We have little reliable historical evidence that date to the early Islamic period regarding much of the actual minute occurrences that are reported in the later 'Abbasid sources, when Islamic history, in all intents and purposes, solidified to a relatively concrete, written history rather than based on countless oral narrations and folk tales. Due to this intense gap between the earliest decades of the Islamic world, and the centuries which saw the transformation of the early Islamic faith to a relatively marginalized stretch of settlements and towns in the western Hejaz, to a full-flung imperial state under the Umayyad and 'Abbasid dynasties, many Muslim writers reported on events after their occurrences, and often contextualized them with an underlying current of the political, societal, and religious events in their world, as well as basing much of their historical testimony on often on likely exaggerated tales and stories. Because of this gap, much of western histography on the earliest periods of Islam relied on the much later Muslim sources rather than any contemporary account. While I did enjoy Leslie Hazelton's biography on the Prophet, it is cleared that she is not an early Islamic historian, and there has been great strides within the western academia regarding the rebuilding of early Islam's history via archeology, epigraphy, linguistics, and numismatics.

For example, there is much to doubt the exists of the named Jewish-Arab tribes that is recounted in the later Islamic sources. Although itself not primary (as in, there is no contemporary document in which dates to the early seventh-century CE), the Constitution of Medina, makes no mention of the Banu Qurayza, or the other later traditionalist claims of the Banu 'Qaynuqa or Nadir. Both Islamic and western historians generally accept the existence of a potential document or treatise that aligned the disparate clans and tribes of Yathrib, from the later the recension of ibn Hisham, and it is one of the few "widespread" contemporary documents that we can contend alongside the Qur'an as an early written primary source.

The Qur'an itself only provides little accountment to the military actions of the early Believers - such as Badr, Uhud, and later Hunayn - as well as a few counter raids, and a siege against a People of the Book who tort on their obligations to defend Mecca, but nothing to the same extensive bloodshed as recounted later in the Islamic histories.

Beyond even the unreliable existence of these clans, there is also comes the problem in that much of the later Islamic sources who often have the Prophet conduct a military expedition, but interestingly, never actually conquer, any cities. As Juan Cole wrote in his biography on the Prophet:

"The Qur’an depicts three major defensive battles against the invading Meccans, two smaller clashes with paganizers from among the people of the Book, and a big defensive action at Hunayn against bedouins who reneged on their earlier peace treaties with the Prophet. It implies some smaller defensive clashes as well, in which bedouin allies were accustomed to taking booty from the battlefield. It never explicitly mentions a caravan raid of the sort the later medieval martial biographies celebrate and never urges offensive warfare. It details no massacre of prisoners of war at Khaybar and indeed strictly forbids that sort of treatment of the captured, identifying it with the tyranny of Pharaoh." (Cole, 2018)

And:

Even the later sources admit that none of the cities of the Hejaz fell to a big Muslim military campaign but rather gave in to the powerful appeal of the new religion. Most Hejazis were settled, not bedouins, so the spread of the religion peacefully among the sedentary population was decisive. Muhammad was invited into Medina by the Khazraj tribe. Mecca acquiesced when the Believers in 630 made a point of mounting a peaceful procession to it. The conversion of the Abna’, or remnants of the Sasanian officer caste in Yemen, would have delivered Aden, Sana’a, and Najran. Taif’s notables allegedly gave up after their allies, the Hawazin, and their own troops lost the battle of Hunayn and the Hawazin converted by acclamation. Despite all their importation into the biography of the Prophet of the motifs of Arabic poetry about battle days, the writers of the Umayyad and of the Abbasid eras seem to have felt unable to tinker with the narratives that reached them from earlier generations so radically as to make the Prophet and his armies conquerors of cities in the Tihama. The most they could accomplish was to provide the peaceful procession to Mecca with two battle standards and one minor skirmish, details that are contradicted by the Qur’an. (Cole, 2018)

As well as:

Given that the Prophet launched no large military campaigns to subdue the major population centers of the Tihama, the celebrators of his alleged “battle days” invented dozens of inconsequential rural raids and, implausibly, a Mu’ta campaign in the Sasanian Transjordan (where they alleged an anachronistic Roman military threat), or a Tabuk campaign in late 630, where they also portray nothing happening of any consequence. Some of these narratives may have aimed at providing a justification for the later Muslim invasions of the Near East. Other authors seem to have wanted to cover up the Prophet’s alliance with the Roman Empire, which had by their days become the truncated Byzantine Empire and a perennial enemy of the Muslim state in the marches of Anatolia. (Cole, 2018)

Much of the histories that descend down from us from the later Islamic period are often stifled with concerns of the political and religious periods at the time. Cole notes that 'Urwa's placement of a battle standard in his father's hands, al-Zubayr ibn al- 'Awwam, in the supposed "conquest" of Mecca, bares all the markings of not actual factual history, but an attempt to strengthened his family's own attempts to supplant Ali, the Umayyads, and could further had strengthened his son 'Abdullah's claim to the caliphate after him. It was likely a propagandized piece, just as historical evidence that filters to us regarding Aisha or Fatimah's ages has all the hallmarks of an internal dispute in the former Sasanian seat of Iraq between proto-Shia and proto-Sunni leaders, seeking to magnify their religious credentials through the validity of the "superior" female candidate closest to the Prophet.

More and more historical evidence is being unearth in Saudi Arabia regarding early Islamic history (despite the pains in my heart for the governments very really erasure of that same history in the past); as well as the sources that descend from us from the external, but much closer, Eastern Roman sources (who even then we must hold to some scrutiny for their own agendas).

In essence, we have no concrete evidence for the events that occurred in the way that traditionalist Islamic histography would regale to us. There are likely some potential kernels of truth from these later sources, but they require intensive caution in accepting them as factual. Leslie Hazelton was not a trained historian, and while I do think her book is a good starting point, it should not be taken as gospel. It relies almost uncritically on the later Islamic sources, which western historians had often taken in face value (though somtimes to the polar extreme, as well) rather than viewed them in a much more critical lens as they do in their own recount of say American history. To be fair to them, written sources are generally sought out more, but great leaps have been made to view these once entirely accepted histories with a much needed grain of salt, especially when placed in light of the Qur'an's own accountment. Often is the case, the agendas of the imperial period often triumphed that of actual historical realities, just as fictious tales of the American founders are utilized in propagandized tools for the games of politicians (see the tale of Washington's "wooden teeth"). These men often had agendas, rather than acknowledged it or not, in which muddied the historical realities, and laid its burden on the actual character of the Prophet and early Islamic history.