Ideally, one would like to be able to check such accounts against contemporary evidence | See, for example, Bowersock, Glen Warren, Peter Robert Lamont Brown and Oleg Grabar Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World 1999, Harvard University Press p |
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sources are not contemporaneous with the events they purport to relate and sometimes were written many centuries later | El-Cheikh, Nadia Maria Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs 2004, Harvard University Press p |
Hitti, History of the Arabs, 10th edition 1970 , p | |
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5, "One major challenge to examining initial contacts between Byzantium and the early Muslim umma arises from the controversy surrounding the traditional Islamic account | however, there is no relevant archaeological, epigraphic, or numismatic evidence dating from the time of Muhammad, nor are there any references to him in non-Muslim sources dating from the period before 632 |