Like other seerah literature, Lings begins by describing pre-Islamic Arabia and the major events of the lives of the Prophet’s forefathers, and the rise of idolatry. The book flows like a story, as though the reader is overlooking the events unfolding in front of them. This makes Lings’ work, originally written in English for an English-speaking audience, especially attractive and more so for those who enjoy a high literary style. The change of language from Arabic to English distills the art of writing into its sedimentary parts, and filters authors through translators’ technical abilities. It has a certain cadence that is lacking in other books that often suffer from the limitations of translation. Shaykh Abdul Nasir Jangda also considers Lings’ book - while acknowledging some of the scholarly objections - to be one of the most “flowing, and very emotionally, intimately written narratives of the life of the Prophet ﷺ” in modern English. My father, a fine critic of English literature, remarked after reading it that unfortunately the prejudice Westerners have for the topic has prevented it from being recognised as one of the great biographies of the English language.
The Prophet’s life was masterfully narrated through a series of short chapters in a prose as engaging and poetic as Lytton Strachey’s in Eminent Victorians, only the subject matter was not on an eminent Victorian but rather written by one who appeared to be. I was quickly immersed in a story told by a master storyteller whose English oft-times sang and always soared. For example, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf has said of his work, 2005), a Shakespearean scholar, spares no rhetorical device in his prose. The book stands out from the rest as Lings (d. Originally published in 1983, the book continues to be among highly-ranked seerah literature in the English language and read by scholars and laypeople alike.
The late Martin Lings’ (also known as Abu Bakr Siraj al-Din) Muhammad ﷺ: His Life Based On The Earliest Sources is among the seerah books written in English that have received widespread acclaim. of the Prophet ﷺ), wives of the Prophet ﷺ, comparative literature looking at the Mecca and Medina years, military expeditions, and much more. Within seerah literature, there are different sub-genres, including the shama’il (collection of Hadiths about the appearance, mannerisms, belongings, etc. It encompasses all of that which is associated with the life and times of the Prophet ﷺ. The seerah of the Prophet ﷺ is its own genre of literature: a realm of study with principles, codification, and systems. In referring to a person’s life, it refers to the path they have traversed. The word seerah linguistically means a path. A Book Review of Muhammad ﷺ : His Life Based On The Earliest Sources by Martin Lings
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