Washington Irving’s Life Of Mahomet

Abstract

This paper is a tentative interdisciplinary assessment of one of the early American biographies of the Prophet Mohammed, namely Washington Irving’s Life of Mahomet (1949)*. Notwithstanding the broad scope and interest of Interdisciplinarity and its suitability (desirability?) to the investigation of any academic subject, the choice of this approach as an analytical paradigm may also be vindicated on at least three other grounds: the author, the work and its critical reception.