This magisterial survey of the Prophet Muhammad in French and English literature over 350 years is both a cross-cultural history and a discussion of the intellectual changes in the representation of the Prophet's life based the close examination of original published and unpublished manuscripts. It is in the mid-seventeenth century that serious Western responses to Muhammad first emerge, but the now common acceptance of his status as Prophet has been relatively recent. While there have many attempts to renew Islamic studies in the West, Gunny argues that it is not necessary to discard Islamic sources to achieve this aim.
