![]() Most riwayahs follow the same general contours – with some divergences – as the one recorded by Ibn Ishaq (d.767) in one of the earliest and most widespread biographies of Muhammad. ![]() These reports are known as riwayahs (‘telling’ or ‘recounting’). There are at least 50 reports from the first two centuries of Islam that describe, in detail, the occasion when Muhammad supposedly mistook the deception of Satan for the command of God. The controversial phrase ‘Satanic Verses’ was coined by the Scottish orientalist Sir William Muir in his 1858 biography The Life of Mahomet. ![]() It narrates the occasion when the Prophet Muhammad mistook the whispers of Satan for divine revelation, leading Muhammad to recite false verses of the Quran in praise of the pagan idols of seventh-century Mecca. ![]() In the Muslim scholarly tradition the ‘Satanic Verses’ incident is known as the ‘Story of the Cranes’. It was not the first time that the so-called ‘Satanic Verses’ had caused controversy their veracity and meaning were fiercely debated within medieval Islamic scholarship, centuries earlier. In 1988 the publication of The Satanic Verses, a novel by the Indian-born British writer Salman Rushdie, propelled an obscure and contentious historical incident into the centre of a global debate about free speech and blasphemy. Muhammad is visited by the Archangel Gabriel at Al-Masjid an-Nabawi, the Prophet’s Mosque, Medina. ![]()
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