The Eye of the Beholder: The Life of Muhammad as Viewed by the Early Muslims. A Textual Analysis.

• Author: Rippin, A.

Separating biography from hagiography - history from fiction, in the words of Rubin - has been the major historiographical challenge faced by those writing about the life of Muhammad, according to their own explanations. In his standard treatment of the subject, W. M. Watt, for example, has spoken of the tendentious elements found in the Muslim accounts of Muhammad and the need for modern historians to use their critical senses to eliminate those factors considered "impossible" within a historical framework.

In his new book, Uri Rubin moves this discussion of Muslim retellings of the life of Muhammad onto an entirely new plane. In a manner similar to that broached by John Wansbrough in The Sectarian Milieu (Oxford, 1978), Rubin disavows any interest in the life of Muhammad in a historical sense and focuses on how the Muslim accounts reflect "the self-image of medieval Islamic society" (p. 3). It is not his intention to make any attempt to distinguish between "legendary" and "historical" elements in the stories (as opposed to earlier attempts to speak of the Muslim image of Muhammad, written by people such as Tor Andrae and Annemarie Schimmel).

A key methodological element employed by Rubin, which he suggests separates his work from that of Wansbrough, is found in his emphasis on the citation of a multitude of sources, an approach which has become associated with the work of M. J. Kister. Rubin's review of the sources from which the accounts of the life of Muhammad may be culled (pp. 5-17) emphasizes the wide diversity of material which must be taken into account, ranging as it does from hadith, sira, tarikh and tafsir.

Rubin's book focuses on certain aspects of the retelling of the life of Muhammad within the early years of the prophet's emergence in Mecca (the promise is made of another book dealing with the Medinan period). He identifies five themes for attention, and each is given its own section: attestation, preparation, revelation, persecution, and salvation.

One emphasis within Rubin's reading of the story of Muhammad is seen in the conviction that early Muslims needed to assert that their prophet was from the same line as those believed in by Jews and Christians. This situation of interreligious confrontation is witnessed in the emphasis found in the stories on the "annunciation" of Muhammad, a motif familiar within the biblical tradition and through which Muslims made their appeal. "This was supposed to convince the People of the Book who refused to recognize Muhammad as a prophet like...