Sīrah

Common card · No. 296814

Al-sīrah al-nabawiyya (Arabic: السيرة النبوية), commonly shortened to sīrah and translated as prophetic biography, are the traditional biographies of the Islamic prophet Muhammad written over centuries by Muslim historians, from which, in addition to the Quran and hadith literature, most historical information about his life and the early history of Islam is derived. Early historiographic information in Islam emerged as the irregular products of storytellers (qass, pl. qussas)—they were quite prestigious then—without details. While the narratives were initially in the form of a kind of heroic epics called maghazi, details were added later, edited and transformed into sirah compilations. The stories were written in the form of "founding conquest stories" based on nostalgia for the golden age then. Humphrey, quoted by Antoine Borrut, explains that the stories related to this period were created according to a pact-betrayal-redemption principle. Western historians describe the purpose of these...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Unknown scribe., Public domain