This book examines the nature and authenticity of the historical sources for the life of Mohammad. It explores both the aural and written traditions and analyses the reliability of the transmission process via which the story of Mohammad's life has been portrayed.

Gregor Schoeler has been the chair of Islamic Studies at the University of Basel since 1982. His recent publications include Al-Ma'arrî: Paradies und Hölle, Munich, 2002 (German translation of the first part of al-Ma'arrî's Risâlat al-Ghufrân), and Volume 4 of the Dîwân of Abû Nuwâs, Beirut 2003, and The Oral and the Written in Early Islam, London and New York 2006, and The Genesis of Literature in Islam: From the Aural to the Read, Edinburgh 2009.

Uwe Vagelpohl is a project researcher in the department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Warwick. His research focuses on translation as a medium of cultural communication and transformation in late antiquity and the Middle Ages.

James E. Montgomery is Professor of Classical Arabic, Staff Fellow and Director of Studies in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (Arabic) at Trinity Hall College, Cambridge, UK.

Foreword. Introduction 1. The Main Medinese Transmitters: Learning and Teaching the Use of Writing 2. The Text in the Transmission Process: Muhammad's First Revelation (The Iqra' Narration) 3. The Issue of Authenticity: The Tradition of the Slander Against A'isah (hadit al-ifk). Afterword. Appendix 1: The Corpus. Appendix 2: List of Sigla