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

Then the Messenger of God (may God bless him and give him peace) appointed Sa‘d b. Abi Waqqas to the command against
Kharrar—Kharrar being part of Juhfa near Khumm—in Dhu'l-Qa'da, eighteen months after the hijra of the Messenger (may God
bless him and give him peace). Abu Bakr b. Ismail b. Muhammad said on the authority of his father on the authority of Amir b. Sa‘d on
the authority of his father [sc. Sa‘d b. Abi Waqqas]: the Messenger of God (may God bless him and give him peace) said, “O Sa‘d, go
to Kharrar, for a caravan belonging to Quraysh will pass through it.” So I went out with twenty or twenty-one men, on foot. We would
hide during the day and travel at night until we arrived there on the morning of the fifth day. We found that the caravan had passed
through the day before. The Messenger had enjoined upon us not to go beyond Kharrar. Had we not done so, I would have tried to
catch up with it. 14
Al-Waqidi knows so much more about this expedition than did Ibn Ishaq—and, as Crone notes, “he
knows all this on the impeccable authority of the leader of the expedition himself”! But how is it that these
details eluded Ibn Ishaq and yet made their way to al-Waqidi some fifty years later? Though it is possible
that al-Waqidi had access to oral traditions that had been passed on from people close to Muhammad but
had escaped Ibn Ishaq's notice, it is more likely that these details were legendary elaborations developed
for the purposes of dramatic storytelling. 15
Legendary Elaboration
The scholar of Islam Gregor Schoeler contends that the traditional Islamic material about Muhammad's
life and work is substantially reliable. He points out that although the work of Urwa ibn Az-Zubair,
Muhammad's first biographer, is lost, Ibn Ishaq and other early Muslim writers quote it extensively.
Because Urwa died in 712 and collected the bulk of his stories about Muhammad from the 660s to the
690s, he had ample occasion to gather reliable information. Urwa, says Schoeler, “still had the
opportunity to consult eye witnesses and contemporaries of many of the events in question—irrespective
of whether he mentions his informant in the isnad or not. For this reason, it is much more likely that he
asked his aunt Aisha about many events she had witnessed…. In addition, he was able to collect firsthand
reports on numerous incidents occurring (slightly) before, during and after the hijra, e.g. the hijra itself
(including the ‘first hijra’ to Abyssinia and the circumstances and events leading to the hijra proper), the
Battle of the Trench and al-Hudaibiya.” 16
These are all important events in Muhammad's life: The Hijra is the Muslims' move from Mecca to
Medina in 622, when Muhammad became for the first time a military and political leader as well as a
spiritual one. Before that, some Muslims had fled to Abyssinia to escape persecution from the Quraysh of
Mecca. The Battle of the Trench, in 627, was the siege of Medina by the pagan Arabs of Mecca—a siege
the Muslims eventually broke, with momentous consequences for all concerned. The Treaty of Hudaibiya
was the truce Muhammad reached with the Quraysh around the year 628; it permitted Muslims to make the
pilgrimage to Mecca. This treaty set the standard in Islamic law for all treaties between Muslims and non-
Muslims. If Urwa was really able to gather and transmit reliable information about all this from his aunt
Aisha and others eyewitnesses of the events in question, then the biography of Muhammad in the standard
Islamic accounts is essentially trustworthy.
Schoeler's claim, however, falters in light of the comparison above between Ibn Ishaq's and al-
Waqidi's accounts of the nonevent at Kharrar. If that material could be subject to so much legendary
elaboration within a few decades, what was to prevent those who passed on Urwa's material from
altering it substantially, whether they did so in light of other material they had received from different
sources, or in the service of some political calculation, or out of a pious interest in exaggerating