Searching for the Covenants: Identifying Authentic Documents of the Prophet Based on Scribal Conventions and Textual Analysis

The covenants of the Prophet Muhammad have until very recently been regarded as forgeries by both Muslim and non-Muslim academics. Following the publication of Dr. John Andrew Morrow’s book The Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of the World, there has been a renewed interest in the covenants. This thesis therefore builds on the research conducted by Morrow and a paper published by myself entitled ‘The Prophet’s Treaty with the Christians of Najran: An Analytical Study to Determine the Authenticity of the Covenants’. The thesis argues that the covenants are indeed genuine and authentic documents that were issued by the Prophet and whose terms and conditions were to apply from the time they were written until the Day of Judgment. As such their policy implications are still applicable today. This thesis employs a number of source-critical methods, mostly relying on textual analysis, to make the case that it is highly implausible that different and disparate religious communities would have forged similarly worded documents, with similar style and format, and that the covenants must therefore originate from a common source. Though the thesis demonstrates how these documents were in some instances tampered with, future research may provide more comprehensive explanations as to why they cannot be found in the Islamic sources in their original format.