Sir William Muir KCSI (1819 - 1905)

Born 27 Apr 1819 in Glasgow, Scotland

Ancestors

Husband of Elizabeth Huntley (Wemyss) Muir — married 8 Feb 1840 in Cawnpore, India

Descendants

Died 11 Jul 1905 at age 86 in Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Mitchell Wawzonek [send private message]

Biography

William Muir ... ^[1]

From a current review of The Lives of Muhammad (Harvard U Press, 2014), by Kecia Ali: The most influential biographies. . . were those written by British authors serving in India. It was a Christian Arabist from Bengal, William Muir, who changed the nature of biography about Muhammad in the modern period. Later biographers, both Muslim and non-Muslim, pious and critical, accepted the instances from the life of Muhammad prioritized by Muir in his magisterial four-volume The Life of Mahomet, from Original Sources (1858, 1861), later abridged (a "mere" 613 pages).

Muir focused on three topics, which also parse as three questions about Muhammad: Was the Quranic revelation given to him authentic? Did his character change from Mecca to Medina? And how did he behave toward women, especially his two most prominent wives, Khadija and Aisha?

Central to Muir's quest was whether Muhammad had received a true revelation (still being challenged, most [in]famously in Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses). Drawing especially from the writings of al-Waqidi and al-Tabari, Muir saw a kernel of historical truth, but with some reservations. While others dismissed even that minimal tarnish, most agreed with Muir's accent on Muhammad the man, extolling him as an exemplar of human progress toward freedom: not just a Prophet, a major virtue in Muslim eyes, but also a harbinger of Islam as a superior civilization.

Sources

• Mitchell Wawzonek, firsthand knowledge. Click the Changes tab for the details of edits by Mitchell and others.

1. ↑ Entered by Mitchell Wawzonek, Feb 10, 2012

See Wikipedia.org for a detailed biography of Sir William Muir:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Muir