Al-Sīra al-Nabawiyya (Arabic: السيرة النبوية), commonly shortened to Sīrah and translated as prophetic biography, are the traditional biographies of the Islamic prophet Muhammad written by Muslim historians, from which, in addition to the Qurʾān and ḥadīth literature, most historical information about his life and the early history of Islam is derived.
The main feature of the information that formed the basis of early historiography in Islam was that this information emerged as the irregular products of storytellers (qāṣṣ, pl. quṣṣāṣ) -they were quite prestigious then- without details. At the same time the study of the earliest periods in Islamic history is made difficult by a lack of sources. While the narratives were initially in the form of a kind of heroic epics called magāzī, details were added later, edited and transformed into sirah compilations. From the very beginning, the process of creating the image of the Prophet as a warrior hero supported by divine help is seen as fitting the ideal hero typology and current needs during the military collapses experienced by the Umayyads. Muhammad's position gradually rose from his military stature to that of the sole and central figure in narratives who received divine assistance, in parallel with the rise in the value of the hadiths attributed to Muhammad in Islamic lawmaking although it wasn't like that in the beginning.
