Author: lesley Hazleton
Publisher: Penguin, Rs 599
We have numerous biographies of Prophet Muhammad written by Muslim as well as Western scholars. Sirat Rasul Allah by Ibn-Ishaq (born in Madina around 704 AD, just 72 years after the death of the Prophet) and Tarikh al-Rasul wa-al Muluk (History of the Prophets and the Kings) by Ahu Jafar al-Tabari (838-923 AD) were the earliest biographies of the Prophet. These biographies were based on original Islamic sources. Ibn-Ishaq’s book was expanded by Ibn Hisham in the ninth century in Egypt. The English translation of the same by Alfred Guillaume, The life of Muhammad, was published by Oxford University Press in 1955. Ahu Jafar al-Tabari’s biography has already been published in English as the 39-volume The History of al-Tabari. The book under review, The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad, by lesley Hazleton, is based on these original sources. The author has used primarily the five different English-language translations of the Quran, cross-referencing them with the original Arabic, apart from using many other secondary sources. The title of the book has been taken from the Quran, which refers to the Prophet as “The First Muslim”, not once but three times.
Hazleton’s book has three parts covering orphanhood, exile and leadership of the Prophet. Overall, the book tells us “how he accomplished his journey from powerlessness to power, from anonymity to renown, from insignificance to lasting significance”. The book, however, differs in approach, focus and objective from other biographies. The author takes the discourse to a higher level. She broadens the perspective, and avoids value judgement and polemics. The book starts with quotes from the Quran, and the writings of Ibn-Khaldün and Mahatma Gandhi. In the treatment of the subject, even Machiavelli appears.
Among the biographies of Muhammad written by the Westerners, apart from the one in hand, mention may be made of William Muir’s The life of Mahomet, DS Margoliouth’s Mohammed and the Rise of Islam, A Sprenger’s life of Mohammed, Maxime Rodinson’s Muhammad and Washington Irving’s life of Muhammad. The books of Muir and Margoliouth were excellent studies, both heavily relying on original Islamic sources. Muir, whose biography published in 1861, belonged to the highest rung of British officialdom in India. He was a believing Christian with missionary motivation behind his scholarly labour. Yet, he did not compromise his scholarship. Muir opposed the biographies by the missionary and some other writers for their factual inaccuracies, slipshod scholarship, hostile intent, unsympathetic treatment and uninhibited expression of opinion about the Prophet. He emphasised the need of the statement of facts “based on sound, orthodox Muslim sources” while discussing the inaccuracies of Washington Irwing’s life of Muhammad. Muir disagreed with Sprenger, who regarded Muhammad as having a “weak and cunning mind”. Here, it needs mention that Muir is richer in data, analysis and presentation on various dimensions and aspects of the life of Muhammad, including political aspect, in comparison to all others. Hazleton focuses on psychological and political aspect.
Muir found that early traditions did not contain highly fanciful and fabricated stories; he pointed out the same while discussing the biography of the Prophet, Moulud Sharif (The Enobled Nativity), by Ghulam Imam Shahid, an Indian Muslim. Hazleton, too, relies on early traditions documented by Ibn-Ishaq and al-Tabari while discussing the ‘Night Journey of the Prophet’, about which the Quran clearly refers: “Glory be to God, who made his servant go by night from the sacred house to the far house, that we might show him some of our signs”. She, however, does not tell the story. Ibn-Ishaq, in this case, caries out a delicate balancing act “with considerable aplomb, stepping carefully between his duty as a believer and his obligation as a biographer. As Hazleton observes, it’s “a wisely phrased abstention from certainty”. Al-Tabari, on the other hand, “writing a century later in the new Muslim capital city of Baghdad, was wary as always of miracle tales and far more focused on politics”, as is the case with the writer of the book under review. For her, the night journey, in its simplest form, is a miracle story.
Most biographies of Muhammad, except the hagiographical ones in which miracles abound, remarkably agree on facts. Of course, the analysis and the way of looking at these facts differed. As in the case of the massacre of the Jewish tribe of Banu Quraiza by the Prophet after their surrender, the earliest Muslim biographers of impeccable orthodoxy celebrate the same with undisguised glee; the Christian scholars of the l8th century like Sprenger, Muir, etc, treated it with moral horror. Margoliouth, in his biography in 1900, took it as a matter of fact. Maxime Rodinson, the author of Muhammad (1961), justifies it “from a purely political point of view”.
After the massacre, as analysed by Hazleton, Muhammad was in full control of Madina’s politics. With the annihilation of their allies, the munafiqun (hypocrites) were totally subdued. After undermining Ibn-Ubayy, one of the leading men of Medina, by challenging his ability to protect his allies, Muhammad demonstrated his ruthlessness, power and authority. It needs to be mentioned that the break with the Jews was already complete after the change of Qibla (the direction that should be faced when a Muslim prays) from Jerusalem to Mecca, and the departure of 2,000 Qaynuqas (Jews) having business ties with Mecca after the market incident. “The exiles had now in turn exiled others.” The Prophet could further exhibit his ruthlessness and became unchallenged after getting the pithiest wordsmiths, who would harass him through their satire, and poets of Arabia — Asma, Abu-Afak, Ibn-Ashraf and Hassan ibn-Thabit — massacred one by one.
Chinese writer Sun Tzu wrote The Art of War in which he declared: “War is deception.” The same strategy was adopted by the Prophet when he said: “Make sure they abandon each other, for war is deception.” It is in this context that Hazleton’s refusal to categorise Muhammad as either a prophet “of peace” or “of war” is praiseworthy.
It needs to be understood that Islam emerged when two great powers — Byzantine and Iran — fought each other to exhaustion, creating a vacuum of power in West Asia. Strategic location of Medina, 200 miles south of Macca, in the trade route of Syria was disadvantageous for Macca. The battle of Badra and subsequent raids were strategically advantageous for Muslims. Moreover, there was unprecedented flow of money from raids on the non-believers, and all who joined Islam were made partners in the same. Hazleton has ably discussed some of these factors in the rise of Islam.
The reviewer is editor of a quarterly research magazine, Dialogue