Sirah Atlas

Sirah Atlas — The Interactive Atlas of the Prophetʼs ﷺ Biography

Sirah Atlas is an interactive scholarly atlas of early Islamic history, covering the Seerah of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, the caliphate of the Rashidun and the Islamic history of West Africa. Every event sits on a zoomable map and on a timeline that carries both the Hijri and the Gregorian date, alongside phase-by-phase battle reconstructions, long-form articles and audio narrations. The atlas is published in six languages and is built on the classical sources: al-Suyuti, al-Tabari and Ibn Kathir.

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The tradition of sirah atlases

Mapping the Seerah is an established scholarly genre. Shawqi Abu Khalilʼs Atlas of the Prophetʼs ﷺ Biography (Atlas al-Sira an-Nabawiyya) and the historical atlases of Sami ibn Abdullah al-Maghluth put the routes, battlefields and settlements of the Prophetʼs ﷺ life onto printed maps, and for a generation of readers those volumes were the standard visual reference for the Seerah.

Sirah Atlas continues that tradition in a medium the printed page cannot offer. The same geography becomes zoomable terrain; a battle unfolds as a sequence of reconstructed phases rather than a single static arrow; the chronology is navigable instead of fixed to a page order; and the material is corrected and extended continuously rather than at the next edition. The printed atlases remain worth owning. This is their living counterpart, not their replacement.

What you can explore

  • Interactive atlas

    The full map and timeline together: every event placed geographically and chronologically, filterable by epoch.

  • Battle maps

    Phase-by-phase reconstructions of the major early Islamic battles, each on terrain with its own narrative.

  • Seerah timeline

    The life of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ from 570 to 632 CE in chronological order, with Hijri and Gregorian dates.

  • Rashidun timeline

    The caliphates of Abu Bakr ﵁, Umar ﵁, Uthman ﵁ and Ali ﵁, event by event.

  • Islamic West Africa timeline

    The Islamic history of West Africa: the empires of the Sahel and their centres of learning, in chronological order.

  • Articles

    Long-form articles on the events, people and places behind every marker on the map.

Frequently asked questions

What is Sirah Atlas?
Sirah Atlas is an interactive online atlas of early Islamic history that places the Seerah of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, the Rashidun caliphate and the Islamic history of West Africa on a zoomable map and a dual-calendar timeline, combining phase-by-phase battle maps with long-form articles and audio narrations. It is an independent project, published in six languages, and it is extended and corrected continuously rather than fixed at a single edition.
Is Sirah Atlas free?
All historical content on Sirah Atlas is free to read: every article, every map, every battle reconstruction and every timeline is available without payment, so the whole history of the Seerah, the Rashidun caliphate and Islamic West Africa can be studied at no cost whatsoever. A free account is needed for a few sections. A paid subscription adds the audio narrations and the quiz system with unlimited daily questions and progress tracking; the articles themselves are never behind a paywall.
Which sources does Sirah Atlas use?
Sirah Atlas is built on the classical Islamic historians rather than on modern retellings: al-Suyuti for the history of the Rashidun caliphs, al-Tabari and Ibn Kathir for the wider chronology and for the terrain and phases of the battles, and the Seerah of Ibn Ishaq in the redaction of Ibn Hisham. Hadith material is taken from Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim. Articles carry their references, so a statement can be traced back to the historian who reports it.
In which languages is Sirah Atlas available?
Sirah Atlas is available in six languages: English, Dutch, German, French, Turkish and Russian, each with its own URL, its own translated interface and its own translated articles, so the maps, timelines and battle reconstructions can be read in full without switching to a second language. Dutch is the source language in which the articles are first written and the other five are translated from it. Where a translation is not yet available, the Dutch original is shown.
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