In attempting to reconstruct the earliest history of Islam, we are routinely pointed to sources (the traditions or ‘hadiths’) that were committed to paper centuries after the events that they describe. Under such circumstances it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to work out what really happened. Instead, we should look to sources that were closest (in time and location) to the events.
The Arab conquests that occurred from the middle of the 7th century AD involved heavily populated and highly cultured areas. This means that the conquests would be widely commented on, in writing, by those being conquered. Many documents arising from this moment in history survived into the present. It is among such sources, i.e., the earliest primary source descriptions of the Arab conquest, that we are likely to encounter authentic testimonies regarding the existence and activities of Muhammad.
The thing that immediately strikes one upon opening these contemporary testimonies is the complete absence of references to Islam or the Qur’an. Those sitting down to write about their experiences obviously knew that the Arabs were muscling in on their territories but are somehow completely silent about the supposed main motivation of the conquerors (namely that they are doing it for God and his prophet).
Think for a moment how remarkable this is. We are in the habit of referring to the ‘Early Muslim Conquests’ after the time of the prophet. However, to those being conquered, there was nothing obviously and recognizably ‘Muslim’ about what was happening. They certainly also did not believe that they were being conquered in the name of a specific prophet.
So, the first thing that should be noted about the picture that emerges from the primary sources is not what we actually find in them, but rather what is absent. There is a deafening silence when it comes to issues, events and persons that stand at the heart of the later Islamic historical tradition.
Secondly it should be acknowledged that there are a handful of contemporary primary sources related to the early years of the Arab conquest that touches on the presence of an influential Arab leader among the incomers. However, when we look closely at these sources, they create more problems (from the perspective of traditional Islamic historiography) than they solve.
Perhaps the most neglected group of sources are those written in Syriac: the most widely spoken language in the Roman province of Syria and its borderlands. These documents are the closest, both in terms of geographical distance and chronologically, to the events of the early Arab conquests. Yet many historians figuratively rush past them to concentrate on the much later Arabic tradition. It is in the Syriac documents that we find the first mention of someone known as Muhammad who is associated with the Arab conquests and battles against the Romans. What is striking, however, is that there is no indication that he was a religious leader in the earliest Syriac documents. While we can obviously not expect the Syriac authors to fully understand all the religious motivations of their conquerors, this still seems like an exceedingly curious omission.
Because of this omission, these documents add virtually nothing to our understanding of the historical Muhammad beyond the idea that his name was associated with the period of conquest. When we read conquest era documents in other languages, the picture becomes even more confused.