however, there is no relevant archaeological, epigraphic, or numismatic evidence dating from the time of Muhammad, nor are there any references to him in non-Muslim sources dating from the period before 632 | |
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These sources contain internal complexities, anachronisms, discrepancies, and contradictions | Lapidus 2002 , pp 0 |
Moreover, many of them provide evidence of embellishment and invention that were introduced to serve the purposes of political or religious apologetic.
30Denis Gril, Miracles, , Brill, 2007 | Peter Teed 1992 , p |
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Kafih Jerusalem, 1984 , ch | El-Cheikh, Nadia Maria Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs 2004, Harvard University Press p |
Hitti, History of the Arabs, 10th edition 1970 , p.
19sources are not contemporaneous with the events they purport to relate and sometimes were written many centuries later | |
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"Muhmmad," Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim world• 137 Netanel's work was virtually unknown beyond his native Yemen until modern times, so had little influence on later Jewish thought• 597, which notes that many of the details surrounding Muhammad's life as given in the biographies, are "problematic in certain respects, the most important of which is that they represent a tradition of living narrative that is likely to have developed orally for a considerable period before it was given even a relatively fixed written form |
Ideally, one would like to be able to check such accounts against contemporary evidence.