robert spencer-did muhammad exist__ an inquiry into islams obscure origins-intercollegiate studies institute (2012) (1)

Ibn Ishaq's Reliability
So are these all “worthless sayings” that Ibn Ishaq received from “unknown people”? Possibly. Yet left
unexplained in these criticisms is Ibn Ishaq's motive. If there were indeed Jews who were enemies of
Islam (as they are for all generations, as designated by Qur'an 5:82) and were feeding Ibn Ishaq false
information about Muhammad in order to discredit Islam, their motive is relatively clear, but Ibn Ishaq's
isn't. Ibn Ishaq, says Margoliouth, paints “a disagreeable picture for the founder of a religion,” but it
“cannot be pleaded that it is a picture drawn by an enemy.” 10 Even if the Muhammad of Ibn Ishaq's
portrait is more of a cutthroat than a holy man, his biographer's reverence for his protagonist is obvious
and unstinting. Clearly Ibn Ishaq has no interest in portraying his prophet in an unfavorable light;
Muhammad, after all, is Ibn Ishaq's moral compass, just as he is for so many Muslims today. Ibn Ishaq
seems not to be troubled by the moral implications of the stories he tells or to believe that the incidents
place Muhammad in a negative light. Such stories cannot be rejected as unhistorical simply because
modern-day Muslims wish they weren't there.
Islamic sources mention earlier historians, but their works have not survived, and what has come down
to us about them is uncertain. For example, the man generally acknowledged as the founding father of
Islamic history, Urwa ibn Az-Zubair ibn al-Awwam, according to Islamic tradition was a cousin of
Muhammad and nephew of Aisha who died in 712. Ibn Ishaq, Tabari, and another early Muslim historian,
Ibn Sa‘d, attribute many traditions to him, but if he wrote anything at all, it has not come down to us. 11
There is no way to evaluate the veracity of Ibn Ishaq's various accounts of Muhammad. Material that
circulated orally for as many as 125 years, amid an environment in which forgery of such material was
rampant, is extremely unlikely to have maintained any significant degree of historical reliability. What's
more, as the Dutch scholar of Islam Johannes J. G. Jansen observes:
Nothing from the contents of Ibn Ishaq is confirmed by inscriptions or other archeological material. Testimonies from non-Muslim
contemporaries do not exist. Greek, Armenian, Syriac and other sources about the beginnings of Islam are very difficult to date, but
none of them is convincingly contemporary with the Prophet of Islam. Under such circumstances, no biography can be a scholarly work
in the modern sense of that word, not even with the help of an omniscient Ibn Ishaq. 12
Historical Embroidery
Later biographers were even more knowing, often embroidering on Ibn Ishaq's accounts. Historian
Patricia Crone adduces one particularly egregious example. According to Ibn Ishaq's account, the raid of
Kharrar appears to have been a nonevent in Muhammad's life: “Meanwhile the Messenger of God had
sent Sa‘d b. Abi Waqqas on campaign with eight men from among the Muhajirun. He went as far as
Kharrar in the Hijaz, then he returned without having had a clash with the enemy.” 13
Two generations later, al-Waqidi (d. 822), in his Book of History and Campaigns, a chronicle of the
battles of Muhammad, embellishes this spare account: