Habib when he enters the class where my father was teaching, which he should evaluate, would first prostrate at my father's feet in the open class and shall go about inspecting the class!
How one wishes that amity remains to-day.
Sorry about the digression.
I started writing on the proof for the existence of Mohammad but wandered along.
Unlike the Ramayana, Mahabharata there are no( to my knowledge) Astrophysical events associated with or indicated in the life history of the Prophet to validate.
And there are no contemporary external evidence.
Like The Bible, the Koran was compiled quite some time after the death of the Prophet.
Now some one has come out with a Book on this aspect of Prophet Mohammad's existence.
"A recent book by Robert Spencer has the title, Did Muhammad Exist? The book1 is well-researched and deals with many historical issues. He describes the “canonical” story, that is, the common story told by Muslims, of Muhammad and then deals with the problems of supporting the story. The conclusion is that there is little to support the Muslim claims concerning the existence of Muhammad historically...
First, we must examine the Qur’an, the sacred book of Muslims. There is little information about Muhammad in the Qur’an. The word “Muhammad” appears 4 times in the Qur’an. In three of the cases it could merely refer to a title, “the praised one,” or “chosen one.” Other names like Abraham appear 79 times, Moses 136 times, Pharaoh 74 times. The title “messenger of Allah” appears 300 times. Surah 33:40 is certainly a reference to a person, but it tells nothing about the life of Muhammad. Surah 48:29 also names Muhammad as a messenger of Allah.
Spencer concludes that “we can glean nothing from these passages about Muhammad’s biography. Nor is it even certain, on the basis of the Qur’anic text alone, that these passages refer to Muhammad, or did so originally.” (p.19)
Second, there are the hadiths, traditions, that are voluminous in quantity, often contradictory in nature, and most of them fabrications due to the lack of information about Muhammad. The hadiths arose much later after Muhammad supposedly died in 632.
Third, there is the Sira, an Arabic term for the traditional biographies of Muhammad. “The earliest biography of Muhammad was written by Ibn Ishaq (d.773), who wrote in the latter part of the eighth century, at least 125 years after the death of his protagonist, in a setting in which legendary material about Muhammad was proliferating. And Ibn Ishaq’s biography does not even exist as such; it comes down to us only in the quite lengthy fragments reproduced by an even later chronicler, Ibn Hisham, who wrote in the first quarter of the ninth century, and by other historians who reproduced and thereby preserved additional sections. Other biographical material about Muhammad dates from even later.” (p.19)
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