The History of Islam

What is the importance of studying sīrah? The first reason: the life of Muhammad (peace be upon him) is the history of Islam. To study the life of Muhammad (peace be upon him) is to study a concise history of Islam. In his sīrah are found situations and incidents that help us in everything that needs to be known in our life of daʿwah. So the life of Muhammad (peace be upon him) is really the history of Islam. This is not just the biography of a person; it is the history of the religion.

Muḥammad ibn Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ — Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ is one of al-ʿasharah al-mubashsharūn bi-l-jannah, the ten who are given glad tidings of Paradise — his son Muḥammad says that their father would teach them the battles of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), he would teach them the sīrah of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), and he would tell them: these are the traditions of your fathers, so study them. And they used to refer to sīrah as maghāzī. Maghāzī means battles, because the latter part of the life of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) was spent in maghāzī. So they would use this word maghāzī to refer to the whole life of Muhammad (peace be upon him).

And ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, the grandson of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, would say that they were taught the sīrah of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) like they were taught the Qur'an. That is how important sīrah was for them; they would study it like they would study the Qur'an. And that makes sense. To study the life of Mūsā (peace be upon him) — where does one go, where is it studied from? From the Qur'an. To study the life of ʿĪsā, the Qur'an is where one goes. But to study the life of Muhammad (peace be upon him) — even though there are bits and pieces of it mentioned in the Qur'an — there is not as much detail about the life of Muhammad (peace be upon him) in the Qur'an as there is about Mūsā. So to study the life of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), sīrah is where one goes. All of the anbiyāʾ, their lives were recorded in the Qur'an, with the exception of Muhammad (peace be upon him). Muhammad (peace be upon him), his life, is learned from sīrah. So to learn about the anbiyāʾ, the Qur'an is where one goes; to learn about Muhammad (peace be upon him), his sīrah is where one goes. Again, even though there are some references in the Qur'an made to his life, the influence of sīrah on understanding the Qur'an is taken up later in this book.