HE biographers of the Prophet Mohammed * form a long series which it is impossible to end, but in which it would be honourable to find a place. The most famous of them is prob-ably Sir Walter Raleigh, † while the palm for eloquence and historical insight may well be awarded to Gibbon.
During the time when Gibbon wrote, and for long after, historians mainly relied for their knowledge of the life of Mohammed on the Biography of Abu'l-Fida, who died in the year 722 А.Н., 1322 A.D., of whose work Gagnier produced an indifferent edition. The scholars of the nineteenth century were naturally not satisfied with so late an authority; and they succeeded in bringing to light all the earliest documents preserved by the Mohammedans. The merit of discovering and utilising these ancient works is shared by G. Weil, Caussin de Perceval, F. Wüsten-feld, A. Sprenger, and Sir William Muir; and the Lives of Mohammed by the last two of these writers * are likely to be regarded as classical so long as there are students of Oriental history in Europe; notwith-standing the fact that Muir's Life is written with a confessedly Christian bias, and that Sprenger's is de-faced by some slipshod scholarship and untrust-worthy archæology.
Since these works were composed, knowledge of Mohammed and his time has been increased by the publication of many Arabic texts, and the labours of European scholars on Mohammedan antiquities. + The works of I. Goldziher, J. Wellhausen, and Th. Noldeke have elucidated much that was obscure, and facilitated the understanding of Arabian history both before and after the Prophet. And from the following Arabic works, most of which have been published since Sprenger and Muir wrote, many fresh details of interest and even of importance occasionally have been furnished.
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