A Review of the Discipline of the Historiography of Holy Prophet's Battles, with Emphasis on Waqidi's Historiography

The Holy prophet's words and acts are known as "the Holy Prophet's lifestyle" which includes his sermons, hadiths and actions regarding various personal, social, cultural and political affairs which are deal with in the books of history and biographies of the Prophet. The war led by the Holy Prophet is usually called "Ghazwah", meaning “battle”. Investigating these battles and presenting information about them are called "Maghazi" meaning" place of Ghazwah". The compilation of such information is technically called "Historiography of Maghazi", which is grouped under the heading of biography. At the beginning of the compilation of these kinds of information, historians gathered information about the wars that occurred during the Holy Prophet's lifetime, most of which were called "Maghazi (battles) of God's Messenger". Later on, historiography of Maghazi, however, became part of books on the biography of the Holy Prophet and due to the developments in historiography, the biography of the Holy Prophet and Maghazi came to mean one thing. Using a descriptive-analytical method, the present paper studies the historiography of Maghazi and gives an account about the former historiographers in this field, especially Mohammad Ibn 'Omar al-Waqidi and his book "Al-Maghazi".