Najrān in the Sīra: narrative roles and Muslim attitudes towards the South Arabian Christians

Abstract

The biography of Muḥammad compiled by Ibn Isḥāq (d. 767) and later written out by Ibn Hišām (d. 834) into the Sīrat Rasūl Allāh is the most important testimony to early Muslims’ pious representations of their Prophet. In it, the Christian community in the South Arabian city of Najrān plays a small but significant role throughout the whole narrative as pre- Islamic monotheists, as zealous and stubborn representatives of Christianity in religious debates, and even as acknowledgers of Islam. Through textual analyses of five sections in the Sīra, this article investigates the narrative roles, that the Christian community in Najrān plays in the Sīra and how this peripheral religious group is viewed by the Muslim compilers. It argues that the stories of the Christianization of Najrān are included in order to frame and give context to the Sīra’s later narratives on the interactions between the Christians and the Muslim community in Medina, and that the Christians of Najrān serve as representatives for Christianity as a whole. At the end of the article, an appendix is included with an annotated close textual and narrative comparison between the Sīra’s story of Faymiyūn and Ṣāliḥ and a Syriac hagiographical work from the 5th century about Paul of Qenṭos and John of Edessa, which likely was the Sīra’s source.