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Uri Rubin, The Eye of the Beholder: The Life of Muhammad as Viewed by the Early Muslims, a Textual Analysis , Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, vol. 5 (Princeton, N.J.: The Darwin Press, Inc., 1995). Pp. 298.

Despite the poetic title, this book is neither a biography of Muhammad nor a reconstruction of his life as seen by the early Muslims who beheld him. It is a scrupulously detailed examination of traditions about Muhammad which illustrate particular themes thought to be part of the biblical prophetic paradigm: attestation, preparation, the experience of revelation, persecution, and "salvation," this last meaning the hijra. The author analyzes the ways in which Muhammad's early biographers sought to shape the Prophet's biography through biblically based, and later Quranic, modes of authentication. Only the Meccan period is discussed, with a later book expected to cover the Medinan period. The author has abandoned the quest for the historical Muhammad because of the impossibility of separating the "real" Muhammad from legends about him. He challenges the notion that earlier traditions about Muhammad are more authentic than later ones, arguing that the molding of accounts of Muhammad's life according to what were perceived as standard criteria of prophethood began at the outset, as Muslims sought to prove themselves worthy successors to the civilizations of the Jews and the Christians. In a detailed and sometimes tedious discussion, the author casts considerable doubt on standard accounts of the life of Muhammad. Even the descriptions of Muhammad's gentleness, modesty, and willingness to serve his family—qualities so uncharacteristic of the typical Arab man of his day that Watt said they must be genuine—are seen here as the end product of a long tradition seeking to root Muhammad's authenticity as a prophet in the "servant passage" of Isaiah 42:2. Although this initially seems far-fetched, Rubin produces an impressive array of texts to show how the desire to identify Muhammad as the "servant" of Isaiah 42 led through a series of permutations to the hadith accounts. Islamic sources, especially the Quran, later replaced non-Islamic materials as the basis of authenticating Muhammad's prophethood. These authenticating quotes from the Quran, inserted into later siras, led to the use of sira material for exegetical purposes, to provide the "occasion of revelation." Rubin reverses the standard wisdom which says that slra was written for the purpose of QuPanic exegesis.