003 - Why Study the Seerah and Pre-Islamic Arabia

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Before we discuss the life of the Prophet PBUH, we must discuss pre-Islamic Arabia. In order to understand the seerah, we need to understand the world at his time. This is why every single book of seerah has a number of introductory sections.

What does the word seerah (سيرة) mean? It means to traverse or to journey. It is derived from the root س ي ر (s-y-r) which means to travel — and the reason why seerah (the biography of a person) is called seerah is because you are traveling his journey, following his footsteps. Even though its use can be for the biography of anybody, Muslim scholars have now kept it only for the biography of the Prophet PBUH.

Benefits of Studying the Seerah

Why should we study the seerah?

1. Allah has commanded us to know this man. This is an obligation that Allah has put upon us. And there are over 50 verses in the Quran that command us to take the Prophet PBUH as an example. Of them:

لَّقَدْ كَانَ لَكُمْ فِي رَسُولِ اللَّهِ أُسْوَةٌ حَسَنَةٌ

"Indeed there is for you, in the messenger of Allah, an exemplary manner, a perfect conduct" [see Quran, 33:21]. We have the perfect example to follow. And therefore, the study of the life & times of our Prophet PBUH is the study of someone we must follow. And amazingly, no matter which angle we look at the seerah, we will benefit from it:

(i) In terms of religion: how the Prophet PBUH worship Allah

(ii) In terms of manners and morals: his mercy and tenderness

(iii) In terms of leadership: how he led the Muslims to success

(iv) In terms of how he was as a father and a husband

The purpose of Allah sending prophets is so that we have a living example to follow. Allah tells us in the Quran that if He had wanted, He could have sent angels [see Quran, 17:95]. But what would the nonbelievers have done if Allah sent angels? They would have rejected them [see Quran, 6:8-9].

Indeed, of the perfection of Allah's wisdom is that He sent down human beings —people like us, flesh and blood— so that we don't say, "But we can't be like them." They are born of women, they marry and have children just like us. The only difference is they are chosen by Allah and are made role models.

2. The seerah is the number one way to increase our love for the Prophet PBUH. There is no other way as effective and as powerful. So isn't it sad that our ummah has neglected this study? Most of our children are completely ignorant of the seerah. It's embarrassing that we know so much more about movie stars and athletes, and have no clue as to the real person whom we should know about. By studying the seerah, our love for the Prophet PBUH increases, and conversely, it demonstrates our love. So it's a two-way street: When you study, your love increases; and when you love, you want to study more. Indeed, when you love someone, you want to know everything about him, and you want to imitate him in every way possible. It's a circle: The more we study the more we love, and the more we love the more we study. Anyone who claims to love the Prophet PBUH but doesn't study the seerah, wallahi, the fact that he doesn't study is a sign that he doesn't love him.

3. It also helps us to understand the Quran. The Quran is a very profound book that you cannot understand without context. For example, Surah al-Duha (سورة الضحى), "Your Lord has not abandoned you, nor is He displeased" [Quran, 93:3] — we cannot understand this verse until we understand the seerah and see when and why this verse was revealed. The context is that the Prophet PBUH was worried and concerned that for weeks wahy (وحي - revelation) hadn't come down, so he began thinking, "Maybe Allah has abandoned me." This is the first year of revelation, and shaytan (شيطان - devil) is giving him bad thoughts; so Allah SWT revealed Surah al-Duha to comfort him PBUH. Until we understand this, the surah doesn't make much sense. So the Quran gains meaning by studying the seerah.

4. It raises our hopes, lifts our spirits, and blesses us with optimism. This is especially true in our times when we face Islamophobia. Even though in comparison to what the sahaba went through, it is embarrassing to even call what we go through a "persecution," nonetheless we are facing a little bit of the heat. So by studying the seerah, we can understand that the people before us suffered even more, and we compare our trials and tribulations to theirs, and realize that actually we are having it easy. And in fact, the Quran tells us the reason why Allah is telling the Prophet PBUH the stories of the earlier prophets (i.e., earlier seerahs):

وَكُلًّا نَّقُصُّ عَلَيْكَ مِنْ أَنبَاءِ الرُّسُلِ مَا نُثَبِّتُ بِهِ فُؤَادَكَ

"We are going to recite to you the stories of the previous prophets in order that your heart attain affirmation" [see Quran, 11:120]. That is, to increase the Prophet's PBUH optimism and Iman (إيمان - faith/belief/confidence). So how about us then? Don't we deserve even more so that our Iman goes up when we study the life and times of the Prophet PBUH?

5. Yet another benefit of studying the seerah is that the seerah itself is a miracle of the Prophet PBUH [i.e., the study of the seerah is the study of the Proofs of his prophethood]. When somebody [e.g., a Jew or a Christian] asks us what are the miracles of our Prophet Muhammad [i.e., what are the Signs of his prophethood], we immediately start thinking of the splitting of the moon, the talking of the tree, etc., without realizing that in fact the whole life of the Prophet PBUH is an even greater miracle; an indication that he was a true prophet of Allah. Coming from where he came and bringing forth the profundity & eloquence of the Quran, his leadership, his patience, his success; coming from the middle of a pagan ancient civilization that didn't even have a library or script; and yet within 50 years Islam spread, and within 100 years it ruled the world — this is a miracle. The seerah is an affirmation of this miracle. The power he wielded and yet the simplicity with which he lived his life; it is impossible for a human not to be affected by the power or luxury unless there is pure, divine sincerity. Ibn Hazm (ابن حزم), a famous Andalusian scholar, said, "Wallahi, if the Prophet PBUH had not been given any miracle other than his life and times, it would have been sufficient to prove that he is a prophet of Allah." How he revolutionized Arabia and changed the entire world — this is truly a miracle. Within 20 years — nobody could have *ever* predicted that a group coming from Arabia would destroy the Persian Empire and start knocking on the doors of the Roman Empire. A group with a new religion, new theology, a force that cannot be equaled with the mighty empires of Rome and Persia; and yet Allah SWT allowed these people that were less educated and less civilized with nowhere near the army or weaponry of the mighty empires to be victorious — because of the religion they held firm to, that is Islam.

6. The seerah lays out a precise methodology to revive the ummah. There are many Islamist groups in our times with their own methodologies to do so. But if you want to bring about izzah (عزة - honor/glory) back, then why don't you look at the seerah? The Prophet PBUH began literally from zero and look where he reached. We look at the ummah today and our hearts bleed, and wonder, "Why, oh Allah?!" "How can we revive the state of the ummah?!" — And the response is: by studying the seerah.

7. By studying the seerah, we also see the life and times of the best generation who ever lived: the generation of the sahaba RA. Allah says, "Allah is pleased with them, and they are pleased with Allah" [Quran, 9:100]. And the Prophet PBUH said, "The best generation is my generation." Ibn Mas'ud (ابن مسعود) RA said, "Allah looked at the hearts of His servants and He chose the brightest and the purest heart to be that of the Prophet Muhammad PBUH. And then He chose the purest next and made them the sahaba of the Prophet PBUH." So by studying the seerah, we also study the stories of Abu Bakr, Umar, Anas, Jabir (جابر), Sa'd ibn Mu'adh (سعد بن معاذ), Talha (طلحة), Zubayr (زبير), et al., and our Iman goes up by listening to the lives of these legendary people, their sacrifices, struggles, perseverance, and patience. They are all role models for us. According to a weak athar (أثر - tradition), the Prophet PBUH said, "My sahaba are like the stars. Whichever one you follow, you are going to be guided."

8. The seerah brings about knowledge with which we can defend the honor of our Prophet PBUH. The honor of our Prophet PBUH has always been attacked from day one. The Quraysh fabricated things against him, they said he was a madman [see Quran, 68:51], magician [38:4], poet [37:36], etc., because none of them could explain how the Quran came, and where did this 'unlettered shepherd' get the Quran from. So they invented all these preposterous claims. And it continues to this day. In our times, how many people say our Prophet PBUH was a bloodthirsty terrorist, a womanizer, etc.? If we want to defend the honor of our Prophet PBUH, how can we do so if we don't know his life and times, if we don't even know whether the accusations are true? And if they are partially true, how do we understand them properly? There is no way other than by studying the seerah. And this is why the early scholars of Islam (the sahaba, tabi'un, tabi' al-tabi'in) used to teach the seerah just like they would teach all of the other sciences. Ali ibn al-Husayn (علي بن الحسين), the great-grandson of the Prophet PBUH, said, "We would teach our children maghazi (مغازي) (i.e., the seerah) just like we would teach them the Quran." So the curriculum in early Islam was Quran + seerah. And we must all do the same with our children.

To summarize: The study of the seerah is the study of (i) the best, and (ii) the best, and (iii) the best, and (iv) the best:

(i) It is the study of the life and times of the single best human to ever live. The Prophet PBUH said, "I am the leader & the paragon of virtue of the children of Adam, and I am not saying this out of arrogance."
(ii) And the best time — the time of the sahaba.
(iii) And the best generation — the generation of the sahaba.
(iv) And the best place — Makkah and Madinah. (Note: These are the holiest cities on earth. But who knew this and really cared about Makkah and Madinah until the Prophet PBUH lived there? As for Madinah, it *became* holy in the life of the Prophet PBUH, as he said, "I am making Madinah holy like Ibrahim made Makkah holy [by the permission of Allah].")

So in every angle, it is the best of the best of the best of the best.

Therefore, studying the Prophet's PBUH life and times is studying our religion. It is studying the rise of the phenomenon of our religion – how Allah brought about the revolution of Islam – how He brought about an entire change of mind – how Islam changed the world. By studying these 23 years of the life of the Prophet PBUH (and yes, it is *only* 23 years from the beginning of his risala [رسالة - message] [i.e. prophethood] until his death), the miracle of the seerah will benefit us in each and every aspect.

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Primary Sources Used for the Series

How do we know what happened 1400 years ago? Where do we get our stuff from? What are our sources?

1. The Quran. The number one source is the Quran. This is a source that is overlooked by many. But it was revealed during the seerah, so it caters to situations that arose during his life, and it references almost every single major event that happened during the life and even before the time of the Prophet PBUH. It is the best source for many reasons:

(i) It is the Speech of Allah, so we cannot doubt it

(ii) The eloquence is unparalleled, e.g., how beautifully Allah describes the Incidents of Badr (بدر) and Uhud (أحد)

(iii) It explains the ghayb (غيب - unseen) — any historian will record the outward, but the Quran records the outward and inward, e.g., Quran [47:29], [3:153]; and also the ghayb, e.g., Quran [3:124], [48:1]

However, of the 'issues' of the Quran is that (i) it is not chronological, and (ii) it does not mention reference. For example, Allah does not mention the word "Uhud" in the Quran, so we need to know that a portion of Surah Ali-Imran (سورة آل عمران) was revealed for Uhud. So the seerah and the Quran go hand in hand: You need the seerah to understand the Quran, and you need the Quran to understand the seerah.

2. The hadith. Every hadith is one snapshot of the seerah. There are lots of books of hadith, but the most famous ones are 6 of them, called Kutub al-Sittah (كتب الستة):

(i) Sahih al-Bukhari (صحيح البخاري),

(ii) Sahih Muslim (صحيح مسلم),

(iii) Sunan Abi Dawud (سنن أبي داود),

(iv) Jami' al-Tirmidhi (جامع الترمذي),

(v) Sunan al-Nasa'i (سنن النسائي), and

(vi) Sunan Ibn Majah (سنن ابن ماجه).

3. Books written specifically for seerah. The first people to begin writing books of seerah were the sons of the sahaba. So many stories were told from their fathers. Urwah the son of Zubayr ibn al-Awwam wrote one of the greatest accounts. (Tangent: Urwah was one of the greatest tabi'un [تابعون] — his father, mother, grandmother, and brother, were all sahabi. But he was born after the death of the Prophet PBUH, so he wasn't a sahabi. And his aunt was none other than Aisha RA. So he was one of the primary narrators of fiqh, hadith, tafsir [تفسير - exegesis], and seerah, because he had access to Aisha RA; he was her mahram [محرم].) Also the son of Uthman ibn Affan (عثمان بن عفان) whose name was Aban (أبان) (died in the year 105 of the Year of the Hijrah) — he also wrote a booklet on seerah. Then a great scholar came by the name of Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri (ابن شهاب الزهري) (d. 124 AH), and he wrote one of the earliest treatises of seerah. But unfortunately, none of these books is existent anymore. The reason is simply: when later books came, they absorbed the earlier treatises. Realize in those days there were no printing presses. If you wanted a book, you had to sit there and write it yourself cover to cover. So if you had to choose one book, you would choose the ones that are better compiled (i.e., the later ones).

We wish we had these early books, but unfortunately, we don't. But we do have books that were written in the very next generation which shows us that seerah was compiled even before hadith because of its importance.

And of course the greatest scholar of seerah is Ibn Ishaq (ابن إسحاق) (d. 150 AH) who authored the Seeratu Rasulillah (سيرة رسول الله - Life of the Messenger of Allah) a.k.a. Seerat Ibn Ishaq (سيرة ابن إسحاق - Seerah by Ibn Ishaq). His name is Muhammad ibn Ishaq (محمد بن إسحاق) and he was born in 85 AH. He lived in Madinah where the Prophet PBUH lived and died. He grew up around the sahaba, their children and grandchildren, and he wrote everything he heard from them. He had a huge passion for seerah and began to compile events in chronological order unlike the earlier treatises. He compiled a very large book (around 10-15 volumes), and just to be on the safe side, he even traveled to other cities, e.g., Basra (البصرة) and Kufa (الكوفة), to discover the stories of Ibn Mas'ud and others. One of the best things about Ibn Ishaq is he compiled everything with isnad (إسناد - chain of narrators). Isnad is a uniquely Islamic phenomenon, it does not exist in any other religion or culture. Isnad tells us where the story comes from. In Islam, we always verify authenticity. We know every person in the chain: when he was born, when he died, how good was he of a Muslim, did he have a good memory, etc. And thus we can judge the isnad.

Then another student (or to be more precise, student of a student) called Ibn Hisham (ابن هشام) (d. 218 AH) came along. His name was Abd al-Malik ibn Hisham (عبد الملك بن هشام), and he authored al-Seerat al-Nabawiyyah (السيرة النبوية - the Life of the Prophet) a.k.a. Seerat Ibn Hisham (سيرة ابن هشام - Seerah by Ibn Hisham). The average Muslim should be aware of these two sourcebooks of the seerah: Seerat Ibn Ishaq (primary) & Seerat Ibn Hisham (secondary). The difference between these two books is: Ibn Hisham realized Ibn Ishaq's volumes were too big, so he decided to summarize Seerat Ibn Ishaq. He did not add anything but rather subtracted. He deleted and made it into a book that is much more manageable, and now it is available in 4 volumes. Again, in those days there was no printing press, so if you wanted a book, you had to write it cover to cover — this is one of the reasons why he reduced. Also, Ibn Ishaq was one of the first people to write a history of humanity — from Adam AS to Nuh to Ibrahim to Musa all the way to the Prophet PBUH; so Ibn Hisham deleted this entire section of earlier history and other information about the life of the Prophet PBUH he deemed unnecessary. Over time, people began copying Ibn Hisham; and today, if you want to buy a copy of the book, you have to buy Seerat Ibn Hisham (سيرة ابن هشام), you won't find Seerat Ibn Ishaq anymore.

However, there was a very famous scholar by the name of Dr. Hamidullah (حميد الله) (d. 2002 CE) came along, he became one of the greatest scholars/researchers in Orientalism, and he discovered many manuscripts of Islam in various lands of Europe; and one of them was a partial copy of [Seerat] Ibn Ishaq — around ¼ of the entire book. He edited and published it, and when now we compare Ibn Ishaq to Ibn Hisham, we find that it is exactly as Ibn Hisham said — he simply cut off around half of the work of Ibn Ishaq. What did he cut off? Long poetry, the lineage of the Arabs, etc. So now when we read Ibn Hisham, we know for sure that we are reading something written just around 100 years after the death of the Prophet PBUH, and this is amazing.

4. Books written about the characteristics of the Prophet PBUH. In Arabic, this is called shama'il (شمائل). And the most famous is Shama'il of al-Tirmidhi. Shama'il is a genre of books that deals with the looks, the characteristics, the manners, the possessions, the houses, etc., of the Prophet PBUH.

5. Books written about the miracles of the Prophet PBUH. In Arabic, this is called dala'il (دلائل). The most famous is Dala'il al-Nubuwwah (دلائل النبوة - The Signs of Prophethood) by al-Bayhaqi (البيهقي) — a massive encyclopedia with ~12 volumes.

6. Histories of the sahaba — by reading their histories we extract seerah.

7. Histories of Makkah and Madinah — by reading the tarikhs we extract seerah.

So these are the primary sources of seerah.

(8) And to this, modern people have added sources that are not found in Muslim lands: A new genre of research in academia, Islamic studies in America and the Western world which deals with what the Romans and Persians say about the Prophet PBUH and the Arabs/Muslims at the time.

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Pre-Islamic Arabia: Early Arab's Genealogy

Now we begin talking about pre-Islamic Arabia. We begin by discussing who the Arabs were. This is a topic of genealogy, of ethnicity. Who are the Arabs the Prophet PBUH appeared amongst? This is the topic that Ibn Ishaq himself begins with.

The scholars have divided Arabs into two broad categories:

1. The Extinct Arabs (al-Arab al-Ba'ida/العرب البائدة‎) — the earliest civilizations that lived in Arabia, pre-Islam by thousands of years. The Quran mentions some of their stories, e.g., Ad (عاد) [e.g., Quran, 89:6-14] and Thamud (ثمود) [e.g., Quran, 11:61-68]. They have nothing to do with the later Arabs. They are called Arabs simply because they lived in the lands that later became Arabia. And as far as we know, Thamud is the earliest humanity that flourished in the Arabian Peninsula around 3000 BCE — so around 5000 years ago. We have documented evidence of the Thamud flourishing 5000 years ago. And to this day, we have the remains of the palaces of the people of Saleh (صالح), which came after Thamud, in an area called al-Ula (العلا) in Saudi Arabia. Ibn Khaldun (ابن خلدون) mentions, "These people fled from the ancient city of Babel (بابل) and they made their way to Arabia." Then what happened to them? Each one of them has its own story: Some Allah destroyed, some civil war, some flood, migration, etc. — and eventually they all became extinct.

2. The Remaining Arabs (al-Arab al-Baqiya/العرب الباقية) — they are composed of two categories:

2a) Qahtan (قحطان) — he is considered to be the father of the Arabs. His son was named Ya'rab/Ya'rib (يعرب); and Ya'rab is where the term Arab (عرب) comes from. And it is said that Ya'rab ibn Qahtan (يعرب بن قحطان) was the first to speak Arabic — the Arabic language is traced back to him. Now who is Ya'rab and who is Qahtan? Amazingly, we do not know. Where did Qahtan descend from? The majority opinion says he descended from the son of Nuh AS called Sam. (Tangent: Legend has it Nuh AS had 3 sons: [i] Sam [سام] is one of the three, and he is the father of the Semites including the Jew race, the people who spoke Aramaic, Ibrahim AS, etc. And [ii] his brother Yafith [يافث] is the father of the Roman race, the Caucasians. And [iii] his brother Ham [حام] is the father of the Africans. The Bible says this; and there is a da'if [ضعيف - weak] hadith in al-Tirmidhi that supports this, so Allahu a'lam [الله أعلم - Allah knows best]). So this opinion says Qahtan and Ibrahim AS both come from Sam but there is no direct connection between them. Another opinion is that Qahtan is in fact the descendant of Ibrahim AS — this is a minority opinion. A third opinion is that Qahtan is in fact the descendant of Hud (هود) AS — but this is a very weak opinion. Allah knows best, but the majority position seems to be that Qahtan is *not* linked to Ibrahim AS except that they were both descendants of Sam. When did Qahtan live? Once again, we have no idea, but he lived *way* before the second category of the Remaining Arabs which is Adnan [see below] — we have to make this a point. Where did the Qahtanis live? They lived in the southern portion of Arabia; and they had a number of dynasties and kingdoms, e.g., the Kingdom of Saba' (مملكة سبأ), Himyarites (مملكة حمير), and Ghassanids (غساسنة). The Aws (الأوس) and the Khazraj (الخزرج) in Madinah were also Qahtanis. These are called the Original Arabs (al-Arab al-Ariba/العرب العاربة) because they invented/spoke Arabic.

2b) Adnan (عدنان) — he is the ancestor of the Prophet PBUH. The Prophet PBUH is Adnani, so we know a lot about Adnan. Who is Adnan? One of the descendants of Ismail (إسماعيل - Ishmael) AS. Now as we know, Ibrahim AS is originally from Ur (أور - an ancient city in Iraq), then his son Ismail AS is left as a baby with his mother Hajar (هاجر - Hagar) in Makkah in an area where Qahtanis don't normally inhabit — a barren land; and one of the tribes of Qahtan, Jurhum (جرهم), passes by, and Ismail AS marries into them (so his children are a mixture of Ibrahim's AS and the Qahtanis' blood), and they begin speaking the language of the Qahtanis that is Arabic, and a few generations down, a luminary appears by the name of Adnan. So as we said, Adnan is one of the descendants of Ismail AS. Al-Tabari (الطبري) mentions 7 opinions^[1] about the lineage between Ismail and Adnan: one opinion says there are 7 generations between them; another opinion says 8, another says 9, another 10, and another 41; but at the end of the day, we do not know. And then from Adnan, the Arab tribes spring forth. All of the Adnani tribes, most famously Quraysh, go back to Adnan, who goes back to Ismail AS. The Adnani Arabs are called the Arabs Who Learned Arabic (al-Arab al-Musta'riba/العرب المستعربة). Why? Because Arabic was not their language — they learned it from al-Arab al-Ariba. There is no difference of opinion that the Prophet PBUH is the 20th offspring of Adnan. Now, the Adnanis actually spoke better Arabic than the Original Arabs. Why? Because they settled in central Arabia — because it was geographically central, all of the other tribes, including the Original Arabs, went through and interacted with them, so they began to take the best of all the Arab cultures, and eventually, they became more eloquent and prestigious than the Original Arabs. And our Prophet PBUH came from them.

We need to understand the tribes and lineage of the Arabs to fully understand the seerah of the Prophet PBUH.

[Transcribed by Br. Safwan Khan, Faizan & Zohra]
safwan-khan@hotmail.com
[Re-revised by Muhammad Abdul Rahman, April 2021]