Abstract
The Prophet Muhammad, who is considered one of the most influential people in the history of humanity, is shown as an 'ideal example' for Muslims in the Qur'an. This notion has been created a historical consciousness about the importance of transferring the life of the Prophet to the next generations. Accordingly, Muslim historians had written books containing the biography of the Prophet which is called Sirah or Maghazî. In this context, it should be stated that the Sirah is the narrative biography of the Prophet Muhammad. Among the Sirah books, it is accepted that Ibn Ishaq’s Sirah of the Prophet had no serious rival and outshone the fame of all his predecessors and contemporaries by his work. For this reason, it is an undeniable fact that it is important to understand the life of the Prophet Muhammad from Ibn Ishaq’s Sirah. In the light of this thought, the main reference of our article will be this account.
The aim of this article is to examine the basic paradigm that shaped the Sirah writing with reference to Ibn Ishaq’s Sirah -which is the earliest biography of the Prophet that we have today- and to identify the earliest narrations about Muhammad’s pre-prophetic life in his Sirah.