Muhammad and The Jews — Page 5
INTRODUCTION From the inadequate material at our disposal it is not easy to reconstruct the past as it happened. Muslim historians were not interested in the fate of the Jews, and the Jews themselves have not left any record of their first encounter with Islam. Though the available material is, indeed, meagre, fragmentary and at times contradictory, nevertheless there is enough ground to cal! for a critical re-examination of these accounts. The study is essentially based on the following sources : 1. The Qur~frn; 2. Kitiib Sirat Rasftl Alliih, 1 lbn Hishiim's recensionoftheoriginal work of Ibn lsl,liiq (d. 151/768); 3. Al-Jiimi al-Sabif:i2 compiled by Imam al-Bukhari (d. 256/869); 4. Al-Sabi[i3 of Muslim b. al-Ijajjaj (d. 261/874). Throughout this study I have, of course, examined Kitiib al-Maghiizi 4 of al-Waqidi (d. 207/822) and Kitiib al-Tabaqat al-Kabir 5 of Ibn Sa"-d (d. 230/845), but the main burden of the argument rests on the four sources given above. The basic source of the history of early Islam is of course the Qur~iin. It is contemporaneous with the Apostle's life and offers a running commentary on all the important events which took place in bis lifetime. But the Qur~ an is not a book of history; history depends on precise chronology, whereas no real idea of the dates or sequence of events can be obtained from it. But it plays a very important role in checking the truth of many an incident which happened during the Apostle's lifetime. Muslim compilers of the biographical dictionaries of the Com- panions of the Apostle, later Muslim historians, Western scholars and modern Muslim historians have written exhaustively in criticism of lbn Isl)iiq, al-Wiiqidi and Ibn Sa"-d. We shall not cover that ground once again. Historical understanding, however, is the constant rethinking of the past. Historical knowledge is inseparable from per- sonal knowledge, which is very much involved with contemporary problems. "It is thus that, in a sense, all history is contemporary, too". 6 1 Ed. by F. Wustenfeld (2 vols. Gottingen, 1856-60). 2 (3 vols. Cairo: AJ-Sha'°b Press. n. d. ). 3 (2 vols. Labore: Ghulam Ali & Sons, 1958-62). 4 Ed. by Marsden Jones (2 vols. London, 1966). 5 (8 vols. Beirnt, 1957 ff). 6 John Lukacs, Historical Consciousness; or, The Remembered Past (New York, 1968), p. 35. 5