He also devoted exceptional care to critically examining reports of military campaigns and accounts of the Prophet’s life, reconciling divergent reports and weighing contradictory ones. The most prominent features of his method in recounting the campaigns are as follows:

• He often combines different reports as he weaves them into his narrative, so that events fit together and unfold in a single, continuous account. This is a well-established approach among leading authorities on prophetic biography and military campaigns, such as al-Zuhrī, Ibn Ishāq, and others. See, for example, his accounts of the Night Journey (3/ 41 - 44), al-Hudaybiyyah (3/ 340 - 352), Usāmah’s killing of a man who said, “There is no god but Allah” (3/ 434 - 435), the Companions’ eating the sea creature called al-ʿanbar during the expedition of al-Khabt (3/ 472), and the delegation of Hawāzin (3/ 590 - 591).

• He weighs the reports of authorities on military campaigns against the authentic hadiths found in the two Sahīh collections and elsewhere. On this basis, he may judge the majority of biographers to be mistaken about the date of a campaign or other details. For example, most authorities on military campaigns stated that the campaign of al-Ghābah took place before al-Hudaybiyyah. The author judged them mistaken because the hadith of Salamah ibn al-Akwaʿ in Sahīh Muslim explicitly states that it occurred after al-Hudaybiyyah (3/ 328 - 329). Similarly, most biographers held that the campaign of Dhāt al-Riqāʿ took place in the fourth year after the Hijrah, whereas the author considered the correct view to be that it occurred after Khaybar, on the strength of indications found in authentic hadiths (2/ 291 - 295).

• When authorities on military campaigns disagree, the author acts as an arbiter: he presents the grounds for their views and then examines them, reconciling them where possible or giving preference to some over others. This can be seen in his treatment of their disagreement concerning Ibn Masʿūd: did he remain