They classify everything taken from the prophets as no more than “accepted opinions.”

We reply: It is a matter of indisputable knowledge that the uninterrupted, mass-transmitted certainty (tawātur) of Muḥammad’s appearance—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—and of his bringing this Qur’an is, in the eyes of all mankind, far stronger than the tawātur that merely attests to the existence of the philosophers themselves, let alone to the experimental and intuitive propositions they cite in support of their theories about physics and astronomy. The same holds for the well-attested reports of his other miracles and for the reports concerning Moses and Jesus—peace be upon them both; these are better known to people than the very existence of those philosophers, let alone the details they relate.

Because of this, the rise of the prophets has become one of the great benchmarks by which world events are dated. Historical chronology anchors itself to a famous occurrence shared by all, so that people may reckon how much time has passed before or after it—just as day is recognized by sunrise and the month by the crescent, both clear lights visible to everyone. For that reason ʿUmar dated the Muslim calendar from the Prophet’s Hijrah, the most prominent of his public acts: his migration from one land to another, through which Allah strengthened Islam. Before Islam the Arabs dated events by celebrated incidents, and the Romans, Persians, Copts, and other nations did the same. Even today, when we wish to pinpoint the era of a given philosopher, we simply say, “He lived such-and-such years before Christ.”

Indeed, Aristotle’s period became known only because it is known that he served as minister to Alexander son of Philip the Macedonian, king of the Greeks. Aristotle, his king, and their associates were polytheists who worshipped the heavenly bodies and idols and practiced sorcery. When Alexander came to Syria during the time of the Children of Israel, he conquered them. It is related that he asked that his name be written into the Torah. When they told him this was impossible, he said, “Then establish a chronology for me.” Thus the Roman dating system by which Jews and Christians reckon was fixed from his time, and because Aristotle was his minister, his own era is known through that link: he lived three hundred years before Christ.