The Earliest Source of Prophet Muhammad's Biography | The Letters of Urwa' ibn az Zubayr

Hi, welcome to Al Muqaddimah, my name is Siavish. The biography of the Prophet Muhammad is one of the most important canons in the history of Islam, second only to the Qur'an itself. The reason for it being so important is that, according to Muslim scholars, it actually expands on the Qur'an. It provides context for much of the Qur'an which becomes difficult to understand without knowing what the Prophet was doing at the time a particular part of the Qur'an was revealed. As a result, there's a rich tradition of the Prophet's biography filling volumes upon volumes. However, this tradition isn't without its critics. The earliest compilation of the Prophet's biography that we have, which by the way is called the Seedah in Arabic, was around the year 800 or so by Ibn Hisham who died around 833CE. Now, that's almost exactly two centuries after the Prophet passed away in 632CE. So, the critics of the Seedah point out that this distance in time brings a lot of uncertainties and likely errors in the Seedah. But simply putting the time between Ibn Hisham and the Prophet Muhammad in years is, in my opinion, quite misleading. It's true that the earliest written compilation of the Seedah that we have was written two centuries after the Prophet but it's by no means the first Seedah. The first Seedah was the one written by Ibn Ishaq around 760CE or so. That one doesn't survive in its original form but much of it can be drawn from the works of his students who directly quoted large parts of it. Ibn Ishaq himself worked from many sources of the Prophet's Seedah who themselves had their own sources and so on. So today, we're gonna talk about the earliest written sources on the Prophet's biography, the letters of one Urwa ibn Zubair to the Umayyad Caliphs, Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan and al-Walid ibn Abd al-Malik. This video is brought to you by, well, all of you. Thank you to my patrons for supporting the channel and making these videos possible. Al-Muqaddimah is funded only by Patreon and as you can see, the videos take a long time to research, edit and produce. It's only because of my patrons that I can put this kind of time into these videos and keep them free from any kind of paywall. So if you want to pledge a dollar or more to support the channel, you can head over to my Patreon. The link is in the description. You can also become a member right here on YouTube. There are no benefits attached to it because I don't get the time to work on them. So if you want to support Al-Muqaddimah financially, please go ahead. Otherwise, just like, comment, share and subscribe. That's also supporting Al-Muqaddimah. Before you watch this video, be sure to watch my video called The Traditional Account of the Life of Prophet Muhammad because it's relevant to this video and I'll be referencing events from it. If you know the general traditional account of the Prophet's biography, then you're good to go. Otherwise, watch that video. The link is in the description. Let's first talk about who Urwa ibn al-Zubair was. Urwa was born around the year 643 to al-Zubair ibn al-Azzam and Asma bint Abu Bakr. Those names would sound familiar to those who know anything about the Prophet Muhammad and his companions. Al-Zubair ibn al-Azzam was the nephew of Khadija, the first wife of Prophet Muhammad. He was hence Muhammad's nephew by marriage. On the other side, Asma, Urwa's mother, was the daughter of Abu Bakr, the first caliph, the closest friend of the Prophet and his father-in-law. You see, Asma had a sister named Aisha who was married to Prophet Muhammad. Hence, Urwa was connected to the Prophet's household twice over. Since he was Aisha's nephew, he had unrestricted access to the Prophet's household. Aisha was a renowned collector of Hadiths, the sayings and actions of the Prophet. Urwa became her student and learned from her and hence he himself gathered a lot of knowledge about the Prophet's life. In addition to Aisha, his father had also spent a lot of time with the Prophet and Urwa lived in Medina at a time when many of the Prophet's close companions were still alive. So, Urwa was exposed to a lot of information about the Prophet's life. Urwa and his two brothers, Abdullah and Musab, grew up in Medina shortly after the death of the Prophet and were hence getting their education from the first generation of Muslims, the companions of the Prophet. It's said that all the students were envious of Urwa because he had unrestricted access to the Prophet's household while they didn't. Urwa's family made up something of a cultural elite of the early Islamic community because they were members of the Quraysh tribe of Mecca. Growing up with them was one Abdul Malik Ibn Marwan. Urwa and Abdul Malik were of similar ages and were educated together in the circles of the religious elites of Medina. However, fate would take these two boys very far apart from each other. Anyhow, fast forward to the year 680 CE. Both Urwa and Abdul Malik are now in their late thirties. The Muslim Caliphate is being ruled by the Umayyad dynasty, who are relatives of Abdul Malik Ibn Marwan. The Az-Zubayr family resents them for this because the Umayyads were late converts to Islam and hence, in the eyes of many Muslims of this generation and later, they were nothing more than usurpers. Anyhow, the great Caliph Mu'awiyah passes away, leaving the Caliphate in the hands of his son Yazid, who is very, very unpopular. The Az-Zubayr family refuses to recognize him as Caliph, along with other prominent families including the Prophet's own family. The Prophet's grandson, Husayn, who was the head of his household, is brutally killed by Yazid, who also moved against Abdullah Ibn Az-Zubayr, Urwa's older brother and the head of the Az-Zubayr family. Yazid sends an army to Medina, which essentially starts a civil war in the Caliphate. The people of Medina, at this point, turn against the Umayyads and Abd al-Malik and his family have to leave Medina to go to Syria to be with their Umayyad kinsmen. As luck would have it, Yazid dies and then his son and successor, Mu'awiyah II, dies as well. The Caliphate is taken over by Marwan Ibn al-Hakam, the father of Abd al-Malik, who also dies shortly after, making Abd al-Malik the Umayyad claimant to the Caliphate, with Damascus and Syria supporting him. On the other side, Abdullah Ibn Az-Zubayr and his brothers declare their own Caliphate, with Abdullah as Caliph in Mecca. This period is known as the Second Fitna or the Second Civil War. Abd al-Malik comes out victorious in 692 CE when his general, Al-Hajjaj Ibn Yusuf, lays siege to Mecca itself and kills Abdullah. He then proceeds to crucify him in the most brutal display of power that the Islamic world has seen so far. Urwa escaped with some of his family's wealth to Medina and then to Damascus, where he meets Abd al-Malik. Abd al-Malik greets him well and gives him shelter, declaring that the war is over with the death of Abdullah and so the rest of his family shouldn't be touched. Urwa also asks him to allow his mother to bury Abdullah, who had been on a cross for thirty-ish days. Urwa then retires from political life and resides in Medina for the rest of his days, serving as one of the city's greatest scholars and teaching the next generation of students. Returning to Abdullah, his tragedy is just heartbreaking. He was a member of Islam's second generation and son of one of the Prophet's closest allies. Both his father and mother's sides had played vital roles in early Islam. According to the Sunni tradition, when the Prophet was hiding in a cave before escaping from Makkah to Medina, it was Abdullah's mother, Asma, who delivered him food. He was related to two of the Prophet's wives and one caliph, two if you also count Ali. Ali was, after all, married to Fatima, who was technically a second cousin once removed. I think. I'm not sure. The whole second, third cousin thing, it always trips me up. Despite all this, Abdullah was killed and crucified, hung in full sight of the public, in the holiest place of Islam for 30 days. His mother lived in that very city. His body must have been ravaged by the elements and it's said that when he was taken off the cross to bury, his body was coming apart like wet paper. He might have even been buried in a shirt that belonged to the Prophet who had given it to his mother. The killing of Husayn ibn Ali is still remembered as the worst thing that the Umayyads did but the killing of Abdullah was no small a crime either and yet it's not remembered as much as Husayn's. Let's move on to Urwa. After the war, during his years in Medina, Urwa was often reached out to by people from all over the Islamic world to gain access to his knowledge of the Prophet's biography. One of those people is none other than Abdul Malik himself who writes letters to him to ask him about events from the Prophet's lifetime. These letters were the first time, as far as we know, that events from the Prophet's biography were written down by anyone. They were certainly not meant to be a corpus but they did end up forming an accidental corpus, making them the earliest source of the Prophet's biography. It wouldn't be wrong to say that Urwa was one of the most influential scholars of the Sira. In fact, the scholar, A. Sprenger, calls him the founder of the Prophet's biography because he produced the earliest written records of the Prophet's biography. He might have even compiled an actual biography of the Prophet but there's debate about that. However, that's not all he did. The complete body of works attributed to Urwa is known as the Urwa Corpus which includes his letters but also his lectures and other oral means of transmission of knowledge. He had many students who attended his lectures and asked him questions and many of these lectures are recorded and passed down from generation to generation. For now, we'll only talk about his letters because those are the earliest written sources. We'll talk about the lectures and the other stuff after that. So now, let's take a look at what these letters tell us about Prophet Muhammad's biography. Urwa wrote an unknown number of letters to Abdul Malik and Al-Walid, answering various queries about the Prophet's life. Nine of these letters survive most extensively in Tarikh al-Tabari which was written in the early 10th century, most likely shortly after 915 CE. You might be wondering, how do we know that these letters are authentic themselves since al-Tabari recorded them after such time? Well, we'll discuss the authenticity of these letters at the end of the video. For now, let me tell you what the letters tell us. I'm using the numbers used by Dr. Sean W. Anthony in his book, Muhammad and the Empires of Faith to label the letters as letter 1, 2, etc. Letter 1 is about the beginning of the revelation, the start of Prophet Muhammad's prophetic mission, his and his followers' early persecution by the Meccans, the emigration of some of the followers to Ethiopia, and finally, Prophet Muhammad's hijraq to Medina. This letter doesn't tell us anything that's really surprising about the Prophet's biography and adheres to the traditional view of this period in the Prophet's life. However, the letter conspicuously doesn't mention the incident of the so-called Satanic Verse. Letter 2 discusses the death of the Prophet's first wife, Khadija, and then his marriage to Aisha bint Abu Bakr, Urwa's aunt. He tells us that Khadija passed away three years before the hijra, which is generally accepted. Then he jumps straight to his marriage to Aisha, skipping a marriage in between. In Islamic tradition, Aisha was the third wife, with Sawza bint Zama being the second one. However, Urwa doesn't contradict this, he simply skips over it. Urwa also adheres to the generally accepted age of Aisha, who was 6 at the time of her wedding and 9 at the time of the consummation of said marriage. While this is certainly controversial in today's time, in 7th century Hijaz, it was really not far outside the normal practices. Letter 3 concerns the Battle of Badr, the first major conflict between Prophet Muhammad's state of Medina and the Quraysh of Mecca. The story of this battle involved Abu Sufyan, who was a kinsman of Abdul Malik. Abu Sufyan, in generally accepted tradition and in this letter, wasn't some sort of villain of this battle but rather managed to avoid the conflict altogether while Prophet Muhammad's men fought the Quraysh. Letter 4 is about the Treaty of Hudaybiyah. Not much stands out here either. The Treaty of Hudaybiyah was signed between Prophet Muhammad and the Quraysh of Mecca which gave both sides some respite from warfare to focus on their own affairs rather than fighting each other. Letter 5 discusses Muhammad's conquest of Mecca and the city of Al-Taif. Interestingly, this letter was in response to Abdul Malik ibn Marwan asking about the famous Muslim general, Khalid ibn al-Malid. In the letter, Urwa also explains the reasoning behind the collapse of the Treaty of Hudaybiyah. According to Urwa, the Treaty of Hudaybiyah extended to the allies of both parties but an ally of the Meccans attacked an ally of the Prophet. The Meccans helped their allies by providing them weapons which voided the treaty, opening the road to Prophet Muhammad's attack on Mecca. Letter 6 is a bit unusual. It's about a group of people known as Homs who were some kind of religious cult within the Quraysh and had some weird taboos. One of the taboos was that when you were wearing the ihram, you couldn't enter your home from the front door. Rather, you had to enter from the rear or leap over a wall. The ihram is that white piece of garment that Muslim men wear during pilgrimage. You have to wear that for the duration of the hajj and cannot take it off until you complete the hajj, which takes multiple days. So, this letter is about the Prophet denouncing this pre-Islamic taboo which is also denounced in the Qur'an. Letter 7 is about Aisha and the incident where she was accused of adultery. The story is quite long in Islamic tradition but the summary is that Aisha was accused of adultery which was a very, very serious charge. Abdul Malik wrote a letter to Urwa to ask him for the names of the accusers of Aisha. Urwa gives three names, Hassan ibn Thabit, Mistah ibn Uthaythah and Hamnah ibn Tajjahash. He doesn't know any other names. It's possible that Abdul Malik actually wanted to confirm whether Ali ibn Abi Talib was involved in the incident. Ali ibn Abi Talib was a famous rival of the Umayyads and the Umayyads were always looking for an excuse to disparage him. However, Urwa doesn't mention Ali in the letter. Letter 8 is about a woman named Khwaila whose husband divorced her using a pre-Islamic method known as Zihar. Under Zihar, a man would declare his wife to be like his mother and hence sexual relations wouldn't be permitted. However, the Quran and the Prophet declared this to be a sinful and invalid practice. That's what this letter is about. That actually reminds me of a very interesting thing about pre-Islamic Hijaz. In the Prophet's society, before Islam, if you called someone a relative, like brother or mother or son, for all intents and purposes, that person actually became your brother or mother or son. For example, before Islam, Prophet Muhammad adopted his freed slave, Zaid ibn Harith, as his son and for all intents and purposes, he was Prophet Muhammad's son and was even known as Zaid ibn Muhammad. There was even an adoption ceremony in which Zaid's biological uncle and father were present as well, where the Prophet declared, I inherit from you and you inherit from me. The Quran later changed this and made it so that even if the Prophet considered Zaid to be a son and a member of his own household, it didn't change who Zaid's father was and Zaid would henceforth be known by his biological father's name. Similarly, we find mentions where in pre-Islamic times in Mecca, one couldn't marry a very close friend's daughter on the basis that you often declare your closest friend to be like a brother and that would make his daughter your niece. Anyhow, letter 9 is about a woman named Qutayla who was said to be married to Prophet Muhammad but later remarried after his death. Now, Prophet Muhammad's wives were forbidden from marrying after his death because they are said to be mothers of the believers, so they cannot marry believers and Muslim women can't marry non-believers anyhow. But in this letter, Urwa denies that Qutayla was ever even married to Prophet Muhammad. That's what the broader tradition also tells us. Now these are the 9 letters that form the written parts of the Urwa corpus. However, like I mentioned before, there's a lot of the Urwa corpus that was transmitted orally. Urwa ibn Zubair is perhaps one of, if not the most narrated scholars when it comes to the Prophet's seerah. Thousands of hadiths in the Sunni hadith canon are repeated on his authority. So, to somehow talk about everything that can be traced back to Urwa is nearly impossible in a video like this, or even a decent-sized book. So, in their book titled, The Earliest Writings on the Life of Muhammad, scholars Andreas Korke and Gregor Schuller look into 8 main events from the Prophet's life that were transmitted on Urwa's authority. These are the following. The Beginning of the Revelation, Persecution by the Meccans and the Hijrah, The Battle of Uhud, The Slander against Aisha, The Battle of the Crensh and the Banu Qurayza Affair, The Treaty of Hudaybiyah and finally, The Conquest of Mecca. Urwa's lectures are by far the most expansive and important part of his corpus and in that regard, two of his disciples, Muhammad ibn Shihab al-Zuhri and Hisham ibn Urwa, the later of which is his son, are the most quoted. I am not going to go into details on his lectures because they are not quite that unique or prominent. For instance, most of them deal with the details of the Prophet's life. But, later in the video, I'll talk about what traditions certainly do and do not go back to Urwa. Given that Urwa belonged to what can only be described as the aristocracy of early Islam, many of his sources are also prestigious Muslims. Named among them are his aunt, Aisha bint Abu Bakr, his father, Az-Zubair ibn Al-Awwam, his brother, Abdullah ibn Al-Zubair, his mother, Asma bint Abu Bakr, his foster sister, Zainab bint Abi Salama, who was a step-daughter of the Prophet, and her mother, Hind bint Abi Umayyah and finally, a companion named Usama ibn Zaid, who was the adopted grandson of the Prophet himself. Outside of the Prophet's household, Urwa was probably the single most well-connected person of his generation. Given that Urwa spent most of his life away from politics in Medina, away from any king or caliph's payroll, his credibility cannot be attacked on any ideas of corruption due to influence or forceful intervention from power. The most major biases that his work could have are that in favour of his own family, being that they were like the second family of Islam, and that against the Umayyads or the Aliys, both of whom were his family's political rivals. In terms of his own family, we do find that people related to him, such as his father, his mother, his grandfather, play vital roles in the Prophet's biography. But given how close they were to the Prophet, that's really not surprising. In terms of the Umayyads or the Aliys, he doesn't disparage the Umayyads or the Aliys in his corpus. He simply avoids talking about them unless directly asked. His work isn't contradicted by anyone else in his generation, so there's no reason to think that he was being dishonest. Some four pages in the earliest writings of the life of Prophet Muhammad, by Gorkian Shuler, are about which material does and does not go back to Urwa. In this book, they've talked about a lot of details from the Prophet's biography that most people might not be familiar with. In the case of those, I'm going to ignore them and only talk about the major points of the Prophet's life. I'm going to put parts from that section of the book on the screen and go through them. If you want a full analysis of the Urwa corpus, I highly recommend the book. For most cases examined, it is thus possible to identify a core that can be traced back to Urwa with certainty. Even if it is not an archetype of the story in all cases, but sometimes only elements that Urwa mentioned, at least in some cases, in the context of the corresponding event. This part of the various reports, which goes back to Urwa, represents, according to the previous findings, the oldest material on the Prophet's biography, besides the Quran and a few non-Muslim writings. We can thus reconstruct what one of the most important Seerah scholars, two generations before Ibn Ishaq, considered to be essential components of the Prophet's biography. We can simply assume that Urwa's original tradition on the first revelatory experience contained those elements that both al-Zuhri and Hisham transmitted of him. Muhammad's visions and auditions, his fear and despair, Khadija's consolation and eulogy, his meeting with Waraqa, and also the delivery of the first divine message by an apparition first identified as Namus, later as Gabriel, as well as the account of the delay in the revelation. On the situation of the Muslims in Mecca, the emigration of some Muslims first to Abyssinia and finally to Medina, many of the key points that make up Urwa's accounts on this subject can be reconstructed. Very little material on the major battles, Badr, Uhud and the Battle of the Trench, can be attributed to Urwa with certainty. While it is very likely that Urwa wrote detailed accounts of Badr and the Battle of the Trench, the transmitted reports do not allow us to attribute any part of them to him with certainty. Of the accounts attributed to Urwa concerning the story of the scandal surrounding Aisha, a few points can be traced to Urwa with certainty. During a nightly walk to relieve herself, Aisha is informed of the scandal by Umm Mista. Muhammad allows Aisha to return to her parents. He questions his servant, who has nothing bad to say about Aisha. Muhammad makes a public speech in which he addresses the scandal. Numerous points about the campaign of Al-Hudaybiyah and the conclusion of the treaty with the Meccans can be traced back to Urwa with certainty. Muhammad set out with a few hundred men in the direction of Mecca. Suhail ibn Amr concludes the contract with Muhammad. Suhail successfully protests against the use of Basmala and the wording that Muhammad is the messenger of God. A treaty is drawn up, the most important feature of which is the unilateral extradition clause. Regarding the conquest of Mecca and the subsequent move against the Hawazin and against Al-Taif, only a few elements can be safely attributed to Urwa. It is certain, however, that Urwa's reports already showed a connection between the treaty of Al-Hudaybiyah and the campaign against Mecca. Those are the elements that Korkie and Schuller believe certainly go back to Urwa. Then are elements that probably go back to Urwa. Apart from the elements that can be traced to Urwa with certainty, there are further points that can probably be traced back to him but for which a long report by Urwa is only preserved in the tradition of one of his disciples, while an independent second record is lacking. In the case of the well-documented events of which reports of Urwa exist both in the traditions of Al-Zuhri and in that of Hisham, it can be shown that there are different emphases in the various versions but no major contradictions between the versions. It may, therefore, be assumed that even the less well-documented long reports, of which several different versions have not survived, can essentially be traced back to the report of Urwa. In other words, the well-documented reports on the Hijrah, on the slander of Aisha, and on Al-Hudaybiyah show that the traditions of Urwa's most important disciples, i.e. Hisham ibn Urwa and Al-Zuhri are independent of each other and reliable and can be traced back to Urwa in the core elements. In cases where there are parallel long traditions of different disciples of Urwa concerning an event, there are no serious contradictions between the different traditions. The different versions thus confirm each other. There is, therefore, no reason to assume that in cases where only one detailed tradition has been preserved by one of Urwa's main disciples should be less reliable. Thus, it can be assumed that the core elements of the letter about the prehistory of the Battle of Badr go back to Urwa. This concerns at least the Muslims' plan to attack Abu Sufyan's caravan, the resulting exodus of the Quraysh to protect the caravan, and finally the military clash of the Quraysh and the Muslims at Badr, which the Muslims are able to win. It is probable that the report of the Battle of the Trench, as it is preserved in various traditions relying on Hisham ibn Urwa, goes back in essence to Urwa. Thus, we may assume that Urwa already reported that the Banu Qurayza faced Muhammad's judgement after the Battle of the Trench and that he placed the judgement in the hands of Sa'd ibn Mu'adh, who was mortally wounded in the battle. The judgement itself, the men of the Banu Qurayza are killed, their wives and children enslaved and their property divided among the Muslims, has probably already been reported by Urwa. Concerning the conquest of Mecca and the moves against the Hawazin at Hunayn and against the Ta'if at Ata'if, in addition to the points mentioned above, which can certainly be traced back to Urwa, several others probably go back to Urwa. Thus, the immediate temporal connection of the three events was probably already established by Urwa and already Urwa will have reported that the conquest of Mecca took place almost without a fight. After these, there are events that Urwa did not report on, which frankly is a bit unusual but also can be explained by Gorki and Schuller. Having seen which traditions and elements from the corpus of Sira traditions that are attributed to Urwa ibn Zubayr can actually be traced back to him with certainty or probability, we will now take a brief look at what Urwa most probably did not report or only reported in passing. We cannot obtain complete certainty that Urwa did not comment on a topic since it cannot be ruled out that corresponding reports have been completely lost. However, since Urwa was regarded early on as one of the first and most important scholars to deal with the life of the Prophet and since his traditions on the subject were not only taken up by authors of the works on the Prophet's biography but also found in numerous hadith works, such a complete loss is rather unlikely. It is striking that a large part of Urwa's reports refer to the Madinan period. From the time before the Hijrah, only the first experience of the revelation and the situation of Muslims in Mecca before the Hijrah are topics to which Urwa seems to have devoted himself in detail. Urwa does not seem to have reported several of the stories from this period that today can be counted as part of the classical inventory of the Prophet's biography. These include, among others, the story of how Muhammad's grandfather, Abd al-Mutlib vowed to sacrifice his son Abdullah, Muhammad's father, the stories concerning the noble lineage of Muhammad's parents, the stories and legends surrounding the birth of Muhammad, the account of the rebuilding of the Kaaba, and the account of Muhammad's night journey and heavenly voyage. All these stories have a legendary character. From the time after the Hijrah, many of the core elements of the Prophet's biography have certainly or very probably already been reported by Urwa. Urwa probably did not write a long account of the Battle of Uhud, nor does Urwa seem to have dealt with Muhammad's real or alleged actions against the Jewish tribes of Banu Nadir and Banu Qaynuqa. Of the numerous smaller military expeditions, Urwa deals with very few, none of which he describes in detail. He must, however, have known about a number of such expeditions since in questions of Fatimah's and Az-Zubair's inheritance, for example, he discusses the booty of Fadak and Khaibar. Interesting side note here, the whole affair with the Prophet Muhammad and the three Jewish tribes in Medina has actually been questioned by modern scholars on the basis of the fact that their names do not actually appear in the earliest document related to the Prophet, the charter or constitution of Medina. These three tribes are the most famous Jewish tribes and they must have been signatory to the Prophet's charter but they aren't mentioned in it at all. Which leads to speculation that the stories about them are later inventions to essentially define how Muslims and non-Muslims are supposed to live. Anyhow, that's a story for another time. Now to the question, is Urwa's corpus authentic? In one word, mostly. The most comprehensive study of the Urwa corpus comes from Andreas Gyorke and Gregor Schuller, like I mentioned before, who came to the conclusion that it's mostly authentic. They are convinced by the fact that the Urwa corpus comes to us from multiple sources, multiple chains of narrators that tell us largely the same stories. There are three main chains of narrations which are recorded by at least seven scholars of different backgrounds which have reached us. One of them originates with Urwa's son Hisham while the other two originate with his students passed down reliably across generations and written over the period from 750CE to 950CE. So the chains seem pretty solid. Gyorke and Schuller are also convinced that the corpus holds up under textual criticism. Textual criticism is a very important method that is used to analyze a document. The document is analyzed, word by word if needed, to find features such as language, vocabulary, tropes, etc. that can put the document in a certain time period. To use a contemporary example, you wouldn't expect to find the phrase, what's up bro, in a document from the 1700s. So if you find a document that has that phrase, it was probably not written in the 1700s. The Urwa corpus shows all signs of being written in the early Umayyad period. If we are to assume that the Urwa corpus isn't authentic and was written under the Abbasids instead from the year 750 to 850 or so, we would have a hard time defending this assumption. Assuming that the corpus is fake and was written under the Abbasids, there would have to be a reason for its existence, likely to disparage the Umayyads or glorify the Abbasids. The corpus doesn't show any hostility towards the Umayyads. The Umayyads were deeply vilified under the Abbasids, so if it was written under the Abbasids, we would surely see signs of hostility against the Umayyads, but we don't see any. Similarly, the corpus has no mentions of Ali ibn Abi Talib, the fourth caliph. He was the cousin and son-in-law of Prophet Muhammad and his absence from the Urwa corpus makes sense because Ali was a political rival of both the Umayyads and the Az-Zubair family. He had fought a battle against Az-Zubair, Urwa's father, after all. The Abbasids, of course, venerated Ali and we would expect some mentions of him at least. Also, the more miraculous parts from the Prophet's lifetime are completely missing from the Urwa corpus, with the exception of the first revelation. Later, legendary and fantastical elements aren't found with Urwa either. It seems to be more factual and grounded. It mentions a ton of people who aren't major figures in the Prophet's biography, so it This changes remarkably over the two generations as the Seerah goes from Urwa to Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri and then from Zuhri to Ibn Ishaq, the first writer of the Seerah. The Seerah then obtains many fantastical elements and starts to take the form of a more religious book. It also ends up including a lot of poetry. It's less of a biography and more of an epic, like the Iliad, for example. Urwa, however, seems to be grounded, factual, reasonable, and fairly agreeable. Professor Sean W. Anthony, who translated some of Urwa's letters for his book Muhammad and the Empire of Faith, says that translating the letters mitigated much of his skepticism about the authenticity of this corpus. In the recent years, revisionists have been arguing against the authenticity of the letters. Most famously, Stephen Shoemaker. His argument against the corpus is that the chains don't hold up as well as they should. Goethe and Schuller have argued against this. The corpus of Urwa ibn Zubayr shows that the Prophet's biography didn't appear out of thin air but instead, many of its elements were already in place before many of his companions even passed away. Urwa lived in Medina for the larger part of his life and interacted with many of the Prophet's close companions. While it's true that the Urwa corpus, over time, took on some exaggerations and embellishments, the core of his corpus seems intact. The chains of narration have been questioned, for sure, but not the text itself. Even with the chains of narration, most but the staunchest revisionists stick to a moderate view of the corpus' authenticity. Hence, some of the biggest points of the Prophet's biography certainly hold under scrutiny and seem to be factual. Not only that, even many details can be linked with Urwa and hence shown to be factual. But details are usually the weakest part of a biography, so I have ignored them here. But if you're familiar with the Prophet's biography and want to learn more about the Urwa corpus, I would certainly recommend Gorky and Schuller's amazing book. See you next time. Don't forget to subscribe and press the bell icon. On the screen right now, you can see the names and tiers of the patrons. You can join them by pledging a dollar or more to support the channel. Thank you for watching.