The Muhammadan correspondence

I don't know if I'd ever skimmed through Michael Lecker's 2005 book People, Tribes and Society in Arabia Around the Time of Muhammad. Lecker has, at least, provided "The preservation of Muḥammad's letters" for free on academia.edu. So; in the event I hadn't read it the first time - let's read it now!

Lecker goes through Ibn Sa'd, readily available in that 1967-72 translation, for the letters which the Prophet supposedly composed and sent out to others. In Islamic dogma (as it reads the Quran), Muhammad couldn't read. First up he was a trader so - meh to that. Also evidence of the literate Prophet goes against Sunnite interest. The correspondence further intersects (thematically) with the treaty genre, often considered early - note "the Constitution of Madina". So I shall approach Lecker with an open mind.

Lecker is pondering what Ibn Sa'd might have used for sources, in case he was making it all up. Lecker figures that indeed Ibn Sa'd was not making it all up. His sources include my boi al-Walid bin Muslim; also al-Mada'ini (hamza required for this 'Iraqi), and - sigh - al-Waqidi. Waqidi is the sort of someone who'd make it all up. On the other hand this blog - and the Muslims - hold much regard for Walid, and for Mada'ini. Back to the earlier hand, the Muslims do admit that Walid (for one) didn't always call from the best sources.

Walid's creduility wasn't a problem for me as I was observing an aurora with him; but where he has some uncle of a Malik bin Ahmar al-Judhami descendent read an old leather scrap to him... yeah, I dunno.

All Ibn Sa'd's sources which Lecker finds had gathered the letters from various Islamic noble lineages. Lecker notes that the written word was not trusted in the earlier Islamic generations. Such legal specialists as Ibn Malik, at least, would rarely use the correspondence. They'd rarely use the people who claimed them, neither; Lecker found difficult to track the earlier asanid in the classical biographies (mainly Lecker used Mizzi). The temptation toward self-serving forgery would appear to justify the lawyers' skepticism, especially where in Muhammad's own name. The biographers (notably Ibn Ishaq) could use "riqaiq" as it was called but only on pain of men like Imam Malik deriding them as liars.