We know that information about Gautama Buddha, Chanakya, and Shankaracharya come from textual sources that were composed centuries after their supposed lifetimes. There is no material proof of their existence. But they are assumed to be historical figures. The same holds true for religious leaders like Jesus Christ and Prophet Muhammad. Believers insist they are historical.
Historians are more skeptical. Words like ‘christ’ and ‘prophet’ are mythic ideas, not historical facts, because God is not a historical figure, hence ideas like son of God, anointed by God, and messenger of God cannot be historical concepts. But they are used as if they are truisms even in history textbooks. Tribal leaders and gods are meanwhile dismissed as fictions, as they are not aligned to a monotheistic framework. This discriminatory approach is one of the reasons why historians are increasingly being challenged for their version of what is fact and what is not.
A few historians since the 1970s are now rethinking how Islam began. Rather than dismissing the traditional Islamic narrative outright, as some extremist thinkers do, they are placing it under historical scrutiny by reading literary sources alongside coins, inscriptions, papyri, and early non-Muslim accounts.
The result is not a rejection of the tradition, but a reframing of it. In this approach, context is given more importance than texts. The traditional narrative is familiar. Muhammad, born in Mecca, begins receiving divine revelations around 610 CE.
These revelations are preserved as the Qur’an. He preaches strict monotheism, moral accountability, and the imminence of the Last Judgment (Qayamat). After persecution in Mecca, he and his followers migrate to Medina in 622 (the Hijra), consolidate power, eventually reclaim Mecca, and establish a community that expands with astonishing speed after his death in 632. Within decades, Muslim armies defeat the Sasanian Empire and strip vast territories from Byzantium. The difficulty lies not in the broad outline, but in the sources. The richly detailed accounts of Muhammad’s life and the early conquests were written two to three centuries after the events they describe. They contain contradictions, theological shaping, and retrospective systematisation.
They also diverge in subtle ways from earlier Christian sources written closer to the events themselves. For historians, this raises a methodological problem: how much of the traditional account reflects the seventh century, and how much reflects the concerns of the eighth and ninth? Coins, inscriptions, and papyri from the seventh century provide contemporary snapshots of the emerging community. One striking observation concerns terminology. In the Quran itself, the words “Islam” and “Muslim” appear relatively infrequently.
Far more common is the term mu’minun—“believers.” In its Quranic usage, “Muslim” simply means one who submits to God; it does not yet designate membership in a distinct religious system. Even more provocatively, certain Quranic passages suggest that righteous Jews and Christians—those who believe in God and the Last Day and act justly—are included among the believers. This linguistic evidence, reinforced by early inscriptions referring to rulers as “Commander of the Believers” (Amir al-Mu’minin), suggests that the earliest community understood itself primarily as a movement of monotheistic believers, not yet as a sharply defined religious body separate from other monotheists.
Early coins continue Byzantine and Sasanian imagery while adding brief monotheistic formulas such as “In the name of God.” Papyri from the period used flexible terminology for taxation and governance, indicating that later legal distinctions had not yet hardened. Islam as a clearly bounded confessional religion probably crystallised later, around 690-700 CE, particularly under the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik. This was a moment of imperial consolidation after decades of expansion and civil war. The construction of the Dome of the Rock at Jerusalem in 692, with its explicit anti-Trinitarian inscriptions and emphasis on Muhammad as God’s Messenger, signals a new phase of self-definition.
Terms drawn from the Quran were formalised; “Islam” became the name of a religion; “Caliph” replaced earlier titles. The community was, in effect, being consciously redefined. This shift may reflect the realities of the empire. As Arab rulers governed vast Christian and Jewish populations, distinctions sharpened. Awareness of theological difference— especially regarding the Trinity—became more explicit. Whether this boundary-making came primarily from Muslim rulers asserting authority or from non-Muslim communities resisting assimilation is difficult to determine. But by the early eighth century, the contours of a distinct Islamic identity were firmly in place. Study of Islam’s historicity was neglected for a very long time.
Then, academicians feared taking it up for fear of being branded Islamophobic. But more and more scholars are refusing to bow down to popular pressure of simply accepted received versions of Islamic history and myth. Scientific analysis is not disrespect. It is scholarship. It was once claimed that Islam was “born in the full light of history,” but this view is now being challenged. Its origins lie somewhere between being partially illuminated by tradition, partially clarified by archaeology. It is still subject to ongoing investigation. The task is not to replace myth with certainty, but to understand how memory, myth, propaganda, and empire shaped the story that later generations came to call Islam.
