List of expeditions of Muhammad: Difference between revisions

List of expeditions of Muhammad (view source)

Revision as of 18:30, 20 December 2022

3,637 bytes added , 20 December 2022

Added introductory overview section about views on these sources

[checked revision]

Lightyears

Editors, em-bypass-2, Reviewers, rollback, Administrators

2,743

edits

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 {{QualityScore|Lead=1|Structure=2|Content=4|Language=2|References=4}}
 The '''List of expeditions of Muhammad''', also includes a '''list of battles by Muhammad's order''' and comprises information about casualties, objectives, and nature of the military expeditions ordered by [[Muhammad]], as well as the primary sources which mention the Battles.
+==The sῑra-maghāzī literature==
+Detailed information and chronology about the raids, expeditions and battles conducted by Muhammad derive from the narratives compiled in the sῑra-maghāzī genre of literature (biography/expeditions) and associated hadiths. Academic scholars increasingly treat the Quran itself as the primary historical source through which the later material is tested, though few battles are explicitly named therein.
+Academic scholars have determined that the later material is unreliable for a variety of reasons, though has some historical value when treated cautiously. Regarding the expedition literature generally, Professor Sean Anthony has argued in his book ''Muhammad and the Empires of Faith'' that the initial, formative compilation of this material took impulse from the late Umayyad court (late 7th/early 8th century CE). The corpus of traditions existed independently of the court, but their formation into sῑra-maghāzī works was a product of political intervention. Anthony contends that "the rhetoric of empire in Late Antiquity profoundly shaped this corpus".<ref>Sean Anthony, ''Muhammad and the Empires of Faith: The making of the Prophet of Islam'', Oakland CA: University of California, 2020, pp. 175-6</ref>
+The hadith and sῑra-maghāzī literature speak frequently of the dominion (mulk) of the prophet and his community (ummah). This triumphalist view of the emergence of the early Islamic community "served to sustain and legitimize that community's hegemony, the supremacy of its ruling elite, and the expansionist policy of the burgeoning polity."<ref>Sean Anthony, ''Muhammad and the Empires of Faith'', p. 177</ref>
+A source which stands out as more significant are the letters of 'Urwa b. Zubayr, the nephew of Aisha. A series of letters from 'Urwa to the late Umayyad court in answer to various historical queries are preserved in the work of al-Tabari, while some narratives therefrom also appear in other sources. More information and a summary of the relevant letters is given in the article [[Jihad in Islamic Law]] and they are translated in full in chapter four of Anthony's book. For a number of reasons these letters are considered more credible than later sources, and detail a small number of raids and battles: the raid on Nakhlah, the battle of Badr, the conquest of Mecca, the battle of Hunayn and the seige of al-Ta'if. Other conflicts which some academic scholars consider reasonably likely to have some historicity but which are not mentioned by 'Urwa are Uhud, Banu Mustaliq, the Ditch, Banu Qurayza, and Khaybar. It may be noted that 'Urwa's letters respond to specific questions about historical events, so we should not expect them to be a comprehensive list of all expeditions undertaken or ordered by Muhammad.
+'Urwa also narrates in his first letter the two forced migrations from Mecca faced by the believers following persecutions known as the first and second fitnas, in the first case to Abyssinia, and the second time to Medina. Bearing in mind this context, Islamic modernist scholars argue that the most well evidenced expeditions are in line with the Quranic principles that fighting is in self-defense or pre-emptive (or more specifically, for proportionate retaliation or to stop religious persecution - see the discussion in the article [[Jihad in Islamic Law]]). This view is of course contested by other Islamic and academic scholars.
+While the term ghazwa is typically translated "expedition" (even in this article), it was sometimes used in a non-military sense, for example the 'umrah pilgrimage which appears in the list below.
 ==List of Expeditions==