| Kafih Jerusalem, 1984 , ch | |
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| 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 | 137 Netanel's work was virtually unknown beyond his native Yemen until modern times, so had little influence on later Jewish thought• Ideally, one would like to be able to check such accounts against contemporary evidence |
5, "One major challenge to examining initial contacts between Byzantium and the early Muslim umma arises from the controversy surrounding the traditional Islamic account.
25| These sources contain internal complexities, anachronisms, discrepancies, and contradictions | |
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| 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 |
Moreover, many of them provide evidence of embellishment and invention that were introduced to serve the purposes of political or religious apologetic.