Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1. "A Prophet Has Appeared, Coming with the Saracens": Muhammad's Leadership during the Conquest of Palestine According to Seventh- and Eighth-Century Sources
Chapter 2. The End of Muhammad's Life in Early Islamic Memory: The Witness of the Sira Tradition
Chapter 3. The Beginnings of Islam and the End of Days: Muhammad as Eschatological Prophet
Chapter 4. From Believers to Muslims, from Jerusalem to the Hijaz: Confessional Identity and Sacred Geography in Early Islam
Conclusion: Jesus and Muhammad, the Apostle and the Apostles
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments

Promotional Information

Stephen J. Shoemaker investigates contradictory traditions about the end of Muhammad's life in the Islamic and non-Islamic sources of the seventh and eighth centuries.

About the Author

Stephen J. Shoemaker is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Oregon and author of Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary's Dormition and Assumption.

Reviews

"[Shoemaker] develops [previous ideas] substantially, discusses them in the light of recent publications, and also offers highly instructive parallels with the situation in (and scholarship on) early Christianity. . . . [He] has done a very good job of highlighting the issues and giving them sophisticated and thorough discussion, and [The Death of a Prophet] is a worthwhile addition to the fast-expanding body of material on Islamic origins."
*Journal of the American Oriental Society*

"A work of utmost importance, and one that has profound implications for our understanding of how Islam began."
*Fred Donner, University of Chicago*