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entically ^Urwan traditions from among the “some 10,000 traditions ascribed to
^Urwa” (p. 282).
The ensuing effort to winnow the wheat from the chaff using isnads generally
does not reveal patterns of transmission that are sufficiently dense at the
earliest stages to confidently identify ^Urwa as the author of the traditions in
question. Moreover, in the few instances where the isnads could plausibly indicate
a likelihood of ^Urwan authorship, it is worth noting that these traditions
fail to reveal anything particularly “new” about the historical Mu1ammad that
could not already be determined using much simpler approaches. This is particularly
the case when we pare down each of the traditions in question to those
elements that are actually supported by all of the various transmissions. There
is, for instance, little doubt that the earliest Muslims must have believed that
Mu1ammad claimed to have received prophetic visions and voices, and the
tradition of a “flight” by Mu1ammad seems to be an early tradition. The tradition
that ^A#isha was accused of adultery also is likely to be quite early, inasmuch as
such a tradition is unlikely to have arisen once she came to be revered as the
“mother of the faithful.”
With respect then to the four traditions analyzed in my article (the beginnings
of revelation, the hijra, al-0udaybiya, and the ^A#isha scandal), there is nothing
new in this book that would lead me to change any of my previous conclusions.
As for the remaining four traditions that are ascribed to ^Urwa in this monograph
(the battles of Badr, U1ud, the Trench, and the conquest of Mecca), each of
these traditions is even less persuasively assigned to ^Urwa. Indeed, Görke and
Schoeler both concede this point in the conclusion to their own study, judging
the attribution to ^Urwa more questionable in each case (256–57, 286). Accordingly,
it remains yet to be seen what this arduous method of isnad-cum-matn criticism
has to offer in terms of potentially dating biographical traditions to the first
Islamic century.
My suspicion is that, given the relatively sparse transmissions of these biographical
traditions at the earliest stages, this method will fail to attain much
success in breaking through the barriers that we face at the beginning of the second
Islamic century. And even in the case that we might someday find greater
success in dating a handful of traditions to within seventy or so years after
Mu1ammad’s death, the optimism that Görke and Schoeler frequently express
about the accuracy of traditions compiled at such a distance from the life of
Mu1ammad seems unwarranted. To the contrary, scholars of Islamic origins
would do well, I think, to look to the models afforded by early Christianity and its
study in order to recognize just how quickly an eschatological movement rooted
in the Abrahamic traditions can radically transform its memory of the time of origins
over a relatively short period of time. Simply reducing the elapsed interval