the
Mesopotamian Christian monk John of Phenak wrote that the Muslims considered Muhammad to be their
'guide' and 'instructor' who taught the Arabs to 'worship the One God in accordance with ancient law'.
He remarks how strictly t'hey kept to the tradition of Muhammad'. Another mid-8th century Syriac
Christian writer tells us that Muhammad went on caravan journeys to Syria as a youth. An anonymous
chronicle written in the mid 700s in the Zuqnin monastery in northern Mesopotamia calls Muhammad
the 'first king of Arabs' who considered him a prophet because he turned them in from polytheism
to worship of the one God. Muhammad gave them laws and they called him the 'Messenger of God'.
End quote. So clearly there is an abundance of very early reliable evidence from non-muslim sources
and muslim sources the quran itself names Muhammad. The Quran is now securely dated in the form
even that we have it today back in time back to the even the lifetime of the Prophet or very
shortly after his death according to the majority view of western scholars and obviously
muslim scholars too. So if you were to come across any youtube videos or any
other missionary propaganda casting doubt on Muhammad's existence I do recommend you
get a good reliable scholarly analysis of the facts from a world-class academic publisher
to get the reliable factual information and not rely on missionary propaganda. Till next time.