0021-1818_islam_98-1-2-i-259

4 Andreas Görke, Harald Motzki, Gregor Schoeler
about the historical Mu1ammad, and that the traditional principles of matn analysis
as advanced by Goldziher and Schacht produce much better results.
Shoemaker is basically arguing from a “sceptic’s” point of view, but despite
his criticism, which will be addressed more thoroughly below, he makes more
concessions towards the possible authenticity of some of the material traced back
to ^Urwa than any “sceptic” prior to him. Thus he says: “In all fairness it must be
said that […] Schoeler and Görke have developed and deployed a very sophisticated
method of analysis that represents perhaps the best effort thus far to identify
early material within the sira traditions;” 5 “[…] analysis of the hijra itself reveals
a slim core of tradition that might be associated with ^Urwa;” 6 and “[…] in
certain instances it may be possible to isolate some basic details that have a rather
high level of historical credibility.” 7
Basically, this is not very different from what Schoeler, Görke and Motzki
say – but it is assessed in a different way. In the following it will be shown that
much more material can convincingly be ascribed to ^Urwa than Shoemaker
would admit. An important tool for this is the corpus of sira traditions ascribed to
^Urwa, which has been completed and analysed in the meantime and the results
of which Shoemaker did not yet take into consideration for his article. 8
Shoemaker in general argues in a sound scholarly fashion, but he frequently
misunderstands or misrepresents the positions Schoeler, Görke and Motzki
hold and thus argues against points that haven’t been made. For instance he presents
the works of Görke and Schoeler as an attempt to reconstruct ^Urwa’s sira,
implying that ^Urwa wrote an actual book in this genre. This is already insinuated
through the title of his article, and he explicitly refers to “^Urwa’s sira” a couple of
times, i.e., suggesting that Görke and Schoeler attempt to “reconstruct the ‘s\ra’
of ^Urwa ibn al-Zubayr,” 9 or aim “at reconstructing the biography of Mu1ammad
as it was taught by ^Urwa in the later first century AH.” 10 He refers to what he calls
a “proposed reconstruction of ^Urwa’s sira” 11 and claims that in their article on the
hijra Görke and Schoeler “present an outline of ^Urwa’s sira.” 12 He then argues
that his own analysis of the material – in contrast to this “rather sanguine analysis”
– affirms Chase Robinson’s findings that ^Urwa should not be considered to
5 Ibid., 267.
6 Ibid., 302.
7 Ibid., 325.
8 Görke and Schoeler, Die ältesten Berichte über das Leben Muhammads.
9 Shoemaker, “In Search of ^Urwa’s Sira,” 257.
10 Ibid., 264.
11 Ibid., 267.
12 Ibid., 268.