It's said that he united the Arab tribes and was the ruler of the Arabian Peninsula. Such a man must have been known far beyond his realm. He certainly had diplomatic relations with other rulers, e.g. the Romans. But as far as I know, the person Muhammad is only mentioned in Islamic sources. He doesn't appear in any single non-Islamic source of his time. Can it be that Muhammad is a purely fictional character?
You made a double post. I would says no. I understand more the doubts about Jesus, even if I don't share them, because there is few concrete descriptions of the Christ, there is hundred of texts about Muhammed, describing him physically, his tastes, his daily life, even some quite embarassing for muslims. It's easy to explain why there is no non islamic sources : We can suppose that some was destroyed by early muslims because those sources were hostiles to their prophet, one of the first caliph Uthman burned a lot of early quran for instance. Furthermore, that zone were extremly poor and as far as I know we have very few written sources about the life in that zone of the globe in a global way. I see a lot of common point between Muhammed and Gengis Khan : both came from hostile to life places, from rough, tough people and managed to unite the tribes of their country before submitting much more developped countries. Both have created a set of extremly severe laws. The main difference is that Gengis Khan didn't took any religious leader role however.
To claim he did not exist is pure fantasy, but that’s what you can expect from the supposed rational and secular West. I mean, FFS, he was the individual who recited the Quran that his followers memorized and wrote down. And where do you think Hadiths come from? They are sayings of Muhammad that hundreds of people heard him say. And then you have his immediate family and early companions (and their descendants) who ended up being major historical figures. God, OPs like this make me cringe of the amount of ignorance on the internet. Your own eminent Western scholars would consider such a question downright ludicrous.
There is zero evidence that the Mohammed character existed. His creators made him into a real person, unlike the writers did with the Jesus character. It is always better to have an imaginary character lead a movement rather than a real person. The interesting thing about the Mohammed character is that he is depicted as a horny man with a herd of women that he screwed at every opportunity but he never had any kids. He is like the Jesus character in that regard. Sure, they both could have been sterile but it is more likely that they didn't exist. If they had been real and had kids imagine how different the stories would be. Christianity and Islam would be much different than they are today.
Imo he probably existed. The same claim is made about Christ . Many of our ancient myths were probably based on some facts that were then added to by man as to make a good story worthy of telling around ancient campfires .
The story tellers can't agree on a lie. The fact is if he had a thousand kids none of them led the movement after he croaked.
And they got the split into 2 sects over not agreeing on his replacement ! Why was it necessary to replace him ? The RCC used apostolic succession. Seems man wanted that position of power and the flock thought they needed to be told what to do.
The sira came in 833. The ahadith came in 870. The tafsir came in 923. And the Koran was canonized in Cairo in 1924. Actually, there are a fair number of scholars who are questioning these matters. Wansborough Rippin Crone Gibson Hawting Hoyland Nevo Luling Von Bothmer Ohlig
The sira came in 833. The ahadith came in 870. The tafsir came in 923. Actually, there are a fair number of scholars who are questioning these matters. Wansborough Rippin Crone Gibson Hawting Hoyland Nevo Luling Von Bother "Replacing him" is not quite the right perspective. Muhammad was a prophet. Uthman, Ali, or al-Baghdadi were Caliphs, not prophets. Caliphs were religious rulers, yes, but political rulers as well.
Picked up this article from Pisa in another thread: Dr Crone, reading 15 archaic languages, has found: a Greek text written during the Arab invasion of Syria between 632 and 634 mentions that "a false prophet has appeared among the Saracens" and dismisses him as an impostor on the ground that prophets do not come "with sword and chariot". Though not naming him by name, for now, I'm going with the independent source, just like going with Josephus', et al, third person account of Jesus.
It falls into the same "proving too much" fallacy that the whole "Jesus never existed" crowd falls into. Any "standard" that would rule out the existence of Mohammed would be one that wound render any research of history impossible, leading us to the conclusion that nearly every historical figure never existed.
