Ramadan, in this new biography, presents his own take on the Prophet’s life and the lessons for Muslims that can be drawn from it. There was clearly a need for the foundation myth of the Muslim community to be told, and retold, in order that the religious sense of the twists and turns of Muslim history might be understood anew. The popularity of Sira has not waned since the earliest of these works, attributed to Ibn Ishaq (773 CE), was composed. The earliest biographical sources, and the works which established the basic chronology of both the Prophet’s life and the revelation of verses and chapters from the Qur’an, are works called Sira. The Qur’an contains little information about the Prophet’s life, and though there has been a concerted effort on the part of commentators to demonstrate that particular verses relate to particular events during the Prophet’s mission, the Qur’an cannot, in truth, be seen as a useful historical source.
Since Muslims are supposed to take the words and actions of the Prophet Muhammad as a guide and example, it is unsurprising that, for Muslim intellectuals, composing biographies of the Prophet has never lost its appeal. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. In the Footsteps of the Prophet: Lessons from the Life of Muhammad.
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