The possibility that part of the Kitab was added to it after its conclusion was raised many years ago. With regard to wa-inna yahūda l-aws… (§57) Wellhausen (73) says:

Watt is of the opinion that the Kitāb “as we have it contains articles from two or more different dates”. 178 He says elsewhere regarding the unity of the Kitāb: “The document is composite, as is shown by repetitions. In its present form it was seen to belong to a date after the Ķurayza affair in 5/627, but some of its articles may go back to the Pledge of War at al-'Akaba”. Watt (226-28) bases his argument on the following presumed inconsis tencies:

1. The believers are mostly spoken of in the third person, but sometimes they are “you” and sometimes “we”. “You” (§26: mahmā khtalaftum…) relates to the contracting parties with reference to their internal affairs. “We” (§18: man tabi'anā min yahud…; §20: kull ghaziya ghazat maʻanā…) relates to the contracting parties with reference to their dealings with foreign elements.

2. The Kitāb speaks mostly of “believers”, but twice they are “Muslims”.

§1 has Muʾminūn and Muslimūn as two distinct groups. §§28 and 44 refer to Muslimūn, not Muʾminun.

3. Following Wellhausen, Watt mentions that articles 24 (§27) and 38 (wa- inna l-yahud yunfiquna maʿa l-muʿminina mā dāmu ʾmuḥāribīna) are re- peated.

The clause was duplicated due to a scribal error. It is not found in Abū ʿUbayd's recension and is missing in some versions of Ibn Ishaq's recension. 4. There are similarities between different articles of the Kitāb. Watt ob- serves, however, that one set of articles is spread, according to his division. of the Kitāb, between articles 16 and 30 and another set between articles 37 and 46. According to Watt, this is sufficient to justify an examination of the possibility that the document as we have it contains articles from two or more different dates.