the accounts of Hūd, Ṣāliḥ, and Shuʿayb, together with certain particulars in the stories of Abraham, Moses, and Jesus—for example, Jesus’ speaking while still in the cradle and the descent of the heavenly table spread. The People of the Scripture know nothing of these matters, nor of the faith of Pharaoh’s wife and other such reports.
It is therefore impossible to claim that he learned them from the People of the Scripture while his own community was unaware of them. On the contrary, he actually showed his people and others the ruins of earlier nations whom God punished for denying the messengers—such as the peoples of ʿĀd, Thamūd, and the like.
People take those visible remnants as proof of the messengers’ truthfulness and of God’s retribution against those who reject them. In the same way, his own people and others take as proof of his veracity in these matters—matters he never studied with the People of the Scripture—the fact that those very People of the Scripture confirmed him whenever his report matched their own revelation, even though they knew he had not learned it from them. From both considerations already mentioned, this shows that he had acquired nothing at all from the People of the Scripture, contrary to what some might imagine.
- Another indicator is that most of his people were among those who bore him the fiercest hostility. They were keen to deny him, disparage him, and search for anything with which to undermine him. Had he obtained these narratives from any human source, they would certainly have known about it, would have used it to discredit him, and would have broadcast it widely—it would have been more notorious than anything else they raised against him. Since nothing of the sort ever occurred, it is plain that they had no knowledge of his having learned these accounts from a human being and were unable to impugn him on that basis, even though—