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The use of assassination to achieve political/religious goals has been important throughout the history of Arabia and [[Islam|Islamic]] expansion since the time of Muhammad. | The use of assassination to achieve political/religious goals has been important throughout the history of Arabia and [[Islam|Islamic]] expansion since the time of Muhammad. | ||
The list on this page contains the results and reasons for the targeted killings and assassinations ordered or supported by Prophet [[Muhammad]], as described in the sῑra (biographical) literature and other primary sources which mention these incidents. | |||
== | ==Views of modern scholarship== | ||
Typically, academic scholars have doubts about the reliability of the sῑra literature and the maghāzī (raid, expedition) accounts therein. In a detailed analysis of protagonists, repeated motifs and textual devices, Ershan Roohi has identified that several accounts of political assassinations in the sira literature may have been motivated by tribes seeking to glorify their ancestors, or for apologetic purposes to exonerate them or their tribe for having at one time resisted acceptance of Islam, in the latter case particularly those stories which involve assassins of Jewish descent or affiliation killing members of their own tribe or confederates for the sake of Muhammad and the new religion.<ref>Eshan Roohi (2021) [https://www.academia.edu/56044561/Between_History_and_Ancestral_Lore_A_Literary_Approach_to_the_S%C4%ABras_Narratives_of_Political_Assassinations Between History and Ancestral Lore: A Literary Approach to the Sīra’s Narratives of Political Assassinations] Der Islam, Vol. 98 (2) doi:10.1515/islam-2021-0029</ref> | |||
Of relevance to the list below, Roohi argues on the basis of repeated story and textual devices that the assassination of Ibn Abi al-Huqaiq was largely fabricated by the Khazraj tribe whom al-Tabari records desired to compete with the assassination by a rival Medinan tribe, al-Aws, of another blasphemous poet, Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf. The identities of the alleged assassins of Ka'b in turn have been argued to be concocted to whitewash their Jewish affiliations and sympathies, particularly in the case of Muhammad b. Maslama, who also is said to have beheaded the Jewish leader Kinana and participated in the killings of the Jewish poet Ibn Abi al-Huqaiq already mentioned and Jewish leader al-Yusayr mentioned below. The story of 'Asma' bint Marwan's murder by the blind Umayr employs a repeated motif of a blind man killing a female blasphemer, which occurs a second time later in the list below without named protagonists. Roohi also questions a few other assassination stories due to plausible motives to cast the alleged killers in a more favourable light or having transferred motifs: Ibn Sunayna (part of a trend to glorify his alledged assassin, Muhayyisa), Amr ibn Jihash (the hitman was allegedly hired by his cousin Ibn Yamin, who elsewhere is reported to have deplored the murder of Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf), Al-Yusayr ibn Rizam and Khalid ibn Sufyan (whose alleged murders by Unays include a number of transferable story motifs). | |||
Regarding the stories as a whole, Roohi's view is that "if we tend not to go so far as to reject them as ex nihilo inventions, it may be safe at least to hold an agnostic view as to their historicity" and that it would be "prudent not to accept at face value" the image portrayed in the sira. On the other hand, while Roohi envisages that the above is the "tip of the iceberg" in terms of literary topoi (transferable motifs or formulae) used in the sira, critics would notice that the list of killings on this page is considerably more varied and extensive than the several cases for which he was able to identify specific grounds for suspicion. | |||
==List of Killings== | ==List of Killings== |