Description
Book SynopsisMost Islamic biographies deal with this issue by using an understandable but insufficient logic: that because Muḥammad, as the Messenger of Allah, was the ideal and paradigmatic human, he must have been an ideal and paradigmatic military commander. His successes flowed from his prophetic status and his moral perfection. Following this logic and wanting Muḥammad’s behavior to conform to very modern ethical concepts and widespread (but not necessarily accurate) beliefs about the nature and conduct of war, the writers have inadvertently created a narrative which, in significant ways, departs from the account clearly and consistently revealed in the earliest extant Arabic sources. The writers’ narrative also removes the Prophet from his historical and cultural context and the realities of the harsh and competitive tribal society in which he lived. Professor Joel Hayward sees this as an unhelpful explanatory tendency and believes that the modern depiction of the Prophet’s relationship with warfare — which presents him as being rather antipathetic to war, indeed as virtually a pacifist who only fought reluctantly in self-defense — cannot actually be sustained by an even-handed analysis of the early Islamic sources. A committed Muslim himself, Hayward agrees that Muḥammad was a moral and decent man who saw peace as a highly desirable state in which humans should live and as a goal worth pursuing. Yet Hayward has approached the Prophet’s understanding and employment of warfare from a different vantage point. He has painstakingly scrutinized the earliest Arabic sources impartially according to the strict standards of historical inquiry in order to ascertain whether Muḥammad’s actions, habits and methods can — when understood within their original seventh-century stateless Arabian context — provide any substantial and meaningful insights into the way that he understood and undertook warfare. Hayward concludes that Muḥammad was an astute, situationally aware, and self-reflective man who created and communicated a believable strategic vision of a necessary and desirable future. That vision persuaded increasing numbers of people to follow him and risk everything willingly in the struggle to create the optimal conditions for their survival, security, and prosperity. In a competitive and conflictual environment with ubiquitous threats, warfare was necessary to make real the bold new world that he foresaw. Through original, meticulously researched, and rigorous analysis, Hayward covers all the raids and campaigns and demonstrates that Muḥammad correctly understood the necessity and utility of force and duly developed into an intuitive, effective, and victorious military practitioner who developed and enforced a strict moral code so as to attain his goals whilst safeguarding the innocent. This engaging, accessible yet deeply scholarly book makes a major contribution to strategic and military analysis and to the Prophet’s biography.
Table of ContentsSECTION 1 Raiding as a Norm: The Best Explanation for the Initiation of Warfare 43 Making Sense of the Past 46 The Ordinariness of Raiding 59 Muḥammad and Raiding 69 Raiding as Jihād 88 The Recognized and Accepted Way of Projecting Power 99 SECTION 2 Pitched Battles and Attacks on Settlements 107 The March to Badr 108 The Battle Looms 126 Shūrā 128 The Battle of Badr 134 The Craving for Revenge 148 The Battle Commences 156 The Lead-up to the Battle of the Trench 162 Assassinations 166 The Battle of the Trench 171 Mu’ta 185 The Conquest of Mecca 191 The March to Ṭā’if 207 The Siege of Ṭā’if 218 Tabūk: Muḥammad’s Last Hurrah 231 SECTION 3 Muḥammad’s War with the Jews 245 Understanding Medina’s Disunity 246 Early Relations with the Jews 254 Banū Qaynuqā‘ 258 Banū al-Naḍīr 269 Banū Qurayẓa 279 The Siege of Khaybar 297
