Introduction
Muhammad did he truly exist? The question, posed in a blunt manner, may initially seem surprising and even absurd. Yet, it is much more legitimate than one might think. It is not unnecessary to recall a golden rule, in the discipline of history, that one can never be entirely certain of the reality of a past event or a person who lived thousands of years ago. Very often, sources are late, opaque, and confusing, and the case of the Prophet of Islam is no exception. Certainly, we possess detailed biographical writings by Arab-Muslim authors from the medieval period. But this type of ancient writing belongs to the realm of fiction1 . And, with rare exceptions, tells us nothing about the person himself. In fact, most historians show a more or less pronounced skepticism toward Islamic sources and the "life of the Prophet" they claim to describe – skepticism that, in truth, is inseparable from the historian's craft. Some specialists have even questioned the historical existence of Muhammad. Therefore, in this article, it is necessary to clarify the state of the question and to determine whether the existence of Muhammad is probable.The sources
The question of Muhammad’s existence requires, first, an inventory of the different sources available to us. Below, readers will find a brief presentation of the documentation related to the Prophet. For a more detailed treatment of the sources, references will be made to articles in the "Sources & Documents" section dedicated entirely to this subject.The Quranic corpus
The first source that naturally comes to mind is the Quran. It is indeed the oldest document of Islam, and the only one whose writing can be reliably dated, if not directly to the Prophet himself, at least to the early generations after his death. However, the Quranic text proves to be remarkably silent about the person of the Prophet, whose name is mentioned only 4 times (3:144; 33:40; 47:2; 48:29). This is much less than Moses (136 times), Abraham (69 times), or Noah (43 times). Equally surprisingly, the Quran provides virtually no data on Muhammad’s life or the context in which he would have evolved. It is therefore not without reason that historians have qualified the Quran as a "text without context"2 . Thus, the main events of the Prophet’s career, as later reported in Muslim sources, are absent. The text is just as silent about the places, dates, or even the characters surrounding Muhammad. Ultimately, he appears as a secondary figure in the Quran. This suppression of the prophetic figure leads some historians to question the use of the Quranic text as a historical document about the life of the Prophet and the early community that formed around him3 .The Sîra
The most abundant documentation on Muhammad’s figure comes from the Sîra rasul Allâh, literally "the life of the Messenger of God." It is a collection of biographical writings that appeared at the end of the Umayyad period, especially during the Abbasid era. Anyone who has delved into the Sîra will notice the multitude of details reported. All aspects of the Prophet’s life are covered, even the most insignificant, such as the number of white hairs he had in his beard! This abundance of information, which is subject to caution, has contributed to the illusion that Muhammad is a well-known figure. However, the stories in the Sîra belong to a "heroic-religious legend" that tells us more about how Muslim authors viewed Muhammad, and the image of him they wanted to impose, than about the historical person himself4 .
The fact that Islamic sources are dubious has been known to historians for a long time. Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi summarises the problem succinctly by emphasizing that they "are filled with contradictions, implausibilities, historical falsifications, legends of all kinds and origins"5 . We could add that these texts were produced late, broadly between 120 and 200 years after the death of the Prophet. To give a comparison, it’s a bit like the earliest biographies of Napoleon I being written after World War II. Even with a good dose of optimism, it would be difficult to hope for a faithful portrait of the emperor. Certainly, the authors of the Sîra claim to derive their information from earlier sources, transmitted orally through a series of transmitters. This chain of transmitters, called isnâd, is supposed to guarantee the reliability of the information. However, even Muslim authors admit that the isnâds were subject to mass fabrication and manipulations6 . Generally, and with few exceptions, information within the Sîra should be excluded from any study concerning the historical figure of Muhammad.
External sources
Alongside Islamic sources, we have about ten non-Muslim texts written in the first century of Islam. The oldest is a fragment of a chronicle dated to 634, probably drafted by a monk witnessing the conquest of Syria. The text mentions the "Arabs of Muhammad" who allegedly sacked several cities in Syria. Although very laconic, the chronicle is of major interest to the historian as the first text outside the Quran to explicitly mention Muhammad. In other literary testimonies, the Prophet is described as a merchant originating from Yathrib (the future Medina), who learned the Bible and promised his disciples the heritage of the Holy Land. The sources also agree that Muhammad was not only alive during the early conquests but also led their operations. These data contradict traditional Islamic sources which state that the Prophet died in 632, a few years before the conquests began7 .Archaeological and epigraphic data
Regarding the early period of Islam, material data are scarce or non-existent. Archaeological excavations at Mecca and Medina are banned by Saudi authorities. Although excavations have increased around the two cities, none have revealed artifacts of interest so far. Objects attributed to the Prophet, such as weapons or relics, are clearly modern forgeries. Moreover, there is a remarkable absence of the Prophet in ancient inscriptions. It is only during the 680s that Muhammad begins to appear in epigraphy. Even the Muslim profession of faith (shahada) originally contained only the part about the oneness of God ("There is no god but God"), with the second part ("Muhammad is the Messenger of God") added later8 . In other words, there is a whole period of Islam during which the role and importance of the Prophet seem to be secondary9 . The increasing prominence of the prophetic figure particularly manifests from the reign of Caliph Abd al-Malik (685–705). From this time on, his name appears more and more in inscriptions and on coins. However, these mentions are most often limited to praise formulas or statements of faith and contain no details about the Prophet’s life. The biographical data within the Prophet’s Sîra have yet to be confirmed by any material, archaeological, or epigraphic evidence to date.Conclusion
This brief inventory of the sources on Muhammad’s figure allows us to draw several lessons. First, that due to a lack of sufficient data, archaeology and epigraphy provide very limited insights into the knowledge of the Prophet of Islam. If one relied solely on these types of data, it would be difficult to affirm or prove his historical existence. Literary sources, on the other hand, are much more plentiful. Aside from the Quran, where the Prophet appears as a minor figure, Muslim sources provide countless details about Muhammad’s life. But they must be approached with great caution for reasons already discussed. Finally, we have non-Muslim writings that attest to Muhammad’s religious and especially military activities. These writings are relatively numerous. In this respect, Muhammad is a well-attested figure in history—more so even than Jesus, who is known outside the texts of the New Testament by two 1st-century authors10 . Although the information is often confused and fragmentary, the mention of the Prophet in writings of diverse origins and languages, from a period so remote, allows us to assert with high probability that he was a historical figure. The existence of a person known as Muhammad is generally well accepted by historians, even the most skeptical11 . Chase Robinson summarizes the consensus position with the following statement: A historian familiar with the available data does not doubt that in the early seventh century, many Arabs recognized a man named Muhammad as a lawgiving prophet in the line of monotheistic prophets, that he formed and led something like a community in Arabia, and finally that the formation of this community allowed... the initiate of conquests that established Islamic dominance over a large part of the Mediterranean and the Middle East in the middle of the seventh century12 . However, a minority of historians argues that Muhammad might be nothing but a literary fiction. This is the mythicist thesis. Although this position remains marginal in contemporary historiography, it merits further consideration to better understand its reasoning.Revisiting the mythicist thesis
The questioning of the historicity of certain figures, especially those related to religion, is not a new phenomenon. As early as 1791, an essay entitled Les ruines was published, in which its author, Constantin François de Volney, first claimed that Jesus of Nazareth never existed. It was followed a few years later by his compatriot Charles-François. In Origine de tous les cultes, published in 1795, Dupuis hypothesized that all religions originated from sun worship—Osiris, Mithra, and Jesus being merely variations of the sun god. The mythicist thesis reached its peak at the turn of the 20th century with the publication by the German Arthur Drews of a popular book titled The Christ Myth. This book even had political repercussions with Lenin’s endorsement of the mythicist thesis, which gained some success in the Soviet Union13 .
It is therefore not surprising that the first doubts about the existence of Muhammad also emerged in Russian territory. The first author to propose such a hypothesis was the scientist and revolutionary Nikolai Morozov. He considered Islam as a derivative of Arianism, an ancient Christian movement that denied the divine filiation of Jesus. According to him, Muhammad's life and that of his successors were fabricated to give identity to the new religion. Apart from a small circle of iconoclastic Soviet authors, the mythicist thesis has never truly gained traction among mainstream historians. However, in recent decades, the hypothesis has resurfaced, based on renewed documentation.
Yehuda Nevo, an archaeologist who conducted epigraphic excavations in the Negev region in southern Palestine, is one of the main proponents of the mythicist thesis. His theory is outlined in Crossroads to Islam, a posthumous book published with the contribution of his assistant Judith Koren14 . Their research concluded that Muhammad was not mentioned in official proclamations (documents, inscriptions, or coins) before the 690s. Admittedly, Nevo & Koren did not ignore that non-Muslim sources mentioned Muhammad as early as the 630s. But this does not constitute sufficient proof in their eyes, as they suggest these sources could have been tampered with by later authors familiar with the traditional narrative. They also emphasize that the earliest sources seem to ignore the prophet role attributed to him by the Muslim tradition.
Taking all these elements into account, Nevo & Koren propose an alternative scenario for the emergence of Islam, which would have developed gradually through successive phases. In a first phase, called "pre-Muhammadan," primitive Islam would have consisted of a mixture of Judeo-Christian beliefs, without clearly defined dogmas, and especially without a prophetic figure. It would have been necessary to wait until the reign of Caliph Abd al-Malik to see Islam, then a state religion, enter a new phase with the promotion of a prophet created for the occasion. To be perfectly fair, Nevo & Koren do not exclude the idea that Muhammad may have indeed existed— but his role in the formation of Islam and his life would have been rewritten at a later time.
More recently, the hypothesis of Muhammad’s non-existence has been defended by several researchers of the Inârah institute, affiliated with Saarland University. Volker Popp, a specialist in numismatics, offers a hypothesis that is at least original. The researcher invites us to read "Muhammad" (literally: the most praiseworthy) not as a proper name but as a title that Arab Christians would have attributed to Jesus15 . He supports his hypothesis notably with a Syrian coin minted in 684/5, which shows a cross on the obverse side and the mention of "Muhammad."
Primitively, Islam would have been a Christian "heretical" movement that viewed Jesus as a simple messenger of God. In this perspective, the creed muhammadur rasûl Allâh does not mean "Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah," but rather "The most praiseworthy (Jesus) is the Messenger of Allah." At a later time, which the author also dates to the reign of Abd al-Malik, muhammad would have been reinterpreted as the name of a purely fictitious Arab prophet.
It is a nice story, but apart from a few pieces of data whose interpretation remains dubious, the theory relies solely on the author’s imagination and raises many difficulties. As Robert Hoyland notes, it is hard to see how muhammad could have shifted over a few generations from a reference to Jesus to an Arab prophet16 . Popp provides no documentation on how this transition might have occurred— a transition for which little trace exists so far. Furthermore, the theory ignores non-Muslim sources, some of which mention a certain Muhammad who cannot by any means refer to Jesus. Perhaps the most intriguing point of the theory is the presence of a cross on a supposedly Islamic coin. Popp interprets this as evidence that even at this period, Islam was nothing but a Christian movement, but other more convincing explanations exist.
Firstly, the "proto-Islamic" state, still embryonic, had no choice but to imitate the iconography of the conquered territories—in this case, Christian and Byzantine iconography. It is worth recalling that the Umayyad administration, at that time, was Greek-speaking and included many Christians17 . With the rise to power of Abd al-Malik, the administration was Arabized and "Islamized." Byzantine iconography was then purged and replaced with purely "Islamic" symbols18 . Secondly, the Maronite chronicle, written around 660, reports that Caliph Mu’awiya had minted gold and silver coins, but the populations refused to use them because of the absence of crosses19 . It then appears very likely that the presence of crosses on coins was intended to satisfy the predominantly Christian populations in the territories under Arab control. Therefore, it is not necessary to resort to Popp’s rather speculative explanation.
Conclusion
We began our article by questioning the existence of Muhammad. The inventory of sources has highlighted several points. First, that due to insufficient data, archaeology and epigraphy offer very limited insight into the Prophet of Islam. Relying solely on such data would make it difficult to affirm or prove his historical existence. Literary sources, on the other hand, are much richer. Aside from the Quran, where the Prophet appears as a minor figure, Muslim sources provide countless details about Muhammad’s life. But they must be approached with great caution for the reasons already discussed. Finally, non-Muslim writings attest to Muhammad’s religious and especially military activities. These writings are relatively numerous. In this respect, Muhammad is a well-attested figure in history— even more so than Jesus, who is known outside the texts of the New Testament by two first-century authors10 . Although the information is often confused and fragmentary, the mention of the Prophet in writings of various origins and languages, from a period so remote, allows us to assert with high probability that he was a historical figure. The existence of a person known as Muhammad is generally well accepted by historians, even the most skeptical11 . Chase Robinson summarizes the consensus position as follows: No historian familiar with the available data doubts that in the early seventh century, many Arabs recognized a man named Muhammad as a lawgiver prophet in the line of monotheistic prophets, that he founded and led a kind of community in Arabia, and finally that the formation of this community allowed... the conquest of the Islamic empire to be launched, establishing Islamic dominance over much of the Mediterranean and the Middle East in the middle of the seventh century12 . However, a minority of historians argue that Muhammad may be nothing but a literary fiction. This is the mythicist thesis. Although this position remains marginal in contemporary historiography, it deserves to be revisited in more detail to better understand its reasoning.Revisiting the mythicist thesis
The questioning of the historicity of certain characters, especially those related to religion, is not a new phenomenon. As early as 1791, an essay entitled Les ruines was published, in which its author, Constantin François de Volney, first claimed that Jesus of Nazareth never existed. It was followed a few years later by his compatriot Charles-François. In Origine de tous les cultes, published in 1795, Dupuis hypothesized that all religions originated from sun worship—Osiris, Mithra, and Jesus being merely variants of the sun god. The mythicist thesis reached its peak at the turn of the 20th century with the publication by the German Arthur Drews of a popular book titled The Christ Myth. This book even had political repercussions with Lenin’s endorsement of the mythicist thesis, which gained some success in the Soviet Union13 .
It is therefore not surprising that the first doubts about the existence of Muhammad also appeared in Russian territory. The first author to suggest such a hypothesis was the scientist and revolutionary Nikolai Morozov. He considered Islam as a derived form of Arianism, an ancient Christian movement that denied the divine lineage of Jesus. According to him, Muhammad's life and that of his successors were fabricated to give identity to the new religion. Apart from a small circle of iconoclastic Soviet writers, the mythicist thesis has never truly gained traction among mainstream historians. However, in recent decades, the hypothesis has revived, based on renewed documentation.
Yehuda Nevo, an archaeologist who conducted epigraphic excavations in the Negev region in southern Palestine, is one of the main proponents of the mythicist thesis. His theory is presented in Crossroads to Islam, a posthumous book published with the contribution of his assistant Judith Koren14 . Their research concluded that Muhammad was not mentioned in official proclamations (documents, inscriptions, or coins) before the 690s. Indeed, Nevo & Koren did not ignore that Muslim sources mentioned Muhammad as early as the 630s. But this is not enough proof in their eyes, as they suggest these sources could have been altered by later authors aware of the traditional account. They also point out that the earliest sources seem to ignore the role of prophet attributed to him by the Muslim tradition.
Taking all these elements into account, Nevo & Koren suggest an alternative scenario for the emergence of Islam, which would have developed gradually through successive phases. In an initial phase, called "pre-Muhammadan," early Islam would have been a mixture of Judeo-Christian beliefs, without clearly defined dogmas, and notably without a prophetic figure. It was only during the reign of Caliph Abd al-Malik that Islam, then a state religion, entered a new phase with the promotion of a prophet created for that purpose. To be fair, Nevo & Koren do not exclude the idea that Muhammad may have indeed existed— but his role in the development of Islam and his life would have been rewritten at a later date.
More recently, the hypothesis that Muhammad did not exist has been supported by several researchers from the Inârah institute, affiliated with Saarland University. Volker Popp, a numismatics specialist, puts forward an especially original hypothesis. The researcher suggests reading "Muhammad" (literally: the most praiseworthy) not as a proper name but as a title that Arab Christians might have given to Jesus15 . He bases this hypothesis notably on a Syrian coin minted in 684/5, which shows a cross on the obverse and the mention of "Muhammad."
Primitive Islam would have been a Christian "heretical" movement that saw Jesus as a simple messenger of God. From this perspective, the creed muhammadur rasûl Allâh does not mean "Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah," but rather "The most praiseworthy (Jesus) is the Messenger of Allah." At a later time, which the author also dates to the reign of Abd al-Malik, muhammad would have been reinterpreted as the name of a purely fictitious Arab prophet.
This is a nice story, but apart from a few pieces of data whose interpretation remains uncertain, the theory rests solely on the author’s imagination and raises many difficulties. As Robert Hoyland notes, it is hard to see how muhammad could have shifted over a few generations from a reference to Jesus to an Arab prophet16 . Popp provides no documentation on how this transition might have occurred— a transition for which little trace exists so far. Furthermore, the theory ignores non-Muslim sources, some of which mention a certain Muhammad who cannot by any means refer to Jesus. Perhaps the most intriguing point of the theory is the presence of a cross on a supposedly Islamic coin. Popp interprets this as evidence that even at this period, Islam was nothing but a Christian movement, but other more convincing explanations exist.
First, the "proto-Islamic" state, still in its infancy, had no choice but to imitate the iconography of the conquered territories—in this case, Christian and Byzantine iconography. It is worth recalling that the Umayyad administration, at that time, was Greek-speaking and included many Christians17 . With the rise to power of Abd al-Malik, the administration was Arabized and "Islamized." Byzantine iconography was then purged and replaced with purely "Islamic" symbols18 . Secondly, the Maronite chronicle, written around 660, reports that Caliph Mu’awiya had minted gold and silver coins, but the populations refused to use them because of the absence of crosses19 . It then seems very probable that the presence of crosses on coins was intended to satisfy the predominantly Christian populations in the territories under Arab control. Therefore, it is not necessary to resort to Popp’s rather speculative explanation.
Conclusion
We began our article by questioning the existence of Muhammad. The inventory of sources has allowed us to highlight several points. First, that due to a lack of sufficient data, archaeology and epigraphy offer very limited insights into the Prophet of Islam. If one relied solely on these types of data, it would be difficult to affirm or prove his historical existence. Literary sources, on the other hand, are much richer. Aside from the Quran, where the Prophet appears as a minor figure, Muslim sources provide countless details about Muhammad’s life. But they must be approached with great caution for the reasons already discussed. Lastly, non-Muslim writings attest to Muhammad’s religious and especially military activities. These writings are relatively numerous. In this regard, Muhammad is a well-attested figure in history— even more so than Jesus, who is known outside the texts of the New Testament by two 1st-century authors10 . Although the information is often confusing and fragmentary, the mention of the Prophet in writings from diverse origins and languages, from such an early period, allows us to assert with a high degree of probability that he was a historical figure. The existence of a person known as Muhammad is generally well accepted by historians, even the most skeptical11 . Chase Robinson summarizes the putative consensus as follows: No historian familiar with the available data doubts that in the early seventh century, many Arabs recognized a man named Muhammad as a lawgiver prophet in the line of monotheistic prophets, that he established and led a community in Arabia, and finally that the building of this community enabled... the launch of conquests that established Islamic dominance over a large part of the Mediterranean and the Middle East in the mid-seventh century12 . However, a minority of historians maintains that Muhammad might be nothing but a literary invention. This is the mythicist hypothesis. Although this position remains marginal in contemporary historiography, it warrants further exploration to better understand its reasoning.Revisiting the mythicist hypothesis
The denial of the historicity of certain figures, especially within the religious domain, is not a new phenomenon. As early as 1791, an essay titled Les ruines was published, in which its author, Constantin François de Volney, claimed for the first time that Jesus of Nazareth never existed. It was followed a few years later by his compatriot Charles-François. In Origine de tous les cultes, published in 1795, Dupuis hypothesized that all religions originated from sun worship—Osiris, Mithra, and Jesus being merely variants of the sun god. The mythicist hypothesis reached its peak around the turn of the 20th century with the publication by German Arthur Drews of a popular book titled The Christ Myth. This work even had political repercussions with Lenin’s endorsement of the mythicist view, which gained some success in the Soviet Union13 .
It is therefore not surprising that the first doubts about the existence of Muhammad also appeared in Russian territory. The first author to suggest such an idea was the scientist and revolutionary Nikolai Morozov. He viewed Islam as a derivative of Arianism, an ancient Christian movement denying the divine lineage of Jesus. He believed Muhammad’s life and that of his followers were fabricated to give an identity to the new religion. Apart from a small circle of iconoclastic Soviet writers, the mythicist thesis has never truly gained ground among mainstream historians. Nonetheless, in recent decades, the hypothesis has resurfaced, supported by renewed evidence.
Yehuda Nevo, an archaeologist who conducted epigraphic excavations in the Negev in southern Palestine, is one of the main advocates of the mythicist hypothesis. His theory is elaborated in Crossroads to Islam, a posthumous book published with contributions from his assistant Judith Koren14 . Their research concluded that Muhammad was not mentioned in official proclamations (documents, inscriptions, or coins) prior to the 690s. Of course, Nevo & Koren were not unaware that non-Muslim sources mentioned Muhammad as early as the 630s. But this is not considered sufficient proof, as they suggest those sources could have been altered by later authors familiar with the traditional account. They also note that the earliest sources seem to ignore the prophet role assigned to him by Muslim tradition.
Considering all these factors, Nevo & Koren propose an alternative scenario for the rise of Islam, which would have developed gradually through successive phases. In the initial phase, called "pre-Muhammadan," early Islam would have consisted of a mix of Judeo-Christian beliefs, without clearly defined dogmas, and notably without a prophetic figure. It was only during the reign of Caliph Abd al-Malik that Islam, then a state religion, moved into a new phase with the promotion of a prophet created specifically for that purpose. To be fair, Nevo & Koren do not exclude the possibility that Muhammad really existed— but his role in shaping Islam and his life would have been rewritten later.
Recently, the hypothesis that Muhammad did not exist has been supported by several researchers at the Inârah institute, attached to Saarland University. Volker Popp, a numismatics expert, advances a notably original hypothesis. The researcher suggests reading "Muhammad" (literally: the most praiseworthy) not as a proper name but as a title that Arab Christians might have given to Jesus15 . He bases this hypothesis particularly on a Syrian coin minted in 684/5, which bears a cross on the obverse with the inscription "Muhammad."
Primitive Islam would have been a Christian "heretical" movement that regarded Jesus as a simple messenger of God. In this view, the creed muhammadur rasûl Allâh does not mean "Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah," but "The most praiseworthy (Jesus) is the Messenger of Allah." At a later time, which the author also dates to the reign of Abd al-Malik, muhammad would have been reinterpreted as the name of a purely fictitious Arab prophet.
This is a nice story, but apart from some data whose interpretation remains uncertain, the theory relies solely on the author’s imagination and raises many difficulties. As Robert Hoyland notes, it is hard to see how muhammad could have shifted over a few generations from a reference to Jesus to an Arab prophet16 . Popp provides no documentation on how this transition might have occurred— a transition for which little trace exists so far. Moreover, the theory ignores non-Muslim sources, some of which mention a certain Muhammad who cannot by any means refer to Jesus. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the theory is the presence of a cross on a supposedly Islamic coin. Popp interprets this as evidence that even at this period, Islam was nothing but a Christian movement, but other explanations are more convincing.
First, the "proto-Islamic" state, still in its infancy, had no choice but to imitate the iconography of the conquered territories—in this case, Christian and Byzantine iconography. It is worth recalling that the Umayyad administration, at the time, was Greek-speaking and included many Christians17 . With the ascension of Abd al-Malik, the administration was Arabized and "Islamized." Byzantine iconography was then purged and replaced by purely "Islamic" symbols18 . Second, the Maronite chronicle, written around 660, reports that Caliph Mu’awiya minted gold and silver coins, but the populations refused to use them because of the absence of crosses19 . It then seems very probable that the presence of crosses on those coins was intended to satisfy the mainly Christian populations of the territories under Arab control. Therefore, there is no need to resort to Popp’s somewhat fanciful explanation.
Conclusion
We began our article by questioning the existence of Muhammad. The overview of sources has allowed us to highlight several points. First, that due to insufficient data, archaeology and epigraphy offer very limited insights into the Prophet of Islam. Relying solely on these types of sources, it would be difficult to affirm or prove his historical existence. Literary sources, on the other hand, are much more abundant. Apart from the Quran, where the Prophet appears as a minor figure, Muslim sources provide countless details about Muhammad’s life. But they should be approached with great caution for reasons already discussed. Finally, non-Muslim writings attest to Muhammad’s religious and especially military activities. These writings are relatively numerous. In this respect, Muhammad is a well-attested figure in history— even more so than Jesus, who is known outside the texts of the New Testament by two first-century authors10 . Although the information is often confusing and fragmentary, the mention of the Prophet in writings of diverse origins and languages, from such an early period, allows us to assert with a high degree of probability that he was a historical figure. The existence of a person known as Muhammad is generally well accepted by historians, even the most skeptical11 . Chase Robinson summarizes the consensus position as follows: No historian familiar with the available data doubts that in the early seventh century, many Arabs recognized a man named Muhammad as a lawgiver prophet in the line of monotheistic prophets, that he established and led a community in Arabia, and finally that the building of this community allowed... to trigger conquests that established Islamic dominance over a large part of the Mediterranean and the Middle East in the mid-seventh century12 . However, a minority of historians argue that Muhammad may merely be a literary invention. This is the mythicist thesis. Although this position remains on the fringe of contemporary historiography, it merits further reflection to better understand its reasoning.Revisiting the mythicist hypothesis
Denial of the historicity of particular figures, especially religious ones, is not a new phenomenon. As early as 1791, an essay titled Les ruines was published, in which its author, Constantin François de Volney, claimed for the first time that Jesus of Nazareth never existed. It was followed a few years later by his compatriot Charles-François. In Origine de tous les cultes, published in 1795, Dupuis hypothesized that all religions originated from sun worship—Osiris, Mithra, and Jesus being merely variations of the sun god. The mythicist thesis reached its climax around the turn of the 20th century with the publication by the German Arthur Drews of a popular book titled The Christ Myth. This book even had political repercussions with Lenin’s endorsement of the mythicist thesis, which gained some success in the Soviet Union13 .
It is therefore not surprising that the first doubts about the existence of Muhammad also appeared in Russian territory. The first to suggest this was the scientist and revolutionary Nikolai Morozov. He considered Islam as a derivative of Arianism, an ancient Christian movement that denied the divine filiation of Jesus. He believed Muhammad’s life and that of his successors were fabricated to give an identity to the new religion. Aside from a small circle of iconoclastic Soviet writers, the mythicist thesis has never really gained traction among mainstream historians. Nonetheless, in recent decades, the hypothesis has resurfaced, supported by renewed evidence.
Yehuda Nevo, an archaeologist who conducted epigraphic excavations in the Negev region in southern Palestine, is one of the main advocates of the mythicist hypothesis. His theory is presented in Crossroads to Islam, a posthumous book published with contributions from his assistant Judith Koren14 . Their research concluded that Muhammad was not mentioned in official proclamations (documents, inscriptions, or coins) prior to the 690s. Of course, Nevo & Koren were not unaware that non-Muslim sources mentioned Muhammad as early as the 630s. But this is not considered sufficient proof, as they suggest those sources could have been altered by later authors familiar with the traditional narrative. They also point out that the earliest sources seem to ignore the prophet role attributed to him by Muslim tradition.
Considering all these factors, Nevo & Koren suggest an alternative scenario for the rise of Islam, which would have developed gradually through successive phases. In the initial phase, called "pre-Muhammadan," early Islam would have been a mixture of Judeo-Christian beliefs, without clearly defined dogmas, and notably without a prophetic figure. It was only during the reign of Caliph Abd al-Malik that Islam, then a state religion, moved into a new phase with the promotion of a prophet created specifically for that purpose. To be fair, Nevo & Koren do not exclude the possibility that Muhammad really existed— but his role in shaping Islam and his life would have been rewritten later.
Recently, the hypothesis that Muhammad did not exist has been supported by several researchers at the Inârah institute, attached to Saarland University. Volker Popp, a numismatics expert, advances a notably original hypothesis. The researcher suggests reading "Muhammad" (literally: the most praiseworthy) not as a proper name but as a title that Arab Christians might have given to Jesus15 . He bases this hypothesis particularly on a Syrian coin minted in 684/5, which bears a cross on the obverse and the mention of "Muhammad."
Primitive Islam would have been a Christian "heretical" movement that regarded Jesus as a simple messenger of God. In this view, the creed muhammadur rasûl Allâh does not mean "Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah," but "The most praiseworthy (Jesus) is the Messenger of Allah." At a later time, which the author also dates to the reign of Abd al-Malik, muhammad would have been reinterpreted as the name of a purely fictitious Arab prophet.
This is a nice story, but apart from some data whose interpretation remains uncertain, the theory relies solely on the author’s imagination and raises many difficulties. As Robert Hoyland notes, it is hard to see how muhammad could have shifted over a few generations from a reference to Jesus to an Arab prophet16 . Popp provides no documentation on how this transition might have occurred— a transition for which little trace exists so far. Moreover, the theory ignores non-Muslim sources, some of which mention a certain Muhammad who cannot by any means refer to Jesus. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the theory is the presence of a cross on a supposedly Islamic coin. Popp interprets this as evidence that even at this period, Islam was nothing but a Christian movement, but other more convincing explanations exist.
First, the "proto-Islamic" state, still in its infancy, had no choice but to imitate the iconography of the conquered territories—in this case, Christian and Byzantine iconography. It is worth recalling that the Umayyad administration, at that time, was Greek-speaking and included many Christians17 . With the rise to power of Abd al-Malik, the administration was Arabized and "Islamized." Byzantine iconography was then purged and replaced with purely "Islamic" symbols18 . Second, the Maronite chronicle, written around 660, reports that Caliph Mu’awiya had minted gold and silver coins, but the populations refused to use them because of the absence of crosses19 . It then seems very probable that the presence of crosses on those coins was intended to satisfy the mainly Christian populations of the territories under Arab control. Therefore, there is no need to resort to Popp’s somewhat fanciful explanation.
Conclusion
We began our article by questioning the existence of Muhammad. The overview of sources has allowed us to highlight several points. First, that due to a lack of sufficient data, archaeology and epigraphy offer very limited insights into the Prophet of Islam. Relying solely on these types of sources, it would be difficult to affirm or prove his historical existence. Literary sources, on the other hand, are much more abundant. Aside from the Quran, where the Prophet appears as a minor figure, Muslim sources provide countless details about Muhammad’s life. But they should be approached with great caution for the reasons already discussed. Lastly, non-Muslim writings attest to Muhammad’s religious and especially military activities. These writings are relatively numerous. In this regard, Muhammad is a well-attested figure in history— even more so than Jesus, who is known outside the texts of the New Testament by two first-century authors10 . Although the information is often confusing and fragmentary, the mention of the Prophet in writings from diverse origins and languages, from such an early period, allows us to assert with a high degree of probability that he was a historical figure. The existence of a person known as Muhammad is generally well accepted by historians, even the most skeptical11 . Chase Robinson summarizes the consensus position as follows: No historian familiar with the available data doubts that in the early seventh century, many Arabs recognized a man named Muhammad as a lawgiver prophet in the line of monotheistic prophets, that he founded and led a community in Arabia, and finally that this community’s formation enabled... the launch of conquests that established Islamic dominance over a large part of the Mediterranean and the Middle East in the mid-seventh century12 . However, a minority of historians argue that Muhammad may be nothing but a literary invention. This is the mythicist hypothesis. Although this position remains on the fringe of contemporary historiography, it warrants further exploration to better understand its reasoning.Revisiting the mythicist hypothesis
The denial of the historicity of certain figures, especially within the religious domain, is not a new phenomenon. As early as 1791, an essay titled Les ruines was published, in which its author, Constantin François de Volney, claimed for the first time that Jesus of Nazareth never existed. It was followed a few years later by his compatriot Charles-François. In Origine de tous les cultes, published in 1795, Dupuis hypothesized that all religions originated from sun worship—Osiris, Mithra, and Jesus being merely variations of the sun god. The mythicist thesis reached its climax around the turn of the 20th century with the publication by the German Arthur Drews of a popular book titled The Christ Myth. This work even had political repercussions with Lenin’s endorsement of the mythicist thesis, which gained some success in the Soviet Union13 .
It is therefore not surprising that the first doubts about the existence of Muhammad also appeared in Russian territory. The first to suggest this was the scientist and revolutionary Nikolai Morozov. He viewed Islam as a derivative of Arianism, an ancient Christian movement denying the divine filiation of Jesus. He believed Muhammad’s life and that of his followers were fabricated to give an identity to the new religion. Aside from a small circle of iconoclastic Soviet writers, the mythicist thesis has never really gained ground among mainstream historians. Nonetheless, in recent decades, the hypothesis has resurfaced, supported by renewed evidence.
Yehuda Nevo, an archaeologist who conducted epigraphic excavations in the Negev in southern Palestine, is one of the main advocates of the mythicist hypothesis. His theory is elaborated in Crossroads to Islam, a posthumous book published with contributions from his assistant Judith Koren14 . Their research concluded that Muhammad was not mentioned in official proclamations (documents, inscriptions, or coins) prior to the 690s. Of course, Nevo & Koren were not unaware that non-Muslim sources mentioned Muhammad as early as the 630s. But this is not considered sufficient proof, as they suggest those sources could have been altered by later authors aware of the traditional narrative. They also point out that the earliest sources seem to ignore the prophet role attributed to him by Muslim tradition.
Considering all these factors, Nevo & Koren suggest an alternative scenario for the rise of Islam, which would have developed gradually through successive phases. In the initial phase, called "pre-Muhammadan," early Islam would have been a mixture of Judeo-Christian beliefs, without clearly defined dogmas, and notably without a prophetic figure. It was only during the reign of Caliph Abd al-Malik that Islam, then a state religion, moved into a new phase with the promotion of a prophet created specifically for that purpose. To be fair, Nevo & Koren do not exclude the possibility that Muhammad really existed— but his role in shaping Islam and his life would have been rewritten later.
Recently, the hypothesis that Muhammad did not exist has been supported by several researchers at the Inârah institute, attached to Saarland University. Volker Popp, a numismatics expert, advances a notably original hypothesis. The researcher suggests reading "Muhammad" (literally: the most praiseworthy) not as a proper name but as a title that Arab Christians might have given to Jesus15 . He bases this hypothesis particularly on a Syrian coin minted in 684/5, which bears a cross on the obverse and the mention of "Muhammad."
Primitive Islam would have been a Christian "heretical" movement that regarded Jesus as a simple messenger of God. In this view, the creed muhammadur rasûl Allâh does not mean "Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah," but "The most praiseworthy (Jesus) is the Messenger of Allah." At a later time, which the author also dates to the reign of Abd al-Malik, muhammad would have been reinterpreted as the name of a purely fictitious Arab prophet.
This is a nice story, but apart from some data whose interpretation remains uncertain, the theory relies solely on the author’s imagination and raises many difficulties. As Robert Hoyland notes, it is hard to see how muhammad could have shifted over a few generations from a reference to Jesus to an Arab prophet16 . Popp provides no documentation on how this transition might have occurred— a transition for which little trace exists so far. Moreover, the theory ignores non-Muslim sources, some of which mention a certain Muhammad who cannot by any means refer to Jesus. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the theory is the presence of a cross on a supposedly Islamic coin. Popp interprets this as evidence that even at this period, Islam was nothing but a Christian movement, but other more convincing explanations exist.
First, the "proto-Islamic" state, still in its infancy, had no choice but to imitate the iconography of the conquered territories—in this case, Christian and Byzantine iconography. It is worth recalling that the Umayyad administration, at the time, was Greek-speaking and included many Christians17 . With the rise to power of Abd al-Malik, the administration was Arabized and "Islamized." Byzantine iconography was then purged and replaced with purely "Islamic" symbols18 . Second, the Maronite chronicle, written around 660, reports that Caliph Mu’awiya had minted gold and silver coins, but the populations refused to use them because of the absence of crosses19 . It then seems very probable that the presence of crosses on these coins was intended to satisfy the mainly Christian populations of the territories under Arab control. Therefore, there is no need to resort to Popp’s somewhat fanciful explanation.
Conclusion
We began our article by questioning the existence of Muhammad. The overview of sources has highlighted several points. First, that due to a lack of sufficient data, archaeology and epigraphy offer very limited insights into the Prophet of Islam. Relying solely on these types of sources, it would be difficult to affirm or prove his historical existence. Literary sources, on the other hand, are much more abundant. Aside from the Quran, where the Prophet appears as a minor figure, Muslim sources provide countless details about Muhammad’s life. But they should be approached with great caution for the reasons already discussed. Finally, non-Muslim writings attest to Muhammad’s religious and especially military activities. These writings are relatively numerous. In this respect, Muhammad is a well-attested figure in history— even more so than Jesus, who is known outside the texts of the New Testament by two first-century authors10 . Although the information is often confusing and fragmentary, the mention of the Prophet in writings of diverse origins and languages, from a period so remote, allows us to assert with a high degree of probability that he was a historical figure. The existence of a person known as Muhammad is generally well accepted by historians, even the most skeptical11 . Chase Robinson summarizes the consensus position as follows: No historian familiar with the available data doubts that in the early seventh century, many Arabs recognized a man named Muhammad as a lawgiver prophet in the line of monotheistic prophets, that he established and led a community in Arabia, and finally that this community’s formation enabled... the beginning of conquests that established Islamic dominance over a large part of the Mediterranean and the Middle East in the mid-seventh century12 . However, a minority of historians argue that Muhammad might be nothing but a literary invention. This is the mythicist hypothesis. Although this position remains on the fringe of contemporary historiography, it warrants further examination to better understand its reasoning.Revisiting the mythicist hypothesis
The denial of the historicity of certain characters, especially those in the religious domain, is not new. As early as 1791, an essay titled Les ruines was published, in which its author, Constantin François de Volney, claimed for the first time that Jesus of Nazareth never existed. It was followed a few years later by his compatriot Charles-François. In Origine de tous les cultes, published in 1795, Dupuis hypothesized that all religions originated from sun worship—Osiris, Mithra, and Jesus being merely variants of the sun god. The mythicist hypothesis reached its peak at the turn of the 20th century with the publication by German Arthur Drews of a popular book titled The Christ Myth. This work even had political repercussions with Lenin’s endorsement of the mythicist view, which gained some success in the Soviet Union13 .
It is therefore not surprising that the first doubts about the existence of Muhammad also appeared in Russian territory. The first to suggest this was the scientist and revolutionary Nikolai Morozov. He considered Islam as a derivative of Arianism, an ancient Christian movement that denied the divine descent of Jesus. He believed Muhammad’s life and that of his successors were fabricated to give an identity to the new religion. Besides a small circle of iconoclastic Soviet writers, the mythicist thesis has never truly gained traction among mainstream historians. However, in recent decades, the hypothesis has resurged, supported by renewed documentation.
Yehuda Nevo, an archaeologist who conducted epigraphic excavations in the Negev area of southern Palestine, is one of the main proponents of the mythicist hypothesis. His theory is outlined in Crossroads to Islam, a posthumous volume published with contributions from his assistant Judith Koren14 . Their research concluded that Muhammad was not mentioned in official proclamations (documents, inscriptions, or coins) before the 690s. Of course, Nevo & Koren were aware that non-Muslim sources mentioned Muhammad as early as the 630s. But this is not sufficient proof, as they suggest these sources could have been altered by later authors familiar with the traditional account. They also note that the earliest sources seem to ignore the prophet role attributed to him by Muslim tradition.
Considering all these elements, Nevo & Koren proposed an alternative scenario for the rise of Islam, which would have gradually developed through successive phases. In an initial phase, called "pre-Muhammadan," early Islam would have been a mixture of Judeo-Christian beliefs, without clear dogmas, and notably without a prophetic figure. It was only during the reign of Caliph Abd al-Malik that Islam, then a state religion, moved into a new phase with the promotion of a prophet created specifically for that purpose. To be fair, Nevo & Koren do not reject the idea that Muhammad may have truly existed— but his role in the development of Islam and his life would have been rewritten later.
More recently, the hypothesis that Muhammad did not exist has been supported by several researchers from the Inârah institute, attached to Saarland University. Volker Popp, a numismatics specialist, advances an especially original hypothesis. The researcher suggests reading "Muhammad" (literally: the most praiseworthy) not as a proper name but as a title that Arab Christians may have given to Jesus15 . He supports this hypothesis notably based on a Syrian coin minted in 684/5, on which appears a cross on the obverse with the mention of "Muhammad."
Primitive Islam would have been a Christian "heretical" movement that considered Jesus a simple messenger of God. In this view, the creed muhammadur rasûl Allâh does not mean "Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah," but rather "The most praiseworthy (Jesus) is the Messenger of Allah." At a later time, which the author also dates to the reign of Abd al-Malik, muhammad would have been reinterpreted as the name of a purely fictitious Arab prophet.
This is a nice story, but aside from some data whose interpretation remains uncertain, the theory relies solely on the author’s imagination and raises many difficulties. As Robert Hoyland notes, it is hard to see how muhammad could have shifted over a few generations from a reference to Jesus to an Arab prophet16 . Popp provides no documentation on how this transition might have occurred— a transition for which little trace exists so far. Moreover, the theory ignores non-Muslim sources, some of which mention a certain Muhammad who cannot by any means refer to Jesus. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the theory is the presence of a cross on a supposedly Islamic coin. Popp interprets this as evidence that even at this period, Islam was nothing but a Christian movement, but other more convincing explanations exist.
First, the "proto-Islamic" state, still in its infancy, had no choice but to imitate the iconography of the conquered territories—in this case, Christian and Byzantine iconography. It is worth recalling that the Umayyad administration, at the time, was Greek-speaking and included many Christians17 . With the rise to power of Abd al-Malik, the administration was Arabized and "Islamized." Byzantine iconography was then purged and replaced with purely "Islamic" symbols18 . Second, the Maronite chronicle, written around 660, reports that Caliph Mu’awiya had minted gold and silver coins, but the populations refused to use them because of the absence of crosses19 . It then seems very likely that the presence of crosses on these coins was meant to satisfy the predominantly Christian populations of the territories under Arab control. Therefore, there is no need to resort to Popp’s somewhat fanciful explanation.
Conclusion
We began our article by questioning the existence of Muhammad. The overview of sources has highlighted several points. First, that due to a lack of sufficient data, archaeology and epigraphy provide very limited insights into the Prophet of Islam. Relying solely on these types of sources, it would be difficult to affirm or prove his historical existence. Literary sources, on the other hand, are much more abundant. Aside from the Quran, where the Prophet appears as a minor figure, Muslim sources provide countless details about Muhammad’s life. But they should be approached with great caution for the reasons already discussed. Lastly, non-Muslim writings attest to Muhammad’s religious and especially military activities. These writings are relatively numerous. In this respect, Muhammad is a well-attested figure in history— even more so than Jesus, who is known outside the texts of the New Testament by two first-century authors10 . Although the information is often confusing and fragmentary, the mention of the Prophet in writings of diverse origins and languages, from such an early period, allows us to assert with a high probability that he was a figure of history. The existence of a person known as Muhammad is generally well accepted by historians, even the most skeptical11 . Chase Robinson summarizes the consensus as follows: No historian familiar with the available data doubts that in the early seventh century, many Arabs acknowledged a man named Muhammad as a lawgiver prophet following the line of monotheistic prophets, that he founded and led a community in Arabia, and that ultimately the formation of this community enabled... the launching of conquests that established Islamic dominance over a large part of the Mediterranean and the Middle East by the mid-seventh century12 . However, a minority of historians maintain that Muhammad might be nothing but a literary invention. This is the mythicist hypothesis. Although this view remains on the fringe of current historiography, it deserves further examination to better understand its reasoning.Revisiting the mythicist hypothesis
The denial of the historicity of certain figures, particularly within the religious field, is not new. As early as 1791, an essay titled Les ruines was published, in which its author, Constantin François de Volney, claimed for the first time that Jesus of Nazareth never existed. It was followed a few years later by his compatriot Charles-François. In Origine de tous les cultes, published in 1795, Dupuis hypothesized that all religions originated from sun worship—Osiris, Mithra, and Jesus being merely variants of the sun god. The mythicist thesis reached its climax around the turn of the 20th century with the publication by German Arthur Drews of a popular book titled The Christ Myth. This work even had political repercussions with Lenin’s support of the mythicist view, which gained some success in the Soviet Union13 .
It is therefore not surprising that the first doubts about the existence of Muhammad also appeared in Russian territory. The first to suggest this was the scientist and revolutionary Nikolai Morozov. He viewed Islam as a derivative of Arianism, an ancient Christian movement that denied the divine descent of Jesus. He believed Muhammad’s life and that of his successors were fabricated to give an identity to the new religion. Apart from a small circle of iconoclastic Soviet writers, the mythicist thesis has never truly gained ground among mainstream historians. However, in recent decades, the hypothesis has been revived, supported by renewed evidence.
Yehuda Nevo, an archaeologist who conducted epigraphic excavations in the Negev in southern Palestine, is one of the main proponents of the mythicist hypothesis. His theory is developed in Crossroads to Islam, a posthumous volume published with contributions from his assistant Judith Koren14 . Their research concluded that Muhammad was not mentioned in official proclamations (documents, inscriptions, or coins) prior to the 690s. Of course, Nevo & Koren were aware that non-Muslim sources mentioned Muhammad as early as the 630s. But this is not considered sufficient proof, as they suggest these sources could have been altered by later authors familiar with the traditional story. They also note that the earliest sources seem to ignore the prophet role assigned to him by Muslim tradition.
Considering all these elements, Nevo & Koren proposed an alternative scenario for the emergence of Islam, which would have developed gradually through successive phases. In the initial phase, called "pre-Muhammadan," early Islam would have been a mixture of Judeo-Christian beliefs, without clear dogmas, and notably without a prophetic figure. It was only during the reign of Caliph Abd al-Malik that Islam, then a state religion, moved into a new phase with the promotion of a prophet created specifically for that purpose. To be fair, Nevo & Koren do not reject the idea that Muhammad may have truly existed— but his role in the development of Islam and his life would have been rewritten later.
Recently, the hypothesis that Muhammad did not exist has been supported by several researchers at the Inârah institute, attached to Saarland University. Volker Popp, a numismatics expert, advances a particularly original hypothesis. The researcher invites us to interpret "Muhammad" (literally: the most praiseworthy) not as a proper name but as a title that Arab Christians might have given to Jesus15 . He supports this hypothesis notably based on a Syrian coin minted in 684/5, which shows a cross on the obverse and bears the mention of "Muhammad."
Primitive Islam would have been a Christian "heretical" movement that regarded Jesus as a simple messenger of God. In this view, the creed muhammadur rasûl Allâh does not mean "Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah," but "The most praiseworthy (Jesus) is the Messenger of Allah." At a later time, which the author also dates to the reign of Abd al-Malik, muhammad would have been reinterpreted as the name of a purely fictitious Arab prophet.
This is a nice story, but apart from some data whose interpretation remains uncertain, the theory relies solely on the author’s imagination and raises many difficulties. As Robert Hoyland notes, it is hard to see how muhammad could have shifted over a few generations from a reference to Jesus to an Arab prophet16 . Popp provides no documentation on how this transition might have occurred— a transition for which little trace exists so far. Moreover, the theory ignores non-Muslim sources, some of which mention a certain Muhammad who cannot by any means refer to Jesus. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the theory is the presence of a cross on a supposedly Islamic coin. Popp interprets this as evidence that even at this period, Islam was nothing but a Christian movement, but other explanations are more convincing.
First, the "proto-Islamic" state, still in its infancy, had no choice but to imitate the iconography of the conquered territories—in this case, Christian and Byzantine iconography. It is worth recalling that the Umayyad administration, at that time, was Greek-speaking and included many Christians17 . With the rise to power of Abd al-Malik, the administration was Arabized and "Islamized." Byzantine iconography was then purged and replaced with purely "Islamic" symbols18 . Second, the Maronite chronicle, written around 660, reports that Caliph Mu’awiya had minted gold and silver coins, but the populations refused to use them because of the absence of crosses19 . It then seems very probable that the presence of crosses on these coins was meant to satisfy the mainly Christian populations of the territories under Arab control. Therefore, there is no need to resort to Popp’s somewhat fanciful explanation.
Conclusion
We began our article by questioning the existence of Muhammad. The overview of sources has highlighted several points. First, that due to a lack of sufficient data, archaeology and epigraphy offer very limited insights into the Prophet of Islam. Relying solely on these types of sources, it would be difficult to affirm or prove his historical existence. Literary sources, on the other hand, are much more abundant. Aside from the Quran, where the Prophet appears as a minor figure, Muslim sources provide countless details about Muhammad’s life. But they should be approached with great caution for the reasons already discussed. Lastly, non-Muslim writings attest to Muhammad’s religious and especially military activities. These writings are relatively numerous. In this regard, Muhammad is a well-attested figure in history— even more so than Jesus, who is known outside the texts of the New Testament by two first-century authors10 . Although the information is often confusing and fragmentary, the mention of the Prophet in writings of diverse origins and languages, from such an early period, allows us to assert with a high probability that he was a figure of history. The existence of a person known as Muhammad is generally accepted by historians, even the most skeptical11 . Chase Robinson summarizes the consensus as follows: No historian familiar with the available data doubts that in the early seventh century, many Arabs recognized a man named Muhammad as a lawgiver prophet in the line of monotheistic prophets, that he founded and led a community in Arabia, and that ultimately the formation of this community enabled... the launch of conquests that established Islamic dominance over a large part of the Mediterranean and the Middle East by the middle of the seventh century12 . However, a minority of historians hold that Muhammad might be nothing but a literary creation. This is the mythicist hypothesis. Although this position remains on the fringes of modern historiography, it warrants further investigation to better understand its reasoning.References
- 1.Rick Herrick, The Writing of the Christian Gospels, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2025, p. 43.
- 2.Francis E. Peters, « The Quest of the Historical Muhammad », International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 23, 1991, p. 300.
- 3.Alfred-Louis de Prémare, Aux origines du Coran : questions d’hier, approches d’aujourd’hui, Téraèdre, 2004, p. 19.
- 4.Alfred-Louis de Prémare, Les fondations de l’islam. Entre écriture et histoire, Paris, Seuil, 2002, p. 18.
- 5.Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, Ali, le secret bien gardé. Figures du premier Maître en spiritualité shi’ite, CNRS éditions, 2020, p. 187.
- 6.See for example Ignaz Goldziher, Études sur la tradition islamiques, Maisonneuve éditeur, 1982 ; Gautier Juynboll, Muslim Tradition, Cambridge University Press, 1985.
- 7.Stephen J. Shoemaker, The Death of a Prophet, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012.
- 8.Frédéric Imbert, « L’Islam des pierres », Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, vol. 129, 2011, pp. 72-75.
- 9.Patricia Crone & Martin Hinds, God’s Caliph, Cambridge University Press, 1986, pp. 58-96.
- 10.John P.. Meier, Un certain juif : Jésus, Le Cerf, 2005, vol. 1 ; Thomas Schmidt, Joseph & Jesus, Oxford University Press, 2025.
- 11.Patrice Crone, « What do we actually know about Mohammed? », Open Democracy, 2008.
- 12.Cited in Sean Anthony, Muhammad and the Empire of the Faith, University of California Press, 2020, p. 8, n°21.
- 13.Bart Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist?, HarperOne, 2012, p. 11.
- 14.Yehuda Névo & Judith Koren, Crossroads to Islam, Prometheus Books, 2003.
- 15.Volker Popp, « Die frühe Islamgeschichte », in Ohlig & Puin (eds.), Die dunklen Anfänge, Schiler & Mücke, pp. 16-123.
- 16.Robert Hoyland, « Numismatics and the History of Early Islamic Syria », in Oddy (ed.), Numismatics and the History of Early Islamic Syria, Archetype Publications, 2010, p. 87.
- 17.Andrew Marsham, The Umayyad World, Taylor & Francis, 2020, p. 141.
- 18.Stefan Heidemann, « The Evolving Representation… », in Neuwirth et al. (eds.), The Qurʾān in Context, Brill, 2010, pp. 149-196, p. 160.
- 19.Andrew Palmer, The Seventh Century in the West-Syrian Chronicles, Liverpool University Press, 1993, p. 32.
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