not obvious. Students of the historical tradition (taʾrīkh) have been able to demonstrate the way in which the tradition could be manipulated to give significantly different messages even after it had been recorded in writing (cf., for example, the way in which al-Ṭabarī was used by the later compilers like Ibn al-Athīr). This sort of creative reinterpretation must have been much more possible in the stages before the appearance of written texts.51
One can in fact identify a variety of interests and tendencies within the early Islamic tradition, as well as certain features of the process of transmission itself, that may have effected the manipulation of isnāds. Michael Cook presents perhaps the most detailed explanation of this phenomenon, and he describes numerous mechanisms by which isnāds likely spread, none of which, it is important to note, involves a grand (or even modest) conspiracy of forgery. On the contrary, Cook identifies several very ordinary events from the process of transmission that likely have introduced the spread of isnāds, and all of these are “thoroughly in accordance with the character and values of the system [of transmission].”52 Patricia Crone additionally explains how the rivalries between various centers of early Islamic scholarship (that is, Medina, Mecca, Kūfa, Baṣra, Syria) likely brought about the spread of isnāds in many instances.53 Likewise, Norman Calder’s study of the early Islamic legal tradition identifies still more factors that likely influenced the process of transmission and caused the spread of isnāds. Calder focuses particularly on doctrinal differences as a vector for such changes, and he presents a compelling example from the ḥadīth that clearly evidences the spread of isnāds occasioned by inter-Islamic dogmatic disputes.54 Any one or a combination of these factors could easily have inspired adjustments to these records of transmission, introducing distortions that would lead to the identification of false common links and, by consequence, inaccurate datings.55 Thus, while the use of common-link analysis to date material may be accepted somewhat provisionally, one must always bear in mind the failures of this method when it has been tested and the potentially deviating effect of the spread of isnāds.56 In order to guard against such inaccuracies, this approach can be applied effectively only to traditions bearing an extremely dense pattern of transmission from multiple, intermediate common links, a threshold that few traditions prove capable of meeting. Moreover, while this approach has shown some success in locating a number of traditions at the beginnings of the second Islamic century, for many of the reasons noted above, it has not proven very effective for identifying traditions from the first century with much credibility.57
Despite these problems, a small group of scholars has recently applied this method to a selection of sīra traditions, not in an effort to recover early traditions from much later sources, where it may perhaps prove effective, but instead with the intent of securing elements of Muhammad’s biography to figures from the first Islamic century. In particular, they have aimed at exhuming a core of tradition that can be assigned to ʿUrwa ibn al-Zubayr’s authorship, thus fixing the outline of Muhammad’s career to this scholar from the end of the seventh century and the beginning of the eighth. In this way they would attempt to establish the historical accuracy and authenticity of at least some of the basic events from the traditional narrative of Islamic origins. At issue is the general reliability of the early sīra traditions for knowledge of Muhammad’s life and the beginnings of Islam: the historical veracity of these accounts stands very much in question. As already noted, the narrative traditions of Muhammad’s life were rather late in forming, and even the earliest sources, such as they are, can be known only indirectly through more recent transmissions. Accordingly, one must reckon with the fact that during the century that elapsed between the end of Muhammad’s life and the first recoverable narratives of Islamic origins, the Islamic faith almost certainly underwent significant changes in its beliefs and practices. As the chapters to follow will argue, Islam’s transformation during this first century seems in fact to have been considerable, involving the shift from an imminent eschatological belief focused on Jerusalem to become the religion of a global empire with a sacred geography centered on the Hijāz. Such developments were bound to have an effect on Islam’s self-image, including particularly how it recalled its formative period and even perhaps how it remembered the ending of its founder’s life. Indeed, as is widely conceded, the image of Muhammad presented in these early biographies reflects not so much a historical figure from the early seventh century as an idealized portrait of Islam’s founding prophet designed to suit the needs and concerns of eighth- and ninth-century Islam.58 Taking the second edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam as a reflection of the opinio communis, the sīra traditions are here judged as being essentially worthless for reconstructing a historically credible biography of Muhammad or for the history of early Islam more generally.59
With this assessment, Muhammad runs the risk of vanishing from history, and taking with him any reliable knowledge concerning the origins of Islam. Against this general consensus, Gregor Schoeler and Andreas Görke, and to a lesser extent Motzki, have applied the methods of isnād criticism to several individual sīra traditions, in the hopes of preventing such an epistemological collapse.60 If their analysis is correct, then the “basic framework” of Muhammad’s biography, presumably including at least some of its chronology, may be ascribed to ʿUrwa and perhaps some other early figures. Since ʿUrwa was a nephew of Muhammad’s favorite wife, ʿĀʾisha, as Görke and Schoeler frequently remind their readers, one can safely assume, they would argue, that his account is largely accurate. Although Görke and Schoeler do not include traditions concerning the end of Muhammad’s life among their alleged corpus of ʿUrwan material, their proposal, if correct, would be of some significance for estimating the reliability of these biographical sources. In such a case it would certainly be more difficult, although by no means impossible, to raise significant doubts concerning the accuracy of the traditional Islamic memory of Muhammad’s death. Nevertheless, the approach fails to deliver what its proponents have promised, largely because the biographical traditions generally lack the dense networks required to identify meaningful nodes of transmission, leaving them rather unsuited for this method of analysis. Consequently, Görke and Schoeler’s claims that ʿUrwa may be identified as the author of a significant corpus of sīra traditions are not especially persuasive. Ultimately their investigations do little to advance our knowledge of the sīra traditions beyond what may already be determined from Ibn Isḥāq’s Maghāzī and other early sources.
For example, Motzki applies this isnād-critical approach to a tradition in which Muhammad orders the assassination of a Jewish opponent, Ibn Abī l-Ḥuqayq, and while he convincingly assigns the tale to al-Zuhrī, his efforts to identify an earlier source are not persuasive.61 To do so, he must conflate two traditions that in fact appear to be quite distinct and ignore the deeply problematic nature of one of his tradents, Abū Isḥāq.62 Schoeler makes a similar analysis of the traditions of the beginnings of Muhammad’s revelations (the iqraʾ episode) and the rumors that ʿĀʾisha had committed adultery (ḥadīth al-ifk),63 while Görke has investigated the reports of Muhammad’s treaty at al-Ḥudaybiya.64 Görke and Schoeler have also published together a very brief article on an extensive tradition complex purportedly associated with the events of Muhammad’s hijra.65 In each instance they attempt to identify these traditions with ʿUrwa, whose biography of Muhammad they aim to reconstruct using the methods of common-link analysis.66 While al-Zuhrī and occasionally other authorities of his generation can be persuasively linked with these traditions, the reach back to ʿUrwa is generally not convincing. Their arguments often require a great deal of optimism regarding the accuracy of certain isnāds and an occasional willingness to accept hypothetically reconstructed lines of transmission. In the case of the complex of traditions linked with the hijra, for instance, a large body of material transmitted by only a single source is identified as genuine, while isnāds belonging to only specific parts of the alleged tradition complex are occasionally represented as authenticating the entire block of material.67
Görke and Schoeler are most successful in arguing that the traditions of Muhammad’s experience of visions and voices at the onset of
