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Muhammad<\/strong>, who was he? Scholars put the historical sources to the test, finding it almost impossible<\/strong> to provide a biography. What little is known is that he spread a biblical message.<\/i><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Who was Muhammad<\/strong><\/mark>? A new academic project reignites the historical debate on the founder of Islam.<\/p>\n Recently in France, “Le Mahomet des historiens<\/a>“<\/i><\/strong> (“Muhammad According to Historians”<\/i>) (Les \u00c9ditions du Cerf 2025), a monumental two-volume work (over 2,000 pages) curated by Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi<\/strong> and John Tolan<\/strong>, with contributions from fifty international specialists, has been released.<\/p>\n The goal? To scientifically explore the figure of Muhammad, his message, his biography, and his cultural impact beyond myth and devotion, meticulously analyzing all sources<\/strong>\u2014Islamic and non-Islamic, Arab, Christian, Persian, African, as well as mystical or literary texts.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Despite the encyclopedic effort, the historians involved emphasize a crucial point: what can be considered certain<\/strong> about the historical life of Muhammad<\/strong> is extremely limited.<\/p>\n In an interview with Le Monde<\/i><\/a><\/em><\/strong>, the project\u2019s main leader, Ali Amir-Moezzi<\/strong>, Emeritus Director at the \u00c9cole Pratique des Hautes \u00c9tudes (Paris) and one of the world\u2019s leading Islamologists, even states that \u201cwhat historians can assert with certainty about Muhammad perhaps does not exceed two pages<\/strong>\u201d<\/i>.<\/p>\n On the other hand, thirty years ago, in the journal “Arabica”<\/a><\/strong><\/i>, anthropologist Jacqueline Chabbi<\/strong> argued that \u201cit is impossible, using critical methods, to write a historical biography of Muhammad<\/strong> because the sources about him are late, contradictory, full of approximations and errors, and theologically and politically biased\u201d<\/em>.<\/p>\n The first known biographical account of Muhammad, that of Ibn Is\u1e25\u0101q, reworked by Ibn Hish\u0101m, dates to over a century after<\/strong> his death.<\/p>\n The same authors of the recent work, the aforementioned Amir-Moezzi and John Tolan<\/strong>, Emeritus Professor at the University of Nantes, confirm in the interview that \u201cif one manages to write a biography of Muhammad, it is because one does not adopt a critical approach<\/strong> to the texts. And if one wants to adopt a critical approach, the attempt becomes simply impossible\u201d<\/i>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In detail, according to scholars, it can be reconstructed with relative certainty only that Muhammad lived in western Arabia at the end of the 6th century<\/strong>. Everything else is shrouded in the fog of late and contradictory sources, including his birth and death dates, the number of his children and wives, etc.<\/p>\n Another established fact is that the founder of Islam, scholars explain, brought \u00aba message situated within<\/strong> the Jewish and Christian monotheistic tradition\u00bb<\/i>, announcing the end of the world and inviting people to repent, to be pious, to give alms, and to be kind to one another in order to be spared<\/strong> from God\u2019s wrath.<\/p>\n Amir-Moezzi also explains that the Quranic text \u00abis presented as an extension<\/strong> of Moses\u2019 Torah and Jesus\u2019 Gospel (Sura 5, 46)\u00bb<\/i>, announcing apocalyptic themes that \u00abare clearly Jewish and Christian\u00bb<\/i>. The only distinction is that, in the Quran, \u00abGod regularly speaks in the first person\u00bb<\/i>.<\/p>\n It is interesting how Amir-Moezzi specifies that this message is classified by historians as Biblical<\/strong>, while co-author John Tolan, Emeritus Professor at the University of Nantes, notes that the Islamic sacred text presents a population \u00abwidely familiar with the monotheistic universe\u00bb<\/i>, therefore biblical, so much so that the Quran constantly refers to stories from the Bible<\/strong>, \u00abparticularly those of the prophets from the Old and New Testaments, allusively, as if they were already known to everyone\u00bb<\/i>.<\/p>\n
\nMuhammad, no historical certainty<\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\nHis message was biblical, not Islamic<\/h2>\n