of the Scripture.

This was in Medina, after he had spent a little more than ten years in Mecca, during which his mission had become widely known, his own people had declared him a liar, and they strove by every means at their disposal to refute his claim. Had there been in Mecca or Medina any member of the People of the Scripture from whom he was learning— or had he even met one of them on the road and taken knowledge from him— that would have undermined the very purpose of those questioners.

It is therefore clear that the People of the Scripture themselves were certain that he had not acquired any knowledge of the unseen from another human being. All the more so, had he learnt it from them while at the same time calling them liars and fighting them, they would surely have exposed the matter and it would have spread among their coreligionists. Whenever he answered them, they would then have said, “You learnt this from so-and-so, who is one of us,” or, “Someone of our faith has taught you this.”

The situation was exactly like the occasions when they used to send word to his own tribe, Quraysh, telling them to ask him certain questions and saying, “If he tells you the answers, then he is a prophet who has been sent; otherwise he is an impostor. Ask him about matters that only a prophet can know.”

These reports—whether from the people of Medina or from his kinsmen of Quraysh—show that both his idolatrous tribe and the People of the Scripture agreed that he had not learnt any of this from a human source. Had they considered such a possibility, their whole test would have failed and they could not have said, “No one knows this except a prophet,” for they all knew that within the People of the Scripture were individuals who possessed that knowledge. By posing these questions they could ascertain whether his answers matched what the prophets had conveyed or contradicted it. They also realised that if a man had learnt such matters from the People of the Scripture—or from someone who had studied under them—his answers could never serve as proof of prophethood, just as if he were to reply concerning those