Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

54 t CHAPTER THREE
mad was written not in Mecca or Medina but in eighth-century
Baghdad, in a religiously cosmopolitan milieu where the Muslim
dialogue with Christians and Jews was well under way. Ibn Ishaq’s
work, particularly in its abbreviated form, served rather precisely
as a Muslim gospel, to bring the “good news” of Muhammad to a
community that still possessed little beyond the Quran and to provide
the Muslims with a biographical book to emulate and rival
the Gospels and so lessen the polemical advantage these latter gave
the Christians.
Muhammad: A Life
The traditional accounts date Muhammad’s birth in Mecca to 570
c.e., which seems somewhat too early, but, as in the case of Jesus,
the exact year is of no great consequence. Of greater importance
was that Muhammad was orphaned at a young age, to which the
Quran itself seems to allude in one of its rare personal asides
(93:6), and the Book more than once urges a merciful justice toward
such bereaved children. Otherwise Muhammad seems to
have had an unremarkable youth, this young man of the Banu
Hashim, a not particularly notable clan of the paramount Meccan
tribe of Quraysh. He was regarded as an “honest” or “reliable”
(amin) young man, and although the Islamic tradition has kept
Muhammad at a very safe distance from the polytheism of Mecca
even before his prophetic call, it does credit him with a role in the
Quraysh’s rebuilding of the Kaaba after it had been destroyed in
one of Mecca’s frequent flash floods. Muhammad had a “hidden
life” up until his public ministry, not, however, as a craftsman like
Jesus, but as a commercial agent. Furthermore, he was married,
with children.
Sometime in his adulthood—the traditional date is 610—Muhammad
received his first revelation. This might be the two visions
described somewhat obliquely in the Quran (53:1–18), but the
biographical tradition thought otherwise. It describes a far more
graphic scene in a cave near Mecca, a struggle with the angel Gabriel,
and finally the revelation of Quran 96:1–5 or, according to