It involves certain vital rearrangement, omissions, abbreviations, and additions for which little or no reason is given … But has this aim been realized? How much in actual fact did the reconstruction text gain from these excerpts? Has Ibn Hisham’s text – indeed, has that of Ibn Ishaq – lost anything in the process? Professor Guillaume’s method is haphazard and far from being inclusive. ‘It has been my aim,’ he says, ‘to restore so far as is now possible the text of Ibn Ishaq as it left his pen or as he dictated it to his hearers from excerpts in later texts’ (p. But if he has time for close examination, comparison and check, he will find that this translation raises more problems than it solves. The reviewer (and the reader) who is in a hurry need have no qualms: the translator has an established reputation the book is well produced and has the imprimatur of a famous publishing house. It seems, on preliminary examination, that a translation of the Sirah into English is not required but since nevertheless one has now been produced by a well-known writer, it is necessary to give it all the attention it deserves. It is difficult, however, to see how a profane transformation of the received text of the life of Muhammad such as is attempted by Professor Guillaume is likely to commend itself to the Islamic world. … one gathers from the concluding words on page v that the translator hopes that his translation will ‘help to further cooperation and friendliness between my country and the Islamic world.’ This is an aim which is, of course, more expedient than academic, but it is nevertheless a commendable one, formulated as it is by a student of Islam who is at the same time an Anglican clergyman. His work is a translation of his own reconstruction of Ibn Ishaq …. Professor Guillaume is not merely offering a translation of the received text of the biography of Muhammad, as recorded by Ibn Hisham from al-Bakka’i, from Ibn Ishaq.