Djaït (Hichem), The Life of Muhammad, Carthage, The Tunisian Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts -Beït al-Hikma-, 3 vols, "Revelation and Prophecy" (vol. 1),"Predication in Mecca" (vol. 2), "The Prophet’s Life in Medina and Triumph of Islam" (vol. 3), translated by Janet Fouli, 134p. 429 p., 265 p., 2014. ISBN 978-9973-49-148-0 (Vol. 1); 978-9973-49-149-7 (Vol. 2); 978-9973-49-150-3 (Vol. 3).

The author

Hichem Djaït is an eminent historian of Islam.

Hichem Djaït (هشام جعيط) est né le 6 décembre 1935 à Tunis. Il appartient à une famille de la haute bourgeoisie tunisoise. Après des études secondaires au Collège Sadiki, il obtient son agrégation en histoire en 1962 à Paris. Docteur ès lettres et sciences humaines à Paris, en 1981, il est professeur émérite à l’Université de Tunis et professeur visiteur à l’Université McGill (Montréal), à Berkeley (Californie), au Collège de France, etc. Spécialiste de l’histoire islamique du Moyen Âge, il écrit par la suite de nombreux ouvrages publiés en Tunisie et en France. Membre de plusieurs commissions internationales, il mène une réflexion sur l’entrée du monde arabo-musulman dans la modernité.

Presentation

In these three volumes Hichem Djaït traces the life of Muḥammad and the history of the birth of Islam.
The first volume is concerned with the Prophet’s vocation and the genesis of the Message. Hichem Djaït proposes a scientific analysis, reassessing the source texts: the Qur‘ān, the hadiths and the Sīra. He analyses, interprets, criticizes, and brings a modern anthropological viewpoint to bear on the birth of Islam.
The second volume continues the account of Muḥammad’s life work. Being both biography and historical study, it charts the life of the Prophet from his birth, his prophecy and the persecutions he suffered, to the Hegira. It also sheds light on the culture, the beliefs and the religious traditions of Meccan society in the seventh century.
The third volume reads like a true epic, since it covers, at one and the same time, the exile of Muḥammad and his scanty followers to Medina, and the way he made this city the starting-point of a conquest that, after the victorious return to Mecca, was to spread to the whole of the Arabian peninsula.
With his unequalled erudition, a gift for narration that grips the reader, and a sharp critical appraisal of the sources, Hichem Djaït presents us with a portrait of the Prophet that combines in a striking manner the man who was inspired by the divine Word and the strategist who was well aware of the realities of the field: a man who, within a few years, was capable of bringing about the capitulation of insubordinate tribes, infidels, Jews and unbelievers, and inspiring men who were to take the Message to the world .