Translation of the biography of Muhammad by Iban Hisham, omitting the longer poems the genealogies and other lists of names

Guthrie, Archibald (1953) Translation of the biography of Muhammad by Iban Hisham, omitting the longer poems the genealogies and other lists of names. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

Both Christianity and Islam have suffered much at the hands of their would-be defenders. In either case apologists have tried to make their faith secure for all time by buttressing it with vast theological outworks. . Consequently we find, particularly in Islam, that while the work done in the field of speculative theology and philosophy is of stupendous proportions, very little has been attempted in the field of historical research. This defect will probably be remedied in time, but for the most part, Islamic theology has tended to emphasise the message of the Prophet rather than his personality. The modern tendency is to explain religions not by studying their massive theological accretions, though such study fulfils a useful function, but by tracing their historical developments. If the West is ever going to understand the Muslim, account must be taken of the historical process that has made him what he is. This process reaches back behind the era of the Prophet of course, so that we cannot take him as the absolute starting-point for the faith of Islam. It grew out of conditions long antecedent to him, but without an understanding insight into his life and times we shall be unable to asses thereal significance of the movement he brought into being. This insight into the character of the Founder of Islam we find in those portions of Ibn Ishaq's biography still extant. In translating the Qur'anic quotations in the Sira I have, in the main, followed the renderings of the late Br Richard Bell, In the Isnads I have tried to avoid endless repetition of the phrase 'on the authority of' by substituting 'from' in all cases after the first occurrence of the phrase.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Additional Information: Adviser: Richard Bell
• Keywords: Translation studies, Biographies, Middle Eastern literature
• Date of Award: 1953
• Depositing User: Enlighten Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:1953-73822
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 14 Jun 2019 08:56
• Last Modified: 14 Jun 2019 08:56
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/73822