Relentless Reasoning

The Empire That Invented the Prophet

How Politics Created Theology

Why the Muhammad of Islam Is a Product of Empire-Building, Not Eyewitness Memory

Introduction

The Most Explosive Question in Islamic Studies

Muslims today believe:

the Prophet’s life is well-attested,
his sayings are meticulously preserved,
his biography is transparently recorded,
his authority is foundational and ancient,
the theology of Islam comes directly from him.

But the historical record — manuscripts, inscriptions, archaeology, and early non-Muslim sources — reveals a very different picture:

The Muhammad of Islamic orthodoxy did not exist in the 7th century.

He was constructed by the empire — not remembered by the community.

This does not deny Muhammad existed.
It means that the stories about him — his teachings, his miracles, his battles, his legal rulings, his sayings, his sīrah — were products of political necessity, crafted generations after his death.

This article explains how the empire created the prophet needed to rule it — and why the traditional portrait of Muhammad is a literary artifact, not a historical memory.

SECTION 1 — The Earliest Evidence Is Silent About the Prophet We Know Today

If the Muhammad of hadith and sīrah were historical, we would expect:

early 7th-century inscriptions mentioning his life,
contemporary documents recording his sayings,
early coins depicting Islamic symbols,
earliest mosques reflecting Meccan orientation,
early use of “Islam” as a distinct religion,
early legal rulings attributed to him,
early theological references citing him.

But we find the opposite:

No inscription mentions his biography.

No early mosque faces Mecca.

No early coin mentions Islam.

No early non-Muslim source records his miracles, battles, or teachings.

No early Muslim source documents his law.

No early Qurʾānic manuscripts reflect a stable prophetic context.

The earliest evidence gives:

a vague prophetic figure,
without biography,
without sayings,
without rituals,
without narrative context.

The fully formed Muhammad of Islamic orthodoxy is absent.

This silence is not accidental.
It is historical.

SECTION 2 — The Early State Needed a Unifying Figure

After Muhammad’s death, the Arab empire expanded rapidly.

But an empire needs:

a founder myth,
a unifying leader,
a moral authority,
a divine mandate,
a justification for rule.

The early Believers’ Movement (as shown in Part 34) had:

no doctrine of prophetic perfection,
no detailed biography,
no fixed prophetic law,
no prophetic sayings corpus.

So the expanding state — especially the Umayyads and Abbasids — built one.

The real question becomes:

Why did the empire need a stronger prophet than history provided?

The answer:
Power, legitimacy, and control.

SECTION 3 — The Umayyads: The First Stage of Prophet Construction

The Umayyad dynasty (661–750 CE) inherited:

a multi-ethnic empire,
civil wars,
sectarian rebellion,
diverse populations (Jews, Christians, Arabs, Persians),
competing claims to leadership.

To unify the empire, they needed:

A symbolic figure for imperial propaganda.
A central authority to override tribal loyalties.
A prophet who legitimized the dynasty’s rule.

Thus they began giving Muhammad:

titles he never had,
political significance,
theological authority,
imperial symbolism.

Not because it was historical —
but because it was useful.

SECTION 4 — The Abbasids: The Architects of the “Islamic Muhammad”

The real transformation occurred under the Abbasids (750–1258 CE).

They needed to differentiate themselves from the Umayyads.
They needed ideological legitimacy.
They needed theological superiority.

Their solution was revolutionary:

They created a fully detailed prophetic persona —

and attributed an entire legal system to him.

Under the Abbasids:

the sīrah was written,
hadith were canonized,
prophetic miracles were invented,
prophetic sayings were forged,
law was attached to him,
theology was built around him,
the “Seal of the Prophets” role was elevated,
Muhammad became the axis of religion.

This was not organic memory.
This was state-sponsored narrative construction.

The empire created the prophet it needed.

SECTION 5 — The Manufactured Sīrah: Biography as Imperial Literature

Ibn Ishaq’s biography (c. 760–770 CE) was written:

130–150 years after Muhammad,
with no access to contemporary records,
relying on storytellers and tribal legend,
during a period of political consolidation.

Ibn Ishaq was working under Abbasid patronage.

His task was clear:

Create a prophetic biography that would unite the empire, justify Abbasid authority, and harmonize the Qurʾān with emerging law.

The result:

idealized hero tales
invented contexts for Qurʾānic verses
reconstructed battles
theological motifs
miracle stories
legal precedents
moral lessons

This was not history.
This was imperial myth-making.

SECTION 6 — Hadith: The Most Successful Propaganda Project in History

Between 750–900 CE:

scholars forged hundreds of thousands of hadith,
sects produced conflicting sayings,
political groups created hadith to support their cause,
jurists produced hadith to support their rulings,
storytellers circulated moral anecdotes,
ascetics spread miracle stories.

The Prophet became:

a legal oracle,
a moral exemplar,
a political tool,
a mystical ideal,
a theological authority,
an empire’s justification.

Hadith did not preserve the Prophet.

Hadith created him.

SECTION 7 — Tafsīr: Creating the Prophet to Explain the Qurʾān

The Qurʾān is fragmented and contextless.

So the empire needed a prophet who could:

explain verses,
provide backstories,
supply legal meaning,
clarify contradictions,
offer narrative coherence.

Thus tafsīr literature emerged:

200–300 years after Muhammad,
filled with invented “occasions of revelation,”
tying every verse to events in the invented sīrah.

In other words:

The biography was built to explain the Qurʾān.

Then the Qurʾān was reinterpreted to fit the biography.

Perfect circularity.
Perfect propaganda.

SECTION 8 — “Muhammad” Becomes the Center of an Entire Theological System

By the 10th century, the Abbasid project was complete:

Muhammad is the final prophet.
His Sunnah is binding.
His biography is canonical.
His miracles are unquestioned.
His sayings form religious law.
His life defines orthodoxy.
His authority overrides reason.
His persona becomes the model for civilization.

This is not how early Muslims saw him.

This is how the empire reshaped him.

A political system needed:

Theology to legitimize power.

A prophet to legitimize theology.
A biography to legitimize the prophet.
Hadith to legitimize the biography.
And law built on all of it.

This is the architecture of religion by state design.

SECTION 9 — The Historical Method Reveals the Construction

When historians examine:

inscriptions,
dated manuscripts,
archaeological evidence,
early administrative documents,
non-Muslim texts,
coinage,
monumental architecture,
geographical references,

they find:

The Muhammad of Islamic orthodoxy is missing until the late 7th or early 8th century —

and does not appear fully formed until the 9th or 10th century.

This gap demands explanation.

The answer is straightforward:

The empire created the Muhammad it needed.

A prophet:

who provided law,
who justified imperial authority,
who unified diverse peoples,
who offered theological legitimacy,
who sanctified the Abbasid state.

This Muhammad is a construction — a literary, legal, and political creation.

SECTION 10 — The Core Logical Failure

Islam claims:

the Prophet’s life was preserved in detail,
his sayings were meticulously transmitted,
his biography is reliable,
his legal system was given by Allah.

History shows:

the biography is late myth,
the hadith are political tools,
the law was invented centuries later,
the Qurʾān provides no context for any of it.

The foundational narrative collapses when tested against:

chronology,
evidence,
logic,
historical method.

A prophet invented by empire cannot be the source of divinely revealed law.

You cannot build theology on propaganda
and call it revelation.

Conclusion

Islam’s Prophet Is a Product of Empire, Not Eyewitness History

Part 36 ends with the unavoidable verdict:

The Muhammad of Islam is not the Muhammad of history.
He is the Muhammad of empire — constructed by political needs, shaped by jurists, amplified by storytellers, and canonized by rulers.

The empire needed:

legitimacy,
unity,
divine sanction,
moral authority,
a sacred foundation.

And so it created:

a prophet,
a biography,
a Sunnah,
a law,
an entire theology.

This was not revelation.
It was consolidation.
It was not memory.
It was architecture.

Islam’s foundational figure is less a preserved prophet
and more a state-built symbol —
the necessary centerpiece of an imperial religion forged long after the fact.