A Critical Reading of Sean Anthony’s "Muhammad and the Empires of Faith" in Light of Shia and Sunni Historical Interpretive Approaches

Sean Anthony’s "Muhammad and the Empires of Faith" is among the most significant contemporary works in the historical reconstruction of the biography (sīra) of the Prophet of Islam and in examining its interaction with the religious and political structures of the late ancient world. Relying on Greek, Syriac, Hebrew, and Arabic sources, the author seeks to interpret the emergence of the Prophet of Islam not merely as an intra-religious event, but as a historical occurrence within the context of the transformations of the Eastern Roman and Sasanian Empires. Employing a critical and comparative approach, the present study examines Anthony’s methodology from the perspective of the two interpretive-historiographical traditions of Shia and Sunni Islam. To this end, it first analyzes the epistemological foundations of the work, such as its reliance on the tradition of critical historiography and the approach of the "Qur’an as a historical source." It then discusses, from the viewpoint of Muslim commentators and thinkers such as Allamah Tabatabai, Murtada Mutahhari, Muhammad Hadi Ma‘rifat, and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, the relationship between history, revelation, and interpretation. The findings of this study indicate that although Anthony’s work, with its high methodological precision, explores the cultural and political contexts of the emergence of Islam, it does not cross the metaphysical and theological boundaries of the Qur’an in reconstructing the history of the Prophet of Islam and necessarily remains within a secular framework. On the other hand, a comparative examination of Shia and Sunni interpretations demonstrates that although the two Islamic traditions differ in their explanations of details, at a deeper level they both offer a kind of "intra-revelational hermeneutics" capable of establishing a link between history and faith. Therefore, a critique of Anthony’s work in light of this hermeneutics makes possible a fresh rereading of the relationship between history and revelation