THE QUESTION OF PROPHECY became one of the main issues shaping the Islamic historiographical tradition. For Muslims, the career of their Prophet and the revelation to him of God 's Qur'ān , their holy book, came to be seen as the decisive events in all of human history, and certainly in the life of their community. Yet, as we have seen, the earliest Believers do not appear to have attached much importance to recording details of the Prophet's life, even though many individuals may have cherished memories of their own contacts with the Prophet. Their primary concern, rather , had been on living in accord with the moral and pietistic content of God's message to the Believers, not on recording the particulars of how that message had been communicated.

In view of this initial lack of historical concern, it is no surprise that there is no record of the compilation of a sīra, or biography, devoted to the Prophet before the end of the first century AH. Until this time-roughly thP- last third of the first century AH-the community of Believers was presumably identified, and identified itself, not so much by its association with the Prophet Muḥammad, as by its pious dedication to the Qur'ān as God's revelation. The first compilation devoted to the life of Muḥammad of which we find mention is a lost szra or maghāzī work attributed to ‘Urwa ibn al-Zubayr (d. 94/713).3 From about ‘Urwa's time, or shortly thereafter, we find attributions of other compilations: a lost Sīra of Sa'īd ibn al-Musayyab (d. 94/713), which was used by al-Ṭbarī, and the maghāzī works (i.e. accounts of the Prophet's campaigns) of ‘Ubayd Allah ibn Ka'b (d. 97/716), Abān ibn ‘Uthmān (d. ca. 100/718), and ‘Amir ibn Sharal)īl al-Sha'bī (d. 103/721). The earliest extant fragment of a compilation dealing with the life of Muḥammad seems to be an excerpt on papyrus from the maghāzī work of Wahb ibn Munabbih (d. 114/732).4 (Of course this, too, may really be a section of Wahb's notes on the subject.) An unidentified scholar's notes on the battle of Badr, one of the key events in the life of Mul)ammad, has survived in another papyrus fragment that probably dates no later than the early second century AH.