The Qur??n seems to insist that its Prophet is not a miracle worker (e.g. Q 29.50). Instead the Prophet points to miraculous signs in nature (e.g. Q 30:20-5) and miraculous events in human history (e.g. Q 12) in order to persuade his audience to heed his message of divine judgment. Thus the Qur??n’s Prophet is no more than a warner (e.g. Q 112; and a warner of the Arabs, in particular [e.g. Q 42:7]). Still the Qur??n recognizes that prophets in the past have done more than this, that they have personally brought or wrought miraculous signs. ??li? presented his supernatural camel (e.g. Q 7:73). Moses transformed his staff into a serpent (Q 7.107). Jesus, meanwhile, seems to have brought signs above all others (Q 2:253). Now if the Qur??n itself is in no way concerned with the apparent privilege that earlier prophets have above its own Prophet, this privilege could hardly be granted by early Muslim intellectuals working in a context of religious competition. Accordingly, at a very early stage Muslim authors began to catalog Mu?ammad’s miracles, usually with the goal of collecting proofs for his prophethood in the face of Jewish and Christian incredulity, and often with the goal of proving that he produced greater miracles than Moses or Jesus. ‘Al? al-?abar?’s (d. 240/855) K. al-D?n wa-l-dawla f? ithb?t nubuwwat al-nab?y Mu?ammad, for example, contains a long list of such miracles, many of which are so extraordinary that ??li?’s camel hardly compares. The anonymous Christian author of Ris?lat al-Kind? (ca. 3rd/9th) quotes many of the same miracles, insisting that they are incredible to any rational person. In turn, the Muslim rationalist ?Abd al-Jabb?r (d. 415/1025) records, and lampoons, a series of miracle tales that Christians tell to defend their faith in his Critique of Christian Origins. At the same time ?Abd al-Jabb?r, although he allows that Mu?ammad performed miracles, notably omits the sensational miracle accounts found in the works of ?Al? al-?abar? and others. At MESA 2009 I will discuss the place of the miracle account in the historical development of the Muslim-Christian conversation. I will emphasize in particular ?Abd al-Jabb?r’s rationalist perspective on this topic. While the Arabic title of his treatise, Tathb?t dal??il al-nubuwwa, (“Confirmation of the Proofs of Prophecy”) suggests that he embraces the tradition of Mu?ammad the miracle worker, his argument therein departs sharply from this tradition.

The fourteenth century Damascene scholar, Abu’l-Fida’ Isma‘il b. ‘Umar b. Kathir (d. 773 AH/1373 CE) is perhaps best known as a student of the controversial Hanbali preacher Taqi’l-Din Ahmad b. Taymiya (d. 728/1328). An important scholar in his own right, Ibn Kathir, like Ibn Taymiya, was a vehement defender of Sunni orthodoxy and argued in favor of a return to the Qur’an and the Sunna. In his universal history, Al-Bidaya wa’l-Nihaya, and his Qur’an exegesis, Tafsir al-Qur’an al-Azim, his tone is especially defensive in this regard, but to what ends was he willing to go in order to prove his point? In the sira section of his Al-Bidaya, his most virulent attacks are reserved for reports that seem to support the Shi‘i position favoring ‘Ali b. Abi Talib’s (d. 41/661) immediate succession to the Prophet Muhammad (d. 11/632). A comparison of these two works reveals that, when faced with such reports, Ibn Kathir was not only willing to refute those whose chains of authority contained questionable, i.e., Shi‘i, reporters, but also those reports whose isnads contained otherwise respected authorities, including those found in the Six Books of authoritative hadith. He then provides his own, more doctrinally acceptable, interpretation of what the texts of these reports actually mean and often incorporates quotations from the Qur’an to bolster his claims. Although he seems to follow the accepted pattern of first judging a report’s isnad and then its text, using the Qur’an for support, an examination of his tafsir of these verses shows that he contradicts himself, claiming one interpretation of a verse in his history, while putting forward a very different interpretation in his work of exegesis. Thus, Ibn Kathir’s support of a return to the Qur’an and Sunna is countered by his manipulation of these very sources. The larger significance of this issue is tied to the importance of Ibn Kathir himself. Ibn Kathir remains an under-studied figure in the intellectual history of Islamic civilization, despite - or perhaps because of - modern Wahhabi support for his works. However, a close textual analysis of these works can provide scholars with a more accurate assessment not only of the role of anti-Shi‘i sentiment in Mamluk Damascus, but also of Ibn Kathir’s place in the broader field of Islamic intellectual history itself.

When considering the image of the Prophet Muhammad, most scholars maintain that he is regarded in the same light by all Muslims throughout “Islamdom”, a view which certainly emerged from a monolith understanding of Islam. While, the general study of Islam moved to explore various manifestations of the religion, few studies have dealt with constructions of the image of the Prophet that emerged among different Muslim communities. Very few have investigated the historical, religious and social elements that served in constructing a divergent image of the Prophet and the role of this image in the formation of the religious identity of the Andalusian and North African Muslims. Although there are dozens of inroads into this subject, I found a tradition unique to North Africa where the believers sent letters with pilgrims (Hajj) to be read to the Prophet Muhammad wherein they addressed him as a living person. These epistles were also frequently read during special occasions, religious or otherwise. In my view these letters were a form of gift-exchange that reflect a distinct religiosity in the Maghrib/Andalus, and also create the possibility of complex questions regarding the nature and fragmentation of time for these authors. This practice lasted from the 3rd century A.H. to the 10th century A.H. (9th-16th centuries CE) as this paper will discuss in the study of thirteen letters that I collected and that span this time period. No research has been conducted on this topic, yet I think these writings strongly suggest a unique religious identity that developed not only in the vernaculars, but was also practiced by the elite society of scholars, notaries and kings. This paper will not only study the tensions suggested by these letters between different historical elements that made the image of the Prophet in the Maghrib/ Andalus which has been central to the religious experience of the people of that region, but will also trace some of the distinct stylistic modes that separate these writings from other forms of epistolary art that was in great use especially in the royal courts.