• What research did you need to complete in order to understand these texts? 

I had to look up locations and I could have researched all the people, but I made the choice to categorize them as "a warrior" or other type of person as I read the names and not research them.

• How would you make these texts relevant to your classroom? 

It would take a lot of work to make this text accessible (in English, content, and context) to my students. If I were to use these texts in my classroom, I might focus on geography and make a map showing the locations of the different places mentioned in relation to each other. The battle one I don't think I would use at all, but the Selections from the Life of Muhammad might be useful. We could analyze it through cultural practices of using wet nurses, evidence of what life was like at that particular time, and also the religious implications evident in the story.

• What information would you share with your students when you presented these texts? 

I would provide a glossary with some vocabulary for the Life of Muhammad (apostle, nurse, famine, destitute, emaciation, nuisance, etc.) and might do some pre-teaching about wet nurses. I would also set up the expectation that we were looking for historical evidence of what daily life was like at this time period and also religious evidence for how Believers knew Muhammad was important.

• Discuss how you would contextualize these readings for your students in a larger unit that you teach on medieval history.  

I might discuss the tradition of hagiography and share some saints' lives for comparison (to "normalize" this type of religious text).