Pillar one — the Qurʾān
Fixed, preserved, machine-verifiable. Arabic and translation arrive live from the Quran.com API on every page load, with the verse key printed beside each āyah.
Quran.com API v4Seerah sources · the two pillars
There is no seerah API. So the seerah is cited, tier by tier.
The Qurʾān has one fixed text, so it can be fetched live and verified character for character. The Prophet's ﷺ life has no single canonical text — it is reconstructed from reports of differing strength. Pretending otherwise would be the dishonest move. What AyaSeerah does instead is show you the tier every claim comes from, and let you pull the underlying ḥadīth yourself.
Pillar two — the Seerah
Reconstructed from graded reports. Every event in AyaSeerah carries the class of report behind it, and the strongest of them are ḥadīth you can fetch live from the open corpus below.
Open ḥadīth corpusThe seerah source stack
Read top down. A claim is only allowed into a study card at the highest tier that actually supports it — and the tier is always shown.
- 1Fetched live
The Qurʾān itself
Badr, Uḥud, al-Ḥudaybiyah, the Hijrah, the slander of ʿĀʾishah ؓ, the boycott years — narrated by Allah about His Messenger ﷺ.
Fetched live, verse by verse, from the Quran.com API (Uthmānī script + Ṣaḥīḥ International). Highest tier of seerah evidence and the only one that is machine-verifiable.
- 2Fetched live
Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī and Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim
The Ḥirāʾ narration, the Isrāʾ, the strangling of the Prophet ﷺ at the Kaʿbah, the Hijrah of Abū Bakr ؓ, the treaty terms.
Every ḥadīth number cited in AyaSeerah can be pulled live in your own browser from the open hadith-api dataset and cross-checked at sunnah.com.
- 3Cited, not fetched
The four Sunan and the Musnad
Detail and sequence not preserved in the Ṣaḥīḥayn — delegations, letters to kings, minor expeditions.
Usable, but each report needs its own grading. AyaSeerah names the grade when it uses one, and never treats a Sunan report as equal to a Ṣaḥīḥayn report.
- 4Used with caution
Sīrat Ibn Isḥāq, as transmitted in Ibn Hishām
The narrative spine: chronology, ʿUtbah ibn Rabīʿah's negotiation, the boycott document, the ordering of the Makkan years.
The earliest surviving continuous seerah, and indispensable — but it is a compilation of reports, many without complete chains. Treated as narrative framework, not as proof for creed or law.
- 5Used with caution
Al-Wāqidī, al-Ṭabarī's narrative material, later collections
Dates, troop numbers, place detail.
Used only for colour and never as the sole basis of a study claim. Al-Wāqidī in particular is criticised by the ḥadīth scholars.
- 6Cited, not fetched
Ar-Raḥīq al-Makhtūm (The Sealed Nectar), Safī al-Raḥmān al-Mubārakfūrī
The modern prize-winning synthesis most students are taught from — including most weekend and university seerah courses.
A twentieth-century compilation, not a primary source, and under copyright. It has no API and cannot be legally reproduced. AyaSeerah follows its structure where it is sound, but always traces the claim back to tier 1–4 and cites that instead.
On Ar-Raḥīq al-Makhtūm specifically: there is no official API, no open dataset and no licence permitting its text to be reproduced in an app. Any site offering its full text as an API is redistributing it without right. AyaSeerah does not host it. Where a well-known detail comes through it, we trace the report to Ibn Hishām or the Ṣaḥīḥayn and cite that instead — which is what the book itself does in its footnotes.
Check any ḥadīth we cite
Type a collection and number — for example Bukhārī 3 (the Ḥirāʾ narration) or Bukhārī 3856 (Abū Bakr ؓ at the Kaʿbah). The request goes from your browser straight to the public dataset; AyaSeerah never sits in the middle. The exact URL is printed so you can paste it anywhere, and a sunnah.com link is given for a second opinion.
Ṣaḥīḥ by consensus
Numbering varies between print editions; if a number misses, check the neighbouring numbers or the sunnah.com reference.
Studied apart, examined together
Each pillar has its own tools, and the same tool exists on both sides — so you can drill one alone, or sit an assessment that mixes them and exposes the joins.
| Tool | Qurʾān alone | Seerah alone | Merged |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ordered spine | 114 surahs in revelation order | 23 years in 6 phases | One timeline — each surah sits inside the year that produced it |
| Context (asbāb / occasion) | Why the passage came down | What was happening that week | The event is the reason; the surah is the answer |
| Spaced repetition | Theme and root cards | Every event is its own SM-2 card | One review queue mixes both, so recall is cross-cued |
| Practice papers | Multiple scored papers per surah | Papers per seerah chapter | Phase exam samples both together |
| Mastery scoring | Per surah, per theme | Per phase, per event | Phase mastery = surah recall × seerah recall |
| Cheatsheet & flip cards | Movements, roots, messages | Events, dates, people | Concept map draws the links between them |
| Source discipline | Verse text fetched live, verse key printed | Report class shown on every event | Nothing is asserted without a named source |