The Objectives and Styles of The Qur'anic Sirah Writing: An Illustrative Study

Abstract

The early Muslim historians and hadith experts recoded the Sirah (life and biography of the Prophet Muhammad -peace be upon him-) literature in their historical annals, and hadith collections. The Sirah-writings was gradually developed as an independent field of inquiry in which the writers employed other sources such as the Quran, exegeses, hermeneutics, Arabic poetry, geography and even theology for Sirah understanding. However, it has been observed that the central position of history and hadith compendiums in Sirah-writings remained intact till the advent of Modern period in which a great change has been witnessed both in methods and styles of Sirah-writings to respond the western critique of Sirah-writings and to present the holy life of the Prophet as a model for humankind.  Therefore, they attempted to revisit the sources with reversionistic approaches and a variety of methods and styles were devised for systematic Sirah-writing. The present study aims to explore the objective of the newly emerged trend of the Quranic based Sirah-writings. A meticulous effort has been made to identify the objectives of this genre. A plethora of literature has been composed to construct an authentic biography of the Prophet grounding on the Quran as its prime source. However, those who follow this trend are clearly categorized into two distinctive groups, those who reject the historical and Prophetic traditions altogether and those who employ the traditions for better understanding of the Quranic text regarding the life of the Prophet. An illustrative case study of the Quranic Sirah-wrings has been conducted to identify the nature, objectives of the subject and how various approaches have been espoused by the leading experts of the field.