What Is the Sirah?

Sirah (Arabic: سيرة; also spelled seerah) is pronounced SEE-rah.

Meaning

The word means way of life or journey. In Islamic usage, the sirah (often as-sirah an-nabawiyyah, the Prophetic biography) is the story of the life of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ: his orphaned childhood, his reputation for honesty, the first revelation in the cave of Hira, the years of hardship in Makkah, the migration (hijrah) to Madinah, his leadership of a growing community, and his final years.

Muslims began recording his life very early. Among the best-known early works is the biography by Ibn Ishaq, preserved in the edition of Ibn Hisham. Scholars draw on the Qur’an, authentic hadith and these historical reports, and they check sirah narrations carefully, because not every story told about him is equally reliable.

How Muslims use it

The sirah is more than history. The Qur’an presents the Prophet ﷺ as a model for believers:

لَّقَدْ كَانَ لَكُمْ فِى رَسُولِ ٱللَّهِ أُسْوَةٌ حَسَنَةٌۭ لِّمَن كَانَ يَرْجُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ وَٱلْيَوْمَ ٱلْءَاخِرَ وَذَكَرَ ٱللَّهَ كَثِيرًۭا ﴿٢١﴾

There has certainly been for you in the Messenger of Allah an excellent pattern for anyone whose hope is in Allah and the Last Day and [who] remembers Allah often.

So Muslims read the sirah to see how he lived out the Qur’an: how he treated his family, the poor, children and his enemies, how he coped with grief and how he forgave. Many mosques hold regular sirah classes, and children learn its stories from a young age.

Example

“In our sirah class this week, we studied how the Prophet ﷺ forgave the people of Makkah.”

Begin with The Life of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ.