Why study the seerah?

Why should we study the seerah? Because Allah tells us to take the Prophet ﷺ as our example, and the only way to follow someone is to know how they lived. There are five reasons, and each one is explained below with the verses and hadith behind it.

1. We are told to follow him
2. It is the surest way to love him more
3. It makes the Quran clear
4. It gives us hope
5. His life is itself a miracle

Allah sent human beings as messengers: people of flesh and blood, born of women, who married and raised children as we do. What sets them apart is that Allah chose them and made them examples for the rest of us. The Quran says it plainly about the last of them.

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.Quran 33:21, Sahih International

The Quran comes back to this again and again. Quran 3:31 ties the love of Allah to following him, 4:80 says that whoever obeys the Messenger has obeyed Allah, and 59:7 tells us to take what he gave and keep away from what he forbade.

So the study of his life is not a hobby for history lovers. It is the study of the person we have been asked to follow. And whichever side of his life you open, a home, a journey, a treaty, a night of prayer, there is something in it to learn from.

There is no better way to grow our love for the Prophet ﷺ than to study his life, and it works in both directions. Learning raises the love, and love makes you want to learn. Wanting to know more about someone is one of the signs that you love them, and that is just human nature.

This love is part of faith. Anas reported that the Prophet ﷺ said none of us truly believes until he is more beloved to us than our fathers, our children and all people. Bukhari 15, sahih (al-Bukhari)

A love built on knowing is different from a love built on hearing. You can meet the people who lived beside him, the wives who knew him best and the Companions who followed him, in Family & Companions.

The Quran is a deep book, and it cannot be fully appreciated without its context. The seerah is that context: who was being spoken to, what had just happened, and what the listeners already believed.

A small example comes from Anas ibn Malik. He was asked whether the Companions disliked walking between Safa and Marwa. He said yes, because they counted it among the practices of the Jahiliyyah, until Allah revealed the verse below. Bukhari 1648, sahih (al-Bukhari)

Indeed, as-Safa and al-Marwah are among the symbols of Allah. So whoever makes Hajj to the House or performs ’umrah - there is no blame upon him for walking between them.Quran 2:158, Sahih International

Without the story, the verse reads like a note about two hills. With it, you see people who had just left idols behind and were careful about what they kept. Surah al-Fil works the same way: it is five short verses about an elephant until you read the story of the Year of the Elephant. For the world these people were leaving, see the Jahiliyyah.

Many Muslims today feel pressure and suspicion, and the seerah puts that pressure in proportion. The Prophet ﷺ and the first believers suffered far more than most of us ever will, and they stayed firm. Setting our trials beside theirs does not make ours small. It makes us steadier.

The Prophet ﷺ was strengthened in the same way. The Quran says the news of the earlier messengers was told to him to make his heart firm.

And each [story] We relate to you from the news of the messengers is that by which We make firm your heart. And there has come to you, in this, the truth and an instruction and a reminder for the believers.Quran 11:120, Sahih International

If the stories of earlier prophets steadied him, his own story can steady us. Read how it went in the persecution of the believers, the boycott, the Year of Sorrow and the journey to Ta’if, and meet Bilal and Sumayyah.

Ask people for the miracles of the Prophet ﷺ and they think of the moon split in two or the tree that spoke. But his whole life was a miracle, from beginning to end.

Think of where he came from. The Quran reminds the doubters that he had never recited or written any scripture before it, and yet he brought a book of a depth and eloquence no one could match.

And you did not recite before it any scripture, nor did you inscribe one with your right hand. Otherwise the falsifiers would have had [cause for] doubt.Quran 29:48, Sahih International

Then think of what followed. He rose in a land of tribes, feuds and idols, where few could read and write. Within eighty years of his passing, Muslim armies had reached Iberia in the west and Sindh in the east, as the era of the Umayyads on Athar shows.

And he held great authority while living very simply. Aishah said that the family of Muhammad did not eat their fill of wheat bread for three days in a row from the day he reached Madinah until he died. Bukhari 5416, sahih (al-Bukhari) Power and wealth change almost everyone who gets them. Only a pure sincerity for the sake of Allah explains a man who had both and stayed this simple.

If you are new to the seerah, begin at the beginning, with Arabia before Islam, and walk through the eight stages of his life. If you like to see a life against the calendar, open the timeline of the Companions. And if you would like to know the man before the story, read what he looked like and how he treated people.