Introduction

Despite some overly widespread ideas that do not hold up under critical analysis, the historical figure of Muhammad remains largely unknown. The main obstacle to our knowledge of the Prophet is the reliance of the historian on Muslim tradition. While Muhammad is mentioned in the writings of Christian and Jewish authors from the 7th century, most of the information related to him comes from traditional sources contained in the Sîra and the hadiths. However, these sources must be handled with caution due to their religious nature, not to mention the inconsistencies and contradictions they contain. There is still a source we have not yet discussed: the Quran. The Quranic text is, in fact, the oldest document of Islam, and the only one whose writing dates, to all likelihood, if not to the Prophet himself, at least to the earliest generations after his death. As such, it is a primary source capable of shedding light on many aspects of Muhammad’s life. But upon closer examination, the information provided by the text about the life or career of the Prophet is sparse, limited to a few insignificant details. This silence leads some historians, such as Alfred-Louis de Prémare, to question the status of the Quran as a “historical document.” This article aims to assess what the Quran can teach us about Muhammad’s life.

A secondary figure

In the collective Muslim imagination, the Quran is very strongly linked to Muhammad’s person and his prophetic career. Yet, upon reading it, one is struck by how relatively marginal his role appears. His name is mentioned only four times. For comparison, Moses appears 136 times, Abraham 69 times, Noah 43 times, and so on. It is specifically Muhammad’s figure that is targeted by the Quran’s “muteness.” The Prophet’s name is mentioned in the four verses reproduced below:

Muhammad is only a messenger — other messengers have passed away before him —. If he were to die or be killed, would you turn on your heels? (3:144)

Muhammad is not the father of any of your men, but he is the Messenger of Allah and the Seal of the Prophets. Allah is, of all things, Knowing. (33:40)

And those who have believed and done righteous deeds and believed in what was sent down upon Muhammad — and it is the truth from their Lord — He will erase their misdeeds and improve their condition. (47:2)

Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah. And those who are with him are hard against the disbelievers, merciful among themselves. You see them bowing and prostrating [in prayer], seeking Allah’s grace and pleasure. Their faces are marked by the trace of prostration. […] (48:29)

From these verses, we might deduce that Muhammad is only a messenger, that he has no male descendants, that he received a revelation from Allah, and that his companions perform acts of piety. These are roughly the only pieces of information about the Prophet that can be gleaned from the Quran. Moreover, the authenticity of some of these verses has been questioned by historians, who suspect, not without reason, the possibility that they might be post-prophetic interpolations. Concerning verse 3:144, mentioning the Prophet’s death makes sense only if it has already occurred. It was, for the author of the interpolation, a way to reassure the Quranic community shaken by the sudden and unexpected death of their leader. Verse 33:40, which emphasizes the absence of a male heir for the Prophet, has been the subject of a stimulating study by David Powers. In his book *Muhammad Is Not the Father of Any of Your Men*, Powers demonstrated that this verse conveys a political message. By asserting that Muhammad has no sons and is the “Seal of the Prophets,” the verse aims to refute claims by those who might invoke natural filiation with the Prophet to claim his succession. It would thus be a later addition intended to confirm the power and legitimacy of the new caliphs. We see that even the most seemingly certain information contained within the Quran can be subject to manipulation. Apart from a few scattered passages, the Quran remains silent about Muhammad. Certainly, the divine voice of the Quran often addresses an addressee by calling him with phrases like “O Prophet,” “O Messenger,” etc. However, identifying this Prophet—who is otherwise anonymous—with Muhammad “is not entirely straightforward.” In some cases, one could very well be dealing with an editorial work by the Quran’s redactors, portraying a prophetic figure possibly fictitious. Indeed, it appears that in the earliest layers of the Quran, the Quranic messenger appears as an angelic being, who is later replaced in the more recent layers of the text by the human figure of the Prophet. Furthermore, the Quranic speaker frequently addresses an anonymous “you,” which Islamic tradition automatically equates with Muhammad. But this is perhaps an overly simplistic shortcut. As Guillaume Dye points out: The usual way of understanding the use of addressing in the second person singular is to see it as a discourse from God to the Quranic messenger. Such an interpretation is neither the only possible nor necessarily the most relevant: it can very well be understood as the rhetorical strategy of a preacher speaking to his audience, directly addressing each individual listener/reader with the pronominal “you.” Paul Neuenkirchen recently highlighted several Syriac writings, similar in content and form to the Quran, in which the authors employ precisely the same rhetorical strategy by addressing a “you” that is nothing other than the reader himself.

A text without context

If the Quran remains silent about the Prophet’s life, it also provides little information about the environment in which he lived. As Michael Cook observes, if one were to base oneself solely on the Quran, one could probably deduce that the protagonist of the Quran was Muhammad, that he lived in western Arabia, and that he resented his contemporaries for rejecting his claims to prophecy. But one could not say that the sanctuary was in Mecca, nor that Muhammad himself was originally from that city, and one could only suppose that he had settled in Yathrib. No dates or chronological markers are given. The two cities of Mecca and Yathrib (later renamed Medina) appear only once. The figures who play an important role in later tradition, such as the Prophet’s Companions, his wives, his daughter Fatima, or his adversaries, are never mentioned in the Quran. The only contemporary of the Prophet mentioned is his adopted son Zayd, whose name appears in a rather unusual passage: When you said to the one whom Allah had favored with good things, just as you had favored yourself, “Keep your wife and fear Allah,” and you concealed in your soul what Allah was going to make known. You feared the people, but it is Allah whom you should fear. And when Zayd had ceased all relation with her, We married her to you, so that there would be no blame upon the believers to marry the wives of their adopted sons when they cease relations with them. The command of Allah must be fulfilled. (33:37) This passage, although very allusive, refers to a controversial episode in the Prophet’s life. Islamic tradition recounts, with sometimes disturbing details, that Muhammad fell in love with Zaynab, the wife of his son Zayd. Zayd then repudiated her to allow Muhammad to marry her. The question naturally arises as to why this episode was included in the Quran, which is usually so laconic about the Prophet’s life. Should we suppose that “the Zaynab affair” was so delicate that clarification in the Quran was deemed necessary? Perhaps, following Alfred-Louis de Prémare, we should consider that this is an element of the Sîra incorporated into the Quran at a time when the distinction between the “hadith” and the “Book of Allah” was not yet fully made. Apart from this unusual episode, the Quran never explicitly mentions the events of the Prophet’s life reported in the Sîra. The Muslim reader will no doubt be surprised. Islamic tradition holds that the Quran is read and interpreted in light of Muhammad’s biography. In fact, many Quranic verses are understood to refer to situations encountered by the Prophet, though most often no apparent link exists within the text itself. Moreover, the stories used to explain the Quran often appear as later elaborations created precisely to clarify vague verses. The great merit of the Belgian scholar Henri Lammens is to have shown that the primary function of the “Prophet’s life” was to provide the Quran with a historical framework—largely fictitious. In other words, the reasoning is remarkably circular: on the one hand, the Quran is explained by referring to Muhammad’s life, but on the other, stories about the Prophet’s life are invented to explain the Quran! In his work *The Eye of the Beholder*, Uri Rubin attempted to add some nuance to Lammens’s otherwise very accurate findings. He demonstrates that, in some cases, the stories from the Sîra originally existed independently of the Quran before being associated with it later. A good illustration is found in the story of the call to prophecy, where, according to legend, Muhammad received a visit from the angel Gabriel while in the Cave of Hira. Rubin’s study shows that the earliest versions of this story were not associated with any passage of the Quran. The story was subsequently rewritten several times to be “Quranized” and connected to Surah 96, whose initial verses (“Recite in the name of your Lord who created…”) became the first revelation given to the Prophet. The lesson to be learned from these studies is that the supposed link between Quranic passages and Muhammad’s life is often artificial and shaky. It is therefore not without reason that historians have called the Quran a “text without context.” In this regard, the Quranic revelation differs from the Gospels, whose narratives revolve around the figure of Jesus—whether these narratives trace back to the historical Jesus or are partly the product of pious imagination by the early Church remains, of course, another matter. It is therefore impossible to write a biography of Muhammad that is based solely on the Quran. The French orientalist Régis Blachère, who attempted such a project, quickly abandoned his ambition. In *Le problème de Mahomet*, he admitted that writing a biography of the Prophet solely from the Quran was a “sweet illusion,” noting that the text “provides only fragmentary, often cryptic indications, almost always subject to divergent interpretations.”