Al-Sëra al-Nabawiyya (), commonly shortened to Sërah and translated as prophetic biography, are the traditional biographies of the Islamic prophet Muhammad written by over centuries Muslim historians, from which, in addition to the Quran and Hadith literature, most historical information about his life and the early history of Islam is derived.
Early historiographic information in Islam emerged as the irregular products of storytellers (qÃÂṣṣ, pl. quṣṣÃÂá¹£)âÂÂthey were quite prestigious thenâÂÂwithout details. While the narratives were initially in the form of a kind of heroic epics called magÃÂzë,<Ref>The earliest sources we have on the life of Muḥammad are the maghÃÂzë, but they are far from being a consistent literary genre because they encompass a mix of different types of texts: lists of martyrs, poetry, QurþÃÂnic explanations, anecdotes resembling those found in the Bible, and of course accounts of military expeditions.https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004466739_005</ref> details were added later, edited and transformed into sirah compilations. The stories were written in the form of "founding conquest stories" based on nostalgia for the golden age then. Humphrey, quoted by Antoine Borrut, explains that the stories related to this period were created according to a pact-betrayal-redemption principle. Western historians describe the purpose of these early biographies as largely to convey a messageâÂÂof a hagiographic natureâÂÂrather than to strictly and accurately record history. Lawrence Conrad examines the early sirah books and sees that the dates of Muhammad's birth span a period of up to 85 years. Conrad defines this as: "the fluidity (evolutionary process) continued even in the written period." At the same time the study of the earliest periods in Islamic history is made difficult by a lack of sources.
From the very beginning, the process of creating the image of the Prophet as a warrior hero supported by divine help is seen as fitting the ideal hero typology and current needs during the military collapses experienced by the Umayyads. Muhammad's position gradually rose from his military stature to that of the sole and central figure in narratives who received divine assistance, in parallel with the rise in the value of the hadiths attributed to Muhammad in Islamic lawmaking although it was not like that in the beginning.
In the first two centuries of Islamic history, was more commonly known as (literally, 'stories of military expeditions'), which is now considered to be only a subset of âÂÂone that concerns the military campaigns of Muhammad. The phrase , or , refers to the study of the life of Muhammad. The term sërah was first linked to the biography of Muhammad by Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri ( 124/741âÂÂ2), and later popularized by the work of Ibn Hisham ( 833).
In the Arabic language the word sërah or sërat () comes from the verb sÃÂra, which means "to travel" or "to be on a journey". A person's sërah is that person's journey through life, or biography, encompassing their birth, events in their life, manners and characteristics, and their death. In modern usage it may also refer to a person's resume. It is sometimes written as "seerah", "sirah" or "sirat", all meaning "life" or "journey". In Islamic literature, the plural form, siyar, could also refer to the rules of war and dealing with non-Muslims.
Early works of sërah consist of multiple historical reports called . Sometimes the word tradition or hadith is used instead. In terms of structure, a hadith and a khabar are very similar; they both contain isnads (chains of transmission). The main difference between a hadith and a khabar is that a hadith is not concerned with an event as such, and normally does not specify a time or place. Rather the purpose of hadith is to record a religious doctrine as an authoritative source of Islamic law. By contrast, while a khabar may carry some legal or theological implications, its main aim is to convey information about a certain event. Some historians consider the sërah and maghÃÂzë literature to be a subset of Hadith.
The sërah literature includes a variety of heterogeneous materials, containing mainly narratives of military expeditions undertaken by Muhammad and his companions. These stories are intended as historical accounts and are used for veneration. The sërah also includes a number of written documents, such as political treaties (e.g., Treaty of Hudaybiyyah or Constitution of Medina), military enlistments, assignments of officials, letters to foreign rulers, and so forth. It also records some of the speeches and sermons made by Muhammad, like his speech at the Farewell Pilgrimage. Some of the sërah accounts include verses of poetry commemorating certain events and battles.
Parts of sërah were inspired by, or elaborate upon, events mentioned in the Quran. These parts were often used by writers of Tafsir and asbab al-nuzul to provide background information for events mentioned in certain ayat.
At a 2 to 3 hundred years later periods, certain type of stories included in sërah developed into their own separate genres. One genre is concerned with stories of prophetic miracles, called aÿlÃÂm al-nubuwa (literally, "proofs of prophethood"âÂÂthe first word is sometimes substituted for amÃÂrÃÂt or dalÃÂþil). Another genre, called faá¸ÂÃÂþil wa mathÃÂlibâÂÂtales that show the merits and faults of individual companions, enemies, and other notable contemporaries of Muhammad. Some works of sërah also positioned the story of Muhammad as part of a narrative that includes stories of earlier prophets, Persian Kings, pre-Islamic Arab tribes, and the Rashidun.
It can also be considered that the changes in the content of the Sira followed a course parallel to the replacement of the Sunnah (which initially meant only tradition), which was a valid argument for legitimacy in Islamic society, with the Sunnah of Muhammad and the Hadith of Muhammad which were considered more valuable, and the divine revelation of Muhammad becoming the most important source of Islamic lawsmaking.
For centuries, Muslim scholars have recognized the problem of authenticity of hadith. Thus they have developed sophisticated methods (see Hadith studies) of evaluating isnÃÂds (chains of transmission). This was done in order to classify each hadith into "sound" (á¹£aḥëḥ) for authentic reports, as opposed to "weak" (á¸Âaÿëf) for ones that are probably fabricated, in addition to other categories. Since many sërah reports also contain isnÃÂd information and some of the sërah compilers (akhbÃÂrës) were themselves practicing jurists and hadëth transmitters (muḥaddiths), it was possible to apply the same methods of hadëth criticism to the sërah reports. However, some sërah reports were written using an imprecise form of isnÃÂd, or what modern historians call the "collective isnÃÂd" or "combined reports". The use of collective isnÃÂd meant that a report may be related on the authority of multiple persons without distinguishing the words of one person from another. This lack of precision led some hadith scholars to take any report that used a collective isnÃÂd to be lacking in authenticity.
According to Wim Raven, it is often noted that a coherent image of Muhammad cannot be formed from the literature of sëra, whose authenticity and factual value have been questioned on a number of different grounds. He lists the following arguments against the authenticity of sëra, followed here by counter arguments:
Nevertheless, other content of sëra, like the Constitution of Medina, are generally considered to be authentic, although it does not fulfill any of the conditions of authenticity in the Islamic recording system such as having a reliable chain of narrators up to the person who recorded it.
During the early centuries of Islam, the sërah literature was taken less seriously compared to the hadiths. Today, although the orthodox Islamic approach frequently uses sërah material in its sermons, Quranism and the academic community approach this material with suspicion. While Yaà Âar Nuri ÃÂztürk notes that the hadiths, which have now reached millions, were initially limited to a few hundred, Mehmet ÃÂzdemir draws attention to the almost non-existent number of miracles (dalÃÂþil al-nubuwwa) in the first records and the hundreds of additions made in later periods.
Many Western scholars suspect that there was widespread fabrication of hadithâÂÂeither entirely or by the misattribution of the views of early Muslim religious and legal thinkers to MuhammadâÂÂin the early centuries of Islam to support certain theological and legal positions. In addition to fabrication, it is possible for the meaning of a hadith to have greatly drifted from its original telling through the different interpretations and biases of its varying transmitters, even if the chain of transmission is authentic. While some hadith may genuinely originate from firsthand observation of Muhammad (particularly personal traits that were not of theological interest, like his fondness for tharid and sweets), Western scholars suggest that it is extraordinarily difficult if not impossible to determine which hadith accurately reflect the historical Muhammad.
More recently, western historical criticism and debate concerning sërah have elicited a defensive attitude from some Muslims who wrote apologetic literature defending its content.
The following is a list of some of the early Hadith collectors who specialized in collecting and compiling sërah and maghÃÂzë reports:
The sërah literature is important: in the Urdu language alone, a scholar from Pakistan in 2024 produced a bibliography of more than 10,000 titles, counting multivolume works as a single book and without integrating articles, short essays and unpublished manuscripts, with the researcher also precising that the literature in Arabic is even more important.