Western Biographers and Sīrah Literature: A Historical Review

Abstract

Numerous biographies have been written so far of the Holy Prophet, Ḥaḍrat Muḥammad (ﷺ). There is no person in human history whose life has been studied extensively with all the details, as has been done on the Holy Prophet (ﷺ) and this series will continue till doomsday. So far, millions of Muslim and non-Muslim scholars have written and compiled works on the life of the Holy Prophet in different languages. In the 19^th century, Western scholars wrote many books on the Holy Prophet ﷺ. Hundreds of Western scholars have praised the Prophet ﷺ, but a large number of them have also raised various objections to him. John Adam Mohler, John Aiton, William Cooke Taylor, Phillipps De Lisle, Aloys Springer and Reinhart Dozy are the writers who tried to present a fake picture of Islam to Western world. Even though their objections are very stupid, unreasonable and groundless, however, Muslim scholars have written a valid and convincing answer to these objections. It is an undeniable fact that some unbiased and realistic people of Europe have correct knowledge about Islam but in their blind support of Christianity, they preferred fables and baseless rumors to facts. One of the reasons for this is that in their writings they address Christian community only and the Christian people are certainly happy with these statements which condemned Islam and ridicule its principles. In this short article a brief introduction of such authors is being presented so that the readers may be informed of their writings.