The Warrior Prophet

Reviewed by: Abdullah Drury, University of Waikato, New Zealand

Published by: Swansea, UK: Claritas Books, 2022, 457pp. ISBN: 978-1800119802.

This book is perhaps one of the most approachable biographies written on Prophet Muḥammad (blessings and peace be upon him) and the topic of war since Martin Lings and Karen Armstrong. The aim of this brilliant and robustly intellectual tome is “to investigate what the early Arabic sources reveal about his capacity and aptitude for using warfare for societal and religious purposes and to make a determination whether and to what degree he acted deliberately in ways that produced positive results, especially those he actually sought, during his decade of armed conflict’ (p.28). In this, the author, Joel Hayward, succeeds with fascinating results.

The text is full of useful military references, from comparisons to Napoleon and quotes by von Clausewitz, but also makes recourse to archaeological, numismatic and other artefactual evidence, as well as a wide range of ancient and arcane documentary records, plus modern anthropology and ethnography.