Muhammad's Military Expeditions

Abstract

Abstract What is so fascinating about Muhammad’s last ten years of life? In what ways did the earliest Muslims remember him and those years? In particular, what does the Muslim tradition reveal about Muhammad’s military expeditions and their targets during these years? Did he really launch over seventy military campaigns? Were they for proclaiming Islam to non-Muslims? Or were they conducted to accumulate resources and advance tribal dominion? More importantly, can we be certain that these military activities actually occurred? These fundamental questions drive this study. By relying on numerous Arabic Muslim sources, this study seeks to examine how medieval Muslims cherished and portrayed Muhammad’s military career. They not only marveled at his battles—they also listed them, specified their targets, described the details from the battleground, and emphasized their tremendous successes. This study leads readers through a complex body of literature; provides insights regarding social, religious, and historical contexts; and creates a vivid picture of Muhammad’s military expeditions according to the early Muslim historians. Readers will join an intellectual journey, exploring numerous Muslim narratives and wrestling with their reliability. They will question whether Islam actually spread by the sword and deduce unconventional conclusions regarding Muhammad’s military career as they unearth the link between historical narratives and historians’ religious sympathies and political agendas. This book integrates and interacts with ample Arabic Muslim scholarly studies on the topic and analyzes their findings and arguments with the hope of making these valuable studies accessible to the English-speaking world.