Exposing Islam

The Sīra

Islam’s 150-Year-Late Patch Job

Why the Biography of Muhammad Is a Backfilled Myth, Not History

Introduction: The Mirage of “The Life of Muhammad”

When Muslims today talk about Muhammad — his personality, his deeds, his moral example — they speak with certainty. They “know” he split the moon, led military campaigns with perfect strategy, distributed justice with divine precision, and interacted with family, friends, and enemies in ways that define Islamic ethics to this day. They will quote stories about his childhood, his marriages, his political dealings, and even the smallest domestic habits. But here’s the reality:

None of this information comes from Muhammad’s lifetime.
None of it comes from the decade after his death.
Or the decade after that.
Or even the century after that.

The earliest surviving biography — the Sīrat Rasūl Allāh — was written by Ibn Isḥāq (d. 767 CE), more than 120 years after Muhammad died in 632 CE. And even that work doesn’t survive in its original form. The version we have is a revised, censored edition by Ibn Hishām (d. 833 CE), who openly admits removing things he didn’t like. That’s right — our “earliest” source is a rewrite of a lost manuscript by a man who thought parts of it were too embarrassing to keep.

And it gets worse.

The Sīra literature is not history in the modern sense. It is a patch job — an imperial-era myth-making exercise designed to retroactively explain the Qur’an, legitimize Islamic law, and present Muhammad as the idealized founder of an expanding Arab empire. This was not a biography written by eyewitnesses. It was a narrative assembled generations later, after political and theological power structures were already in place.

If you stripped away the Sīra and relied on the Qur’an alone, you’d know almost nothing about Muhammad’s life — his birthplace, his parents’ names, the chronology of events, the battles, even the year he died are all absent from the Qur’an. That’s why the Sīra had to be invented: to plug in all the missing pieces and turn a mysterious prophet figure into a detailed historical character who could serve as a legal and military precedent.

1. The Timeline Problem: A Century of Silence

Let’s start with the dating. Muhammad’s death is traditionally placed in 632 CE. The earliest known Sīra compiler, Ibn Isḥāq, was born around 704 CE — more than 70 years later. That means every single one of his “sources” was second-hand at best, and more likely third-, fourth-, or fifth-hand oral tradition.

Then there’s the manuscript problem: Ibn Isḥāq’s original Sīra is lost. What survives is Ibn Hishām’s edition, produced around 833 CE — 200 years after Muhammad’s death. Ibn Hishām openly states that he deleted “things which it is disgraceful to discuss,” “matters which would distress certain people,” and “certain reports which al-Bakkāʾī told me but which I did not accept.”

Translation: the parts of the story he didn’t like were erased. Gone forever. And that’s our “earliest biography.”

Other key contributors to Muhammad’s life story, like al-Wāqidī (d. 823) and Ibn Saʿd (d. 845), came even later — nearly two centuries removed from the events they describe.

Here’s what that gap means in modern historical terms:
If we applied the same standards to Muhammad that historians apply to Alexander the Great, we’d reject the Sīra as hopelessly unreliable. Even Alexander’s historians — writing only a century after his death — are treated with caution. But in Islam, a 150-year gap filled with oral tradition, political editing, and theological agenda is treated as unquestionable truth.

2. Who Were the Sīra Writers — and What Were They Doing?

Ibn Isḥāq (704–767 CE)

The pioneer of the Sīra tradition, Ibn Isḥāq, gathered oral reports from people who claimed to have heard them from others who heard them from yet others — all supposedly tracing back to Muhammad’s companions. He didn’t have notebooks from eyewitnesses. He didn’t have government records. He had storytellers.

Ibn Isḥāq’s work was controversial even in his own day. Critics accused him of including fabricated material and relying on weak transmitters. The famous scholar Mālik ibn Anas reportedly called him “a liar” who “transmits tales from the Jews.” And remember — this is coming from within the Islamic scholarly tradition itself.

Ibn Hishām (d. 833 CE)

Ibn Hishām is the gatekeeper of what survives from Ibn Isḥāq. He didn’t just preserve the text; he reshaped it. In his introduction, he explicitly states that he removed certain things: poems he considered inauthentic, stories that might offend, and material “unacceptable” to him. That means our version of Ibn Isḥāq’s Sīra is already filtered through ideological and moral lenses.

Al-Wāqidī (747–823 CE)

A chronicler of Muhammad’s battles, al-Wāqidī is infamous for his detailed military narratives — many of which contradict Ibn Isḥāq and each other. Later Muslim scholars considered him unreliable, accusing him of fabrications. His works, however, became a goldmine for those who wanted to turn Muhammad into a model warlord.

Ibn Saʿd (784–845 CE)

A student of al-Wāqidī, Ibn Saʿd wrote Kitāb al-Ṭabaqāt al-Kabīr, an enormous biographical dictionary of Muhammad, his companions, and later figures. Like the others, his work is stuffed with miraculous events, hearsay, and contradictions.

3. Internal Contradictions and Legendary Embellishments

If the Sīra were genuine historical memory, we’d expect it to be relatively consistent. Instead, it reads like overlapping folklore traditions mashed together.

Examples:

The “Splitting of the Moon” — Some Sīra sources present it as a literal, witnessed miracle. Others don’t mention it at all, and non-Muslim sources from the period are silent.
The Year of Muhammad’s Birth — Reports vary wildly; some link it to the “Year of the Elephant,” others offer different dating systems.
Battle Narratives — Ibn Isḥāq, al-Wāqidī, and Ibn Saʿd often disagree on numbers, strategies, casualties, and even outcomes.
Supernatural Signs — Tales of water flowing from Muhammad’s fingers or trees obeying his commands are stock miracle motifs found in other religious traditions. Their presence in the Sīra suggests literary borrowing, not eyewitness history.

These contradictions aren’t minor details; they’re fundamental. The Sīra tradition can’t even agree on basic chronology, let alone verify the miraculous claims that form Muhammad’s mythic profile.

4. The Qur’an’s Silence — and the Need for a Backstory

The Qur’an gives almost no concrete biographical detail about Muhammad. It never mentions:

His parents’ names
His birth year
His wives’ names (except indirectly referring to some incidents)
The number or sequence of battles
A clear timeline of events

This vagueness is a serious problem for a religion that depends on Muhammad’s example (Sunnah) to interpret the Qur’an. Without a backstory, key Qur’anic passages are incomprehensible. For example:

The “Verse of the Hijab” — Without the Sīra, you wouldn’t know it was supposedly revealed in connection to Muhammad’s marriage to Zaynab.
The “Verse of the Sword” — The Qur’an gives no context for who the enemies are or what battles are being referred to.

The Sīra was the solution — an after-the-fact narrative framework to make the Qur’an appear coherent, provide a precedent for Islamic law, and turn Muhammad into a legal, political, and military template.

5. Political Motives Behind the Sīra

The Abbasid caliphate (750–1258 CE) — under whose watch the Sīra tradition took shape — had every reason to commission or encourage a detailed biography of Muhammad. By this point, Islam was the ideological glue holding together a sprawling, multi-ethnic empire. The Sīra served to:

Legitimize Abbasid Rule — By portraying Muhammad as both prophet and ruler, the Abbasids could claim to be his political heirs.
Codify Islamic Law — Stories about Muhammad’s actions became legal precedents (Sunna), binding for all Muslims.
Sanctify Warfare — Detailed battle narratives turned jihad into a prophetic tradition, justifying ongoing military expansion.
Unify a Diverse Population — A single, authoritative life story of Muhammad helped forge a common religious identity across the empire.

The Sīra wasn’t just pious storytelling; it was statecraft. It provided the ideological foundation for governance, law, and expansion.

6. Comparing Islamic and Non-Islamic Sources

If Muhammad was a major political and religious leader in 7th-century Arabia, we’d expect contemporary non-Muslim sources to corroborate key details. Instead, the earliest external references are vague and often contradictory.

Christian and Syriac Chronicles from the decades after 632 mention an Arab prophet or leader, sometimes posthumously, but without the rich detail found in the Sīra.
Archaeological evidence (coins, inscriptions) from the first decades of Islam barely mention Muhammad, focusing instead on generic titles like “Messenger of God.”
No contemporary records confirm the Sīra’s miracle stories, battle narratives, or personal details.

This stark contrast suggests the Sīra is not historical memory but retroactive mythmaking.

7. Methodological Problems: Oral Tradition and Isnād Chains

Islamic historians defend the Sīra by appealing to the isnād system — chains of transmission tracing each report back to an original source. But the isnād system itself developed in the very period when fabricated stories were flooding the tradition. In other words, the isnād chains were not proof of authenticity; they were a retroactive attempt to make oral lore look credible.

Hadith scholar Joseph Schacht famously demonstrated that many isnāds were invented to legitimize stories already in circulation. The same applies to Sīra material: the “chain” gives an illusion of reliability while masking the late origin of the story.

8. The Sīra as Imperial Mythology

When you strip away the pious framing, the Sīra looks less like history and more like imperial mythology. The pattern is familiar:

Heroic founder figure (like Romulus for Rome or Theseus for Athens)
Miraculous birth signs and divine favor
Military conquests establishing the “nation” or “ummah”
Codification of laws attributed directly to the founder
Moral perfection to serve as a model for all citizens

The point isn’t to record facts; it’s to provide a usable past that legitimizes present power structures.

9. What This Means for Islamic Claims

Islam’s theological and legal authority rests heavily on the Sunnah — Muhammad’s example. But if the Sīra is historically unreliable, the Sunnah collapses as a factual foundation. That means:

Islamic law is built on stories with no verifiable historical basis.
Moral claims about Muhammad are products of later idealization, not firsthand observation.
The Qur’an’s interpretation is anchored in a backstory that didn’t exist in Muhammad’s lifetime.

Without the Sīra, Islam loses the detailed prophetic model it insists is essential for faith and practice.

Conclusion: The Biography That Wasn’t There

The Sīra is not a window into Muhammad’s life. It is a mirror reflecting the political, theological, and cultural needs of the 8th and 9th centuries. The 150-year gap between Muhammad’s death and the earliest surviving biography is not just a footnote — it is a fatal flaw. The contradictions, miracle tales, political motives, and lack of contemporary corroboration all point to the same conclusion:

The Sīra is a 150-year-late patch job — a work of imperial propaganda dressed up as sacred history.
It tells us far more about the Abbasid era than it does about the 7th-century man it claims to describe.

If we applied the same critical standards to Muhammad’s biography that historians apply to any other figure, the Sīra would be discarded as a historical source. What remains is mythology, not memory — a story told to bind an empire, not to record a life.

Disclaimer: This analysis critiques Islamic historical claims and the textual reliability of the Sīra. It is not an attack on individual Muslims, but on the historical and political mechanisms that shaped Islamic tradition.