HISTORICAL GENEALOGY OF THE PRESENT QUR'AN

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Guillaume remarked, "the holy of holies. Itmust never rest beneath other books,

but always on top of them, onemust never drink or smoke when it is being read

aloud, and it must belistened to in silence. It is a talisman against disease

anddisaster."In some Westerners it engenders other emotions. For Gibbon it

wasan "incoherent rhapsody of fable," for Carlyle an "insupportablestupidity,"

while here is what the German scholar Salomon Reinachthought: "From the

literary point of view, the Koran has littlemerit. Declamation, repetition,

puerility, a lack of logic andcoherence strike the unprepared reader at every

turn. It ishumiliating to the human intellect to think that this

mediocreliterature has been the subject of innumerable commentaries, and

thatmillions of men are still wasting time absorbing it."For us in studying the

Koran it is necessary to distinguish thehistorical from the theological

attitude.

Here we are only concernedwith those truths that are yielded by a process of

rational enquiry,by scientific examination. "Critical investigation of the text

of theQu'ran is a study which is still in its infancy," wrote the Islamicscholar

Arthur Jeffery in 1937. In 1977 John Wansbrough notedthat "as a document

susceptible of analysis by the instruments andtechniques of Biblical criticism

[the Koran] is virtually unknown."By 1990, more than fifty years after

Jeffery's lament, we still havethe scandalous situation described by Andrew

Rippin:I have often encountered individuals who come to the study of Islamwith

a background in the historical study of the Hebrew Bible orearly Christianity,

and who express surprise at the lack of criticalthought that appears in

introductory textbooks on Islam. The notionthat "Islam was born in the clear

light of history" still seems to beassumed by a great many writers of such

texts. While the need toreconcile varying historical traditions is generally

recognized,usually this seems to pose no greater problem to the authors

thanhaving to determine "what makes sense" in a given situation. Tostudents

acquainted with approaches such as source criticism, oralformulaic

compositions, literary analysis and structuralism, allquite commonly employed

in the study of Judaism and Christianity,such naive historical study seems to

suggest that Islam is beingapproached with less than academic candor.The

questions any critical investigation of the Koran hopes to answerare:1. How did

the Koran come to us.?—That is the compilation and thetransmission of the

Koran.2. When was it written, and who wrote it?3. What are the sources of the

Koran? Where were the stories,legends, and principles that abound in the Koran

acquired?4. What is the Koran? Since there never was a textus receptus

nevarietur of the Koran, we need to decide its authenticity.I shall begin with

the traditional account that is more or lessaccepted by most Western scholars,

and then move on to the views of asmall but very formidable, influential, and

growing group of scholarsinspired by the work of John Wansbrough.According to

the traditional account the Koran was revealed toMuhammad, usually by an angel,

gradually over a period of years untilhis death in 632 C.E. It is not clear how

much of the Koran had beenwritten down by the time of Muhammad's death, but it

seems probablethat there was no single manuscript in which the Prophet himself

hadcollected all the revelations. Nonetheless, there are traditionswhich

describe how the Prophet dictated this or that portion of theKoran to his

secretaries.The Collection Under Abu Bakr Henceforth the traditional account

becomes more and more confused;in fact there is

no one tradition but several incompatible ones.According to one tradition,

during Abu Bakr's brief caliphate (632-634), `Umar, who himself was to succeed

to the caliphate in 634,became worried at the fact that so many Muslims who had

known theKoran by heart were killed during the Battle of Yamama, in

CentralArabia. There was a real danger that parts of the Koran would

beirretrievably lost unless a collection of the Koran was made beforemore of

those who knew this or that part of the Koran by heart werekilled. Abu Bakr

eventually gave his consent to such a project, andasked Zayd ibn Thabit, the

former secretary of the Prophet, toundertake this daunting task. So Zayd

proceeded to collect theKoran "from pieces of papyrus, flat stones, palm

leaves, shoulderblades and ribs of animals, pieces of leather and wooden

boards, aswell as from the hearts of men." Zayd then copied out what he

hadcollected on sheets or leaves

(Arabic, suhuf). Once complete, theKoran was handed over to Abu Bakr, and on his

death passed to `Umar,and upon his death passed to `Umar's daughter, Hafsa.There

are however different versions of this tradition; in some it issuggested that it

was Abu Bakr who first had the idea to make thecollection; in other versions the

credit is given to Ali, the fourthcaliph and the founder of the Shias; other

versions still completelyexclude Abu Bakr. Then, it is argued that such a

difficult task couldnot have been accomplished in just two years. Again, it is

unlikelythat those who died in the Battle of Yamama, being new converts,

knewany of the Koran by heart. But what is considered the most tellingpoint

against this tradition of the first collection of the Koranunder Abu Bakr is

that once the collection was made it was nottreated as an official codex, but

almost as the private property ofHafsa. In other words, we find that

no authority is attributed to AbuBakr's Koran. It has been suggested that the

entire story wasinvented to take the credit of having made the first

officialcollection of the Koran away from `Uthman, the third caliph, who

wasgreatly disliked. Others have suggested that it was invented "to takethe

collection of the Quran back as near as possible to Muhammad'sdeath."The

Collection Under `Uthman According to tradition, the next step was taken under

`Uthman (644-656). One of `Uthman's generals asked the caliph to make such

acollection because serious disputes had broken out among his troopsfrom

different provinces in regard to the correct readings of theKoran. `Uthman

chose Zayd ibn Thabit to prepare the official text.Zayd, with the help of three

members of noble Meccan families,carefully revised the Koran comparing his

version with the "leaves"in the possession of Hafsa, `Umar's daughter; and as

instructed,

incase of difficulty as to the reading, Zayd followed the dialect ofthe Quraysh,

the Prophet's tribe. The copies of the new version,which must have been

completed between 650 and `Uthman's death in656, were sent to Kufa, Basra,

Damascus, and perhaps Mecca, and onewas, of course, kept in Medina. All other

versions were ordered to bedestroyed.This version of events is also open to

criticism. The Arabic found inthe Koran is not a dialect. In some versions the

number of peopleworking on the commission with Zayd varies, and in some are

includedthe names of persons who were enemies of `Uthman, and the name

ofsomeone known to have died before these events! This phase two of thestory

does not mention Zayd's part in the original collection of theKoran discussed

in phase one.Apart from Wansbrough and his disciples, whose work we shall look

atin a moment, most modern scholars seem to accept that theestablishment

of the text of the Koran took place under `Uthmanbetween 650 and 656, despite

all the criticisms mentioned above. Theyaccept more or less the traditional

account of the `Uthmaniccollection, it seems to me, without giving a single

coherent reasonfor accepting this second tradition as opposed to the first

traditionof the collection under Abu Bakr. There is a massive gap in

theirarguments, or rather they offer no arguments at all. For instance,Charles

Adams after enumerating the difficulties with the `Uthmanicstory, concludes

with breathtaking abruptness and break inlogic, "Despite the difficulties with

the traditional accounts therecan be no question of the importance of the codex

preparedunder `Uthman." But nowhere has it yet been established that it

wasindeed under `Uthman that the Koran as we know it was prepared. It issimply

assumed all along that it was under `Uthman that the Koran wasestablished in

its final form,

and all we have to do is to explainaway some of the difficulties. Indeed, we can

apply the samearguments to dismiss the `Uthmanic story as were used to dismiss

theAbu Bakr story. That is, we can argue that the `Uthmanic story wasinvented

by the enemies of Abu Bakr and the friends of `Uthman;political polemics can

equally be said to have played their part inthe fabrication of this later

story. It also leaves unanswered somany awkward questions. What were these

"leaves" in the possession ofHafsa? And if the Abu Bakr version is pure forgery

where did Hafsaget hold of them? Then what are those versions that seemed to

befloating around in the provinces? When were these alternative textscompiled,

and by whom? Can we really pick and choose, at our ownwill, from amongst the

variants, from the contradictory traditions?There are no compelling reasons for

accepting the `Uthmanic story andnot the Abu Bakr one; after all they are

all gleaned from the samesources, which are all exceedingly late, tendentious in

the extreme,and all later fabrications, as we shall see later.But I have even

more fundamental problems in accepting any of thesetraditional accounts at

their face value. When listening to theseaccounts, some very common- sensical

objections arise which no oneseems to have dared to ask. First, all these

stories place anenormous burden on the memories of the early Muslims.

Indeed,scholars are compelled to exaggerate the putatively prodigiousmemories

of the Arabs. Muhammad could not read or write according tosome traditions, and

therefore everything depends on him havingperfectly memorized what God revealed

to him through His Angels. Someof the stories in the Koran are enormously long;

for instance, thestory of Joseph takes up a whole chapter of 111 verses. Are we

reallyto believe that Muhammad remembered it exactly as it was

revealed?Similarly the Companions of the Prophet are said to have memorizedmany

of his utterances. Could their memories never have failed? Oraltraditions have

a tendency to change over time, and they cannot berelied upon to construct a

reliable, scientific history. Second, weseem to assume that the Companions of

the Prophet heard andunderstood him perfectly.Variant Versions, Verses Missing,

Verses AddedAlmost without exceptions Muslims consider that the Quran we

nowpossess goes back in its text and in the number and order of thechapters to

the work of the commission that `Uthman appointed. Muslimorthodoxy holds

further that `Uthman's Quran contains all of therevelation delivered to the

community faithfully preserved withoutchange or variation of any kind and that

the acceptance ofthe `Uthmanic Quran was all but universal from the day of

itsdistribution. The orthodox position is

motivated by dogmatic factors;it cannot be supported by the historical

evidence....Charles AdamsWhile modern Muslims may be committed to an impossibly

conservativeposition, Muslim scholars of the early years of Islam were far

moreflexible, realizing that parts of the Koran were lost, perverted, andthat

there were many thousand variants which made it impossible totalk of the Koran.

For example, As-Suyuti (died 1505), one of themost famous and revered of the

commentators of the Koran, quotesIbn `Umar al Khattab as saying: "Let no one of

you say that he hasacquired the entire Quran, for how does he know that it is

all? Muchof the Quran has been lost, thus let him say, `I have acquired of

itwhat is available'" (As-Suyuti, Itqan, part 3, page 72). A'isha, thefavorite

wife of the Prophet, says, also according to a traditionrecounted by as-Suynti,

"During the time of the Prophet, the chapterof the Parties used to

be two hundred verses when read. When `Uthmanedited the copies of the Quran,

only the current (verses) wererecorded" (73).As-Suyuti also tells this story

about Uba ibn Ka'b, one of the greatcompanions of Muhammad:This famous

companion asked one of the Muslims, "How many verses inthe chapter of the

Parties?" He said, "Seventy-three verses." He(Uba) told him, "It used to be

almost equal to the chapter of the Cow(about 286 verses) and included the verse

of the stoning". The manasked, "What is the verse of the stoning?" He (Uba)

said, "If an oldman or woman committed adultery, stone them to death."As noted

earlier, since there was no single document collecting allthe revelations,

after Muhammad's death in 632 C.E., many of hisfollowers tried to gather all

the known revelations and write themdown in codex form. Soon we had the codices

of several scholars suchas Ibn Masud, Uba ibn Ka'b, `Ali, Abu Bakr, al-Aswad,

and others(Jeffery, chapter 6, has listed fifteen primary codices, and a

largenumber of secondary ones). As Islam spread, we eventually had whatbecame

known as the metropolitan codices in the centers of Mecca,Medina, Damascus,

Kufa, and Basra. As we saw earlier, `Uthman triedto bring order to this chaotic

situation by canonizing the MedinanCodex, copies of which were sent to all the

metropolitan centers,with orders to destroy all the other codices.`Uthman's

codex was supposed to standardize the consonantal text, yetwe find that many of

the variant traditions of this consonantal textsurvived well into the fourth

Islamic century. The problem wasaggravated by the fact that the consonantal

text was unpointed, thatis to say, the dots that distinguish, for example, a

"b" from a "t"or a "th" were missing. Several other letters (f and q; j, h, and

kh;s and d; r and z; s and sh; d and dh, t and z) wereindistinguishable. In

other words, the Koran was written in a scriptadefectiva. As a result, a great

many variant readings were possibleaccording to the way the text was pointed

(had the dots added).Vowels presented an even worse problem. Originally, the

Arabs had nosigns for the short vowels: the Arab script is consonantal.

Althoughthe short vowels are sometimes omitted, they can be represented

byorthographical signs placed above or below the letters—three signs inall,

taking the form of a slightly slanting dash or a comma. Afterhaving settled the

consonants, Muslims still had to decide whatvowels to employ: using different

vowels, of course, rendereddifferent readings. The scripta plena, which allowed

a fully voweledand pointed text, was not perfected until the late ninth

century.The problems posed by the scripta defectiva inevitably led to thegrowth

of different centers with their own variant traditions of howthe texts should be

pointed or vowelized. Despite `Uthman's order todestroy all texts other than his

own, it is evident that the oldercodices survived. As Charles Adams says, "It

must be emphasized thatfar from there being a single text passed down inviolate

from thetime of `Uthman's commission, literally thousands of variant readingsof

particular verses were known in the first three (Muslim)centuries. These

variants affected even the `Uthmanic codex, makingit difficult to know what its

true form may have been."Some Muslims preferred codices other than the

`Uthmanic, for example,those of Ibn Mas'ud, Uba ibn Ka'b, and Abu Musa.

Eventually, underthe influence of the great Koranic scholar Ibn Mujahid (died

935),there was a definite canonization of one system of consonants and alimit

placed on the variations of vowels used in the text thatresulted in acceptance

of seven systems. But other scholars acceptedten readings, and still others

accepted fourteen readings. Even IbnMujahid's seven provided fourteen

possibilities since each of theseven was traced through two different

transmitters, viz,1. Nafi of Medina according to Warsh and Qalun2. Ibn Kathir

of Mecca according to al-Bazzi and Qunbul3. Ibn Amir of Damascus according to

Hisham and Ibn Dakwan4. Abu Amr of Basra according to al-Duri and al-Susi5.

Asim of Kufa according to Hafs and Abu Bakr6. Hamza of Kuga according to Khalaf

and Khallad7. Al-Kisai of Kufa according to al Duri and Abul HarithIn the end

three systems prevailed, those of Warsh (d. 812) from Nafiof Medina, Hafs (d.

805) from Asim of Kufa, and al-Duri (d. 860) fromAbu Amr of Basra. At present

in modern Islam, two versions seem to bein use: that of Asim of Kufa through

Hafs, which was given a kind ofofficial seal of approval by being adopted in

the Egyptian edition ofthe Koran in 1924; and that of

Nafi through Warsh, which is used inparts of Africa other than Egypt.As Charles

Adams reminds us:It is of some importance to call attention to a possible

source ofmisunderstanding with regard to the variant readings of the Quran.The

seven (versions) refer to actual written and oral text, todistinct versions of

Quranic verses, whose differences, though theymay not be great, are nonetheless

substantial. Since the veryexistence of variant readings and versions of the

Quran goes againstthe doctrinal position toward the Holy Book held by many

modernMuslims, it is not uncommon in an apologetic context to hear theseven

(versions) explained as modes of recitation; in fact the mannerand technique of

recitation are an entirely different matter.Guillaume also refers to the

variants as "not always trifling insignificance." For example, the last two

verses of sura LXXXV, AlBuraj, read: (21) hawa qur'anun majidun;

(22) fi lawhin mahfuzun/in.The last syllable is in doubt. If it is in the

genitive -in, it givesthe meaning "It is a glorious Koran on a preserved

tablet"—areference to the Muslim doctrine of the Preserved Tablet. If it isthe

nominative ending -un, we get "It is a glorious Koran preservedon a tablet."

There are other passages with similar difficultiesdealing with social

legislation.If we allow that there were omissions, then why not additions?

Theauthenticity of many verses in the Koran has been called intoquestion by

Muslims themselves. Many Kharijites, who were followersof `Ali in the early

history of Islam, found the sura recounting thestory of Joseph offensive, an

erotic tale that did not belong in theKoran. Hirschfeld questioned the

authenticity of verses in which thename Muhammad occurs, there being something

rather suspicious in sucha name, meaning `Praised', being borne by the Prophet.

The name

wascertainly not very common. However the Prophet's name does occur indocuments

that have been accepted as genuine, such as theConstitution of Medina.Most

scholars believe that there are interpolations in the Koran;these

interpolations can be seen as interpretative glosses on certainrare words in

need of explanation. More serious are theinterpolations of a dogmatic or

political character, which seem tohave been added to justify the elevation of

`Uthman as caliph to thedetriment of `Ali. Then there are other verses that

have been addedin the interest of rhyme, or to join together two short passages

thaton their own lack any connection.Bell and Watt carefully go through many of

the amendments andrevisions and point to the unevenness of the Koranic style

asevidence for a great many alterations in the Koran:There are indeed many

roughness of this kind, and these, it is hereclaimed, are fundamental

evidence for revision. Besides the pointsalready noticed—hidden rhymes, and

rhyme phrases not woven into thetexture of the passage—there are the following

abrupt changes ofrhyme; repetition of the same rhyme word or rhyme phrase in

adjoiningverses; the intrusion of an extraneous subject into a passageotherwise

homogeneous; a differing treatment of the same subject inneighbouring verses,

often with repetition of words and phrases;breaks in grammatical construction

which raise difficulties inexegesis; abrupt changes in length of verse; sudden

changes of thedramatic situation, with changes of pronoun from singular to

plural,from second to third person, and so on; the juxtaposition ofapparently

contrary statements; the juxtaposition of passages ofdifferent date, with

intrusion of fare phrases into early verses. In many cases a passage has

alternative continuationswhich follow one another in the present text.

The second of thealternatives is marked by a break in sense and by a break

ingrammatical construction, since the connection is not with whatimmediately

precedes, but with what stands some distance back.The Christian al-Kindi (not

to be confused with the Arab, Muslimphilosopher) writing around 830 C.E.,

criticized the Koran in similarterms:The result of all this (process by which

the Quran came into being)is patent to you who have read the scriptures and see

how, in yourbook, histories are jumbled together and intermingled; an

evidencethat many different hands have been at work therein, and

causeddiscrepancies, adding or cutting out whatever they liked or disliked.Are

such, now, the conditions of a revelation sent down from heaven?Skepticism of

the SourcesThe traditional accounts of the life of Muhammad and the story of

theorigin and rise of Islam, including the compilation of the Koran, arebased

exclusively on Muslim sources, particularly the Muslimbiographies of Muhammad,

and the Hadith, that is the Muslimtraditions.The Prophet Muhammad died in 632

C.E. The earliest material on hislife that we possess was written by Ibn Ishaq

in 750 C.E., in otherwords, a hundred twenty years after Muhammad's death. The

question ofauthenticity becomes even more critical, because the original form

ofIbn Ishaq's work is lost and is only available in parts in a laterrecension

by Ibn Hisham who died in 834 C.E., two hundred years afterthe death of the

Prophet.The Hadith are a collection of sayings and doings attributed to

theProphet and traced back to him through a series of putativelytrustworthy

witnesses (any particular chain of transmitters is calledan isnad). These

Hadith include the story of the compilation of theKoran, and the sayings of the

companions of the Prophet. There aresaid to be six correct or

authentic collections of traditionsaccepted by Sunni Muslims, namely, the

compilations of Bukhari,Muslim, Ibn Maja, Abu Dawud, al-Tirmidhi, and al-Nisai.

Again it isworth noting that all these sources are very late indeed. Bukharidied

238 years after the death of the Prophet, while al-Nisai diedover 280 years

after!The historical and biographical tradition concerning Muhammad and

theearly years of Islam was submitted to a thorough examination at theend of

the nineteenth century. Up to then careful scholars were wellaware of the

legendary and theological elements in these traditions,and that there were

traditions which originated from party motive andwhich intended "to give an

appearance of historical foundation to theparticular interests of certain

persons or families; but it wasthought that after some sifting there yet

remained enough to enableus to form a much clearer sketch of Muhammad's life

than that of

anyother of the founders of a universal religion." This illusion wasshattered by

Wellhausen, Caetani, and Lammens who called "one afteranother of the data of

Muslim tradition into question."Wellhausen divided the old historical

traditions as found in theninth- and tenth-century compilations in two: first,

an authenticprimitive tradition, definitively recorded in the late

eighthcentury, and second a parallel version which was deliberately forgedto

rebut this. The second version was full of tendentious fiction,and was to be

found in the work of historians such as Sayf b. `Umar(see above). Prince

Caetani and Father Lammens cast doubt even ondata hitherto accepted as

"objective." The biographers of Muhammadwere too far removed from his time to

have true data or notions; farfrom being objective the data rested on

tendentious fiction;furthermore it was not their aim to know these things as

they reallyhappened, but

to construct an ideal vision of the past, as it oughtto have been. "Upon the

bare canvas of verses of the Koran that needexplanation, the traditionists have

embroidered with great boldnessscenes suitable to the desires or ideals of their

paricular group; orto use a favorite metaphor of Lammens, they fill the empty

spaces bya process of stereotyping which permits the critical observer

torecognize the origin of each picture."As Lewis puts it, "Lammens went so far

as to reject the entirebiography as no more than a conjectural and tendentious

exegesis of afew passages of biographical content in the Quran, devised

andelaborated by later generations of believers."Even scholars who rejected the

extreme skepticism of Caetani andLammens were forced to recognize that "of

Muhammad's life before hisappearance as the messenger of God, we know extremely

little;compared to the legendary biography as treasured by the

faithful,practically nothing."The ideas of the Positivist Caetani and the Jesuit

Lammens were neverforgotten, and indeed they were taken up by a group of

SovietIslamologists, and pushed to their extreme but logical conclusions.The

ideas of the Soviet scholars were in turn taken up in the 1970s,by Cook, Crone,

and other disciples of Wansbrough.What Caetani and Lammens did for historical

biography, IgnazGoldziher did for the study of Hadith. Goldziher has had an

enormousinfluence in the field of Islamic studies, and it is no exaggerationto

say that he is, along with Hurgronje and Noldeke, one of thefounding fathers of

the modern study of Islam. Practically everythinghe wrote between roughly 1870

and 1920 is still studied assiduouslyin universities throughout the world. In

his classic paper, "On theDevelopment of Hadith," Goldziher "demonstrated that

a vast number ofHadith accepted even in the most rigorously

critical Muslimcollections were outright forgeries from the late 8th and

9thcenturies—and as a consequence, that the meticulous isnads [chains

oftransmitters] which supported them were utterly fictitious."Faced with

Goldziher's impeccably documented arguments, historiansbegan to panic and

devise spurious ways of keeping skepticism at bay,such as, for instance,

postulating ad hoc distinctions between legaland historical traditions. But as

Humphreys says, in their formalstructure, the Hadirh and historical traditions

were very similar;furthermore many eighth- and ninth-century Muslim scholars

had workedon both kinds of texts. "Altogether, if hadith isnads were suspect,so

then should be the isnads attached to historical reports."As Goldziher puts it

himself, "close acquaintance with the vast stockof hadiths induces sceptical

caution," and he considers by far thegreater part of the Hadith "the result of

the

religious, historicaland social development of Islam during the first two

centuries." TheHadith is useless as a basis for any scientific history, and can

onlyserve as a "reflection of the tendencies" of the early Muslimcommunity.Here

I need to interpose a historical digression, if we are to have aproper

understanding of Goldziher's arguments. After the death of theProphet, four of

his companions succeeded him as leaders of theMuslim community; the last of the

four was `Ali, the Prophet's cousinand son-in-law. `Ali was unable to impose his

authority in Syriawhere the governor was Mu'awiya who adopted the war cry of

"Vengeancefor `Uthman" against `Ali (Mu'awiya and `Uthman were related and

bothbelonged to the Meccan clan of Umayya). The forces of the two met inan

indecisive battle at Siffin. After `Ali's murder in 661, Mu'awiyabecame the

first caliph of the dynasty we know as the Umayyad, whichendured until 750

C.E. The Umayyads were deposed by the `Abbasids,who lasted in Iraq and Baghdad

until the thirteenth century.During the early years of the Umayyad dynasty,

many Muslims weretotally ignorant in regard to ritual and doctrine. The

rulersthemselves had little enthusiasm for religion, and generally despisedthe

pious and the ascetic. The result was that there arose a group ofpious men who

shamelessly fabricated traditions for the good of thecommunity, and traced them

back to the authority of the Prophet. Theyopposed the godless Umayyads but dared

not say so openly, so theyinvented further traditions dedicated to praising the

Prophet'sfamily, hence indirectly giving their allegiance to the party of

`Alisupporters. As Goldziher puts it, "The ruling power itself was notidle. If

it wished an opinion to be generally recognized and theopposition of pious

circles silenced; it too had to know how todiscover a hadith to suit its

purpose. They had to do what theiropponents did: invent and have invented,

hadiths in their turn. Andthat is in effect what they did." Goldziher

continues:Official influences on the invention, dissemination and suppressionof

traditions started early. An instruction given to his obedientgovernor al

Mughira by Muawiya is in the spirit of the Umayyads: "Donot tire of abusing and

insulting Ali and calling for God'smercifulness for `Uthman, defaming the

companions of Ali, removingthem and omitting to listen to them (i.e., to what

they tell andpropagate as hadiths); praising in contrast, the clan of

`Uthman,drawing them near to you and listening to them." This is an

officialencouragement to foster the rise and spread of hadiths directedagainst

Ali and to hold back and suppress hadiths favoring Ali. TheUmayyads and their

political followers had no scruples in promotingtendentious lies in a sacred

religious form, and

they were onlyconcerned to find pious authorities who would be prepared to

coversuch falsifications with their undoubted authority. There was neverany

lack of these.Hadiths were liable to be fabricated even for the most

trivialritualistic details. Tendentiousness included the suppression ofexisting

utterances friendly to the rival party or dynasty. Underthe `Abbasids, the

fabrications of hadiths greatly multiplied, withthe express purpose of proving

the legitimacy of their own clanagainst the `Alids. For example, the Prophet

was made to say that AbuTalib, father of `Ali, was sitting deep in hell:

"Perhaps myintercession will be of use to him on the day of resurrection so

thathe may be transferred into a pool of fire which reaches only up tothe

ankles but which is still hot enough to burn the brain."Naturally enough this

was countered by the theologians of the `Aliasby devising numerous traditions

concerning the

glorification of AbuTalib, all sayings of the prophet. "In fact," as Goldziher

shows,amongst the opposing factions, "the mischievous use of

tendentioustraditions was even more common than the official party."Eventually

storytellers made a good living inventing entertainingHadiths, which the

credulous masses lapped up eagerly. To draw thecrowds the storytellers shrank

from nothing. "The handling down ofhadiths sank to the level of a business very

early. Journeys (insearch of hadiths) favored the greed of those who succeeded

inpretending to be a source of the hadith, and with increasing demandsprang up

an even increasing desire to be paid in cash for thehadiths supplied."Of course

many Muslims were aware that forgeries abounded. But eventhe so-called six

authentic collections of hadiths compiled byBukhari and others were not as

rigorous as might have been hoped. Thesix had varying criteria for including a

Hadith

as genuine or not—some were rather liberal in their choice, others rather

arbitrary.Then there was the problem of the authenticity of the texts of

thesecompilers. For example, at one point there were a dozen differentBukhari

texts; and apart from these variants, there were deliberateinterpolations. As

Goldziher warns us, "It would be wrong to thinkthat the canonical authority of

the two [collections of Bukhari andMuslim] is due to the undisputed correctness

of their contents and isthe result of scholarly investigations." Even a tenth

century criticpointed out the weaknesses of two hundred traditions incorporated

inthe works of Muslim and Bukhari.Goldziher's arguments were followed up, nearly

sixty years later, byanother great Islamicist, Joseph Schacht, whose works on

Islamic laware considered classics in the field of Islamic studies.

Schacht'sconclusions were even more radical and perturbing, and the

fullimplications of these conclusions have not yet sunk in.Humphreys sums up

Schacht's theses as: (1) that isnads [the chain oftransmitters] going all the

way back to the Prophet only began to bewidely used around the time of the

Abbasid Revolution—i.e., the mid-8th century; (2) that ironically, the more

elaborate and formallycorrect an isnad appeared to be, the more likely it was

to bespurious. In general, he concluded, "NO existing hadith could bereliably

ascribed to the prophet, though some of them mightultimately be rooted in his

teaching. And though [schacht] devotedonly a few pages to historical reports

about the early Caliphate, heexplicitly asserted that the same strictures

should apply to them."Schacht's arguments were backed up by a formidable list

ofreferences, and they could not be dismissed easily. Here is howSchacht

himself sums up his own thesis:It is generally conceded that the

criticism of traditions aspracticed by the Muhammadan scholars is inadequate and

that, howevermany forgeries may have been eliminated by it, even the

classicalcorpus contains a great many traditions which cannot possibly

beauthentic. All efforts to extract from this often self-contradictorymass an

authentic core by "historic intuition"… have failed.Goldziher, in another of

his fundamental works, has not only voicedhis "sceptical reserve" with regard

to the traditions contained evenin the classical collections [i.e., the

collections of Bukhari,Muslim, et al.], but shown positively that the great

majority oftraditions from the Prophet are documents not of the time to

whichthey claim to belong, but of the successive stages of development

ofdoctrines during the first centuries of Islam. This brilliantdiscovery became

the corner-stone of all serious investigation…This book [i.e., Schacht's own

book] will be found to

confirmGoldziher's results, and go beyond them in the following respects: agreat

many traditions in the classical and other collections were putinto circulation

only after Shafi`i's time [shafi`i was the founderof the very important school

of law which bears his name; he died in820 C.E.]; the first considerable body

of legal traditions from theProphet originated towards the middle of the second

[Muslim] century[i.e., eighth century C.E.], in opposition to slightly

earliertraditions from the Companions and other authorities, and to theliving

tradition of the ancient schools of law; traditions fromCompanions and other

authorities underwent the same process ofgrowth, and are to be considered in

the same light, as traditionsfrom the Prophet; the study of isnads show a

tendency to growbackwards and to claim higher and higher authority until they

arriveat the Prophet; the evidence of legal traditions carries back

toabout the year 100 A.H. [718 C.E.]...Schacht proves that, for example, a

tradition did not exist at aparticular time by showing that it was not used as

a legal argumentin a discussion which would have made reference to it

imperative, ifit had existed. For Schacht every legal tradition from the

Prophetmust be taken as inauthentic and the fictitious expression of a

legaldoctrine formulated at a later date: "We shall not meet any legaltradition

from the Prophet which can positively be consideredauthentic."Traditions were

formulated polemically in order to rebut a contrarydoctrine or practice;

Schacht calls these traditions "countertraditions." Doctrines, in this

polemical atmosphere, were frequentlyprojected back to higher authorities:

"traditions from Successors [tothe Prophet] become traditions from Companions

[of the Prophet], andtraditions from Companions become traditions from the

Prophet."Details from

the life of the Prophet were invented to support legaldoctrines.Schacht then

criticizes isnads which "were often put together verycarelessly. Any typical

representative of the group whose doctrinewas to be projected back on to an

ancient authority, could be chosenat random and put into the isnad. We find

therefore a number ofalternative names in otherwise identical isnads."Shacht

"showed that the beginnings of Islamic law cannot be tracedfurther back than to

about a century after the Prophet's death."Islamic law did not directly derive

from the Koran but developed outof popular and administrative practice under

the Ummayads, andthis "practice often diverged from the intentions and even

theexplicit wording of the Koran." Norms derived from the Koran wereintroduced

into Islamic law at a secondary stage.A group of scholars was convinced of the

essential soundness ofSchacht's analysis, and proceeded to

work out in full detail theimplications of Schacht's arguments. The first of

these scholars wasJohn Wansbrough, who in two important though formidably

difficultbooks, Quaranic Studies: Sources and Methods of

ScripturalInterpretation (1977) and The Sectarian Milieu: Content

andComposition of Islamic Salvation History (1978), showed that theKoran and

Hadith grew out of sectarian controversies over a longperiod, perhaps as long

as two centuries, and then was projected backonto an invented Arabian point of

origin. He further argued thatIslam emerged only w hen it came into contact

with and under theinfluence of Rabbinic Judaism—"that Islamic doctrine

generally, andeven the figure of Muhammad, were molded on Rabbinic

Jewishprototypes.Proceeding from these conclusions, The Sectarian

Milieuanalyses early Islamic historiography—or rather the interpretivemyths

underlying this historiography—as a late manifestation of

OldTestament `salvation history.'"Wansbrough shows that far from being fixed in

the seventh century,the definitive text of the Koran had still not been

achieved as lateas the ninth century. An Arabian origin for Islam is highly

unlikely:the Arabs gradually formulated their creed as they came into

contactwith Rabbinic Judaism outside the Hijaz (Central Arabia, containingthe

cities of Mecca and Medina). "Quranic allusion presupposesfamiliarity with the

narrative material of Judaeo-Christianscripture, which was not so much

reformulated as merely referredto.... Taken together, the quantity of

reference, the mechanicallyrepetitious employment of rhetorical convention, and

the stridentlypolemical style, all suggest a strongly sectarian atmosphere in

whicha corpus of familiar scripture was being pressed into the service ofas yet

unfamiliar doctrine." Elsewhere Wansbrough says, "[The]challenge to produce an

identical

or superior scripture (or portionthereof), expressed five times in the Quranic

text can be explainedonly within a context of Jewish polemic."Earlier scholars

such as Torrey, recognizing the genuine borrowingsin the Koran from Rabbinic

literature, had jumped to conclusionsabout the Jewish population in the Hijaz

(i.e., Central Arabia). Butas Wansbrough puts it, "References in Rabbinic

literature to Arabiaare of remarkably little worth for purposes of

historicalreconstruction, and especially for the Hijaz in the sixth and

seventhcenturies.Much influenced by the Rabbinic accounts, the early Muslim

communitytook Moses as an exemplum, and then a portrait of Muhammad emerged,but

only gradually and in response to the needs of a religiouscommunity. This

community was anxious to establish Muhammad'scredentials as a prophet on the

Mosaic model; this evidently meantthere had to be a Holy Scripture, which would

be

seen as testimony tohis prophethood. Another gradual development was the

emergence of theidea of the Arabian origins of Islam. To this end, there

waselaborated the concept of a sacred language, Arabic. The Koran wassaid to be

handed down by God in pure Arabic. It is significant thatthe ninth century also

saw the first collections of the ancientpoetry of the Arabs: "The manner in

which this material wasmanipulated by its collectors to support almost any

argument appearsnever to have been very successfully concealed." Thus

Muslimphilologists were able to give, for instance, an early date to a

poemascribed to Nabigha Jadi, a pre-Islamic poet, in order to "provide

apre-Islamic proof text for a common Quranic construction." The aim inappealing

to the authority of pre-Islamic poetry was twofold: firstto give ancient

authority to their own Holy Scripture, to push backthis sacred text into an

earlier period, and thus give

their textgreater authenticity, a text which in reality had been fabricated

inthe later ninth century, along with all the supporting traditions.Second, it

gave a specifically Arabian flavor, an Arabian setting totheir religion,

something distinct from Judaism and Christianity.Exegetical traditions were

equally fictitious and had but one aim, todemonstrate the Hijazi origins of

Islam. Wansbrough gives somenegative evidence to show that the Koran had not

achieved anydefinitive form before the ninth century:Schacht's studies of the

early development of legal doctrine withinthe community demonstrate that with

very few exceptions, Muslimjurisprudence was not derived from the contents of

the Quran. It maybe added that those few exceptions are themselves hardly

evidence forthe existence of the canon, and further observed that even

wheredoctrine was alleged to draw upon scripture, such is nor necessarilyproof

of

the earlier existence of the scriptural source. Derivationof law from

scripture... was a phenomenon of the ninth century....Asimilar kind of negative

evidence is absence of any reference to theQuran in the Fiqh Akbar I….The latter

is a document, dated to the middle of the eighth century,which was a kind of

statement of the Muslim creed in face of sects.Thus the Fiqh Akbar I represents

the views of the orthodoxy on thethen prominent dogmatic questions. It seems

unthinkable had the Koranexisted that no reference would have been made to

it.Wansbrough submits the Koran to a highly technical analysis with theaim of

showing that it cannot have been deliberately edited by a fewmen, but "rather

the product of an organic development fromoriginally independent traditions

during a long period oftransmission."Wansbrough was to throw cold water on the

idea that the Koran was theonly hope for genuine historical information

regarding the Prophet;an idea summed up by Jeffery, "The dominant note in this

advancedcriticism is `back to the Koran.' As a basis for critical biographythe

Traditions are practically worthless; in the Koran alone can webe said to have

firm ground under our feet." But as Wansbrough was toshow: "The role of the

Quran in the delineation of an Arabian prophetwas peripheral: evidence of a

divine communication but not a reportof its circumstances.... The very notion

of biographical data in theQuran depends on exegetical principles derived from

material externalto the canon."A group of scholars influenced by Wansbrough

took an even moreradical approach; they rejected wholesale the entire Islamic

versionof early Islamic history. Michael Cook, Patricia Crone, and MartinHinds

writing between 1977 and 1987regard the whole established version of Islamic

history down at leastto the time of Abd al-Malik (685-705)

as a later fabrication, andreconstruct the Arab Conquests and the formation of

the Caliphate asa movement of peninsular Arabs who had been inspired by

Jewishmessianism to try to reclaim the Promised Land. In thisinterpretation,

Islam emerged as an autonomous religion and cultureonly within the process of a

long struggle for identity among thedisparate peoples yoked together by the

Conquests: Jacobite Syrians,Nestorian Aramaeans in Iraq, Copts, Jews, and

(finally) peninsularArabs.The traditional account of the life of Muhammad and

the rise of Islamis no longer accepted by Cook, Crone, and Hinds. In the shore

butpithy monograph on Muhammad in the Oxford Past Masters series, Cookgives his

reasons for rejecting the biographical traditions:False ascription was rife

among the eighth-century scholars, and...inany case Ibn Ishaq and his

contemporaries were drawing on oraltradition. Neither of these propositions is

as

arbitrary as itsounds. We have reason to believe that numerous traditions

onquestions of dogma and law were provided with spuriousus chains ofauthorities

by those who put them into circulation; and at the sametime we have much

evidence of controversy in the eighth century as towhether it was permissible

to reduce oral tradition to writing. Theimplications of this view for the

reliability of our sources areclearly rather negative. If we cannot trust the

chains ofauthorities, we can no longer claim to know that we have before usthe

separately transmitted accounts of independent witnesses; and ifknowledge of

the life of Muhammad was transmitted orally for acentury before it was reduced

to writing, then the chances are thatthe material will have undergone

considerable alteration in theprocess.Cook then looks at the non-Muslim

sources: Greek, Syriac, andArmenian. Here a totally unexpected picture emerges.

Though there

isno doubt that someone called Muhammad existed, that he was amerchant, that

something significant happened in 622, that Abrahamwas central to his teaching,

there is no indication that Muhammad'scareer unfolded in inner Arabia, there is

no mention of Mecca, andthe Koran makes no appearance until the last years of

the seventhcentury. Further, it emerges from this evidence that the

Muslimsprayed in a direction much further north than Mecca, hence

theirsanctuary cannot have been in Mecca. "Equally, when the first

Koranicquotations appear on coins and inscriptions towards the end of

theseventh century, they show divergences from the canonical text. Theseare

trivial from the point of view of content, but the fact that theyappear in such

formal contexts as these goes badly with the notionthat the text had already

been frozen."The earliest Greek source speaks of Muhammad being alive in 634,

twoyears after his death

according to Muslim tradition. Where the Muslimaccounts talk of Muhammad's break

with the Jews, the Armenian versiondiffers strikingly:The Armenian chronicler of

the 660s describes Muhammad asestablishing a community which comprised both

Ishmaelites (i.e.,Arabs) and Jews, with Abrahamic descent as their common

platform;these allies then set off to conquer Palestine. The oldest Greeksource

makes the sensational statement that the prophet who hadappeared among the

Saracens (i.e., Arabs) was proclaiming the comingof the (Jewish) messiah, and

speaks of the Jews who mix with theSaracens, and of the danger to life and limb

of falling into thehands of these Jews and Saracens. We cannot easily dismiss

theevidence as the product of Christian prejudice, since it findsconfirmation

in the Hebrew apocalypse [an eighth-century document, inwhich is embedded an

earlier apocalypse that seems to be contemporarywith the

conquests]. The break with the Jews is then placed by theArmenian chronicler

immediately after the Arab conquest of Jerusalem.Although Palestine does play

some sort of role in Muslim traditions,it is already demoted in favor of Mecca

in the second year of theHegira, when Muhammad changed the direction of prayer

for Muslimsfrom Jerusalem to Mecca. Thereafter it is Mecca which holds

centerstage for his activities. But in the non-Muslim sources, it isPalestine

which is the focus of his movement, and provides thereligious motive for its

conquest.The Armenian chronicler further gives a rationale for thisattachment:

Muhammad told the Arabs that, as descendants of Abrahamthrough Ishmael, they

too had a claim to the land which God hadpromised to Abraham and his seed. The

religion of Abraham is in factas central in the Armenian account of Muhammad's

preaching as it isin the Muslim sources; but it is given a quite different

geographicaltwist. If the external sources are in any significant degreeright on

such points, it would follow that tradition is seriouslymisleading on important

aspects of the life of Muhammad, and thateven the integrity of the Koran as his

message is in some doubt. Inview of what was said above about the nature of the

Muslim sources,such a conclusion would seem to me legitimate; but is fair to

addthat it is not usually drawn.Cook points out the similarity of certain

Muslim beliefs andpractices to those of the Samaritans (discussed below). He

alsopoints out that the fundamental idea developed by Muhammad of thereligion

of Abraham was already present in the Jewish apocryphal workcalled the Book of

Jubilees (dated to c. 140-100 B.C;), and which maywell have influenced the

formation of Islamic ideas. We also have theevidence of Sozomenus, a Christian

writer of the fifth centurywho "reconstructs a

primitive Ishmaelite monotheism identical withthat possessed by the Hebrews up

to the time of Moses; and he goes onto argue from present conditions that

Ishmael's laws must have beencorrupted by the passage of time and the influence

of paganneighbors."Sozomenus goes on to describe certain Arab tribes who, on

learning oftheir Ishmaelite origins from Jews, adopted Jewish observances.

Againthere may have been some influence on the Muslim community from

thissource. Cook also points out the similarity of the story of Moses(exodus,

etc.) and the Muslim hijra. In Jewish messianism, "thecareer of the messiah was

seen as a re-enactment of that of Moses; akey event in the drama was an exodus,

or flight, from oppression intothe desert, whence the messiah was to lead a

holy war to reconquerPalestine. Given the early evidence connecting Muhammad

with Jews andJewish messianism at the time when the conquest of Palestine

wasinitiated, it is natural to see in Jewish apocalyptic thought a pointof

departure for his political ideas."Cook and Patricia Crone had developed these

ideas in theirintellectually exhilarating work Hagarism: The Making of the

IslamicWorld (1977). Unfortunately, they adopted the rather difficult styleof

their "master" Wansbrough, which may well put off all but the mostdedicated

readers; as Humphreys says, "their argument is conveyedthrough a dizzying and

unrelenting array of allusions, metaphors, andanalogies." The summary already

given above of Cook's conclusions inMuhammad will help non-specialists to have

a better grasp of Cook andCrone's (henceforth CC) arguments in Hagarism.It

would be appropriate to begin with an explanation of CC's frequentuse of the

terms "Hagar,Hagarism," and "Hagarene." Since a part oftheir thesis is that

Islam only emerged later than hitherto thought,after the first

contacts with the older civilizations in Palestine,the Near East, and the Middle

East, it would have been inappropriateto use the traditional terms "Muslim,"

"Islamic," and "Islam" for theearly Arabs and their creed. It seems probable

that the early Arabcommunity, while it was developing its own religious

identity, didnot call itself "Muslim." On the other hand, Greek and

Syriacdocuments refer to this community as Magaritai, and Mahgre (orMahgraye)

respectively. The Mahgraye are the descendants of Abrahamby Hagar, hence the

term "Hagarism." But there is another dimensionto this term; for the

corresponding Arabic term is muhajirun; themuhajirun are those who take part in

a hijra, anexodus. "The `Mahgraye' may thus be seen as Hagarene participants ina

hijra to the Promised Land; in this pun lies the earliest identityof the faith

which was in the fullness of time to become Islam."Relying on hitherto

neglected

non-Muslim sources, CC give a newaccount of the rise of Islam: an account, on

their admission,unacceptable to any Muslim. The Muslim sources are too late,

andunreliable, and there are no cogent external grounds for acceptingthe

Islamic tradition. CC begin with a Greek text (dated ca. 634-636), in which the

core of the Prophet's message appears as Judaicmessianism. There is evidence

that the Jews themselves, far frombeing the enemies of Muslims, as

traditionally recounted, welcomedand interpreted the Arab conquest in messianic

terms. Theevidence "of Judeo-Arab intimacy is complemented by indications of

amarked hostility towards Christianity." An Armenian chronicle writtenin the

660s also contradicts the traditional Muslim insistence thatMecca was the

religious metropolis of the Arabs at the time of theconquest; in contrast, it

points out the Palestinian orientation ofthe movement. The same chronicle helps

us understand

how theProphet "provided a rationale for Arab involvement in the enactmentof

Judaic messianism. This rationale consists in a dual invocation ofthe Abrahamic

descent of the Arabs as Ishmaelites: on the one hand toendow them with a

birthright to the Holy Land, and on the other toprovide them with a monotheist

genealogy." Similarly, we can see theMuslim hijra not as an exodus from Mecca

to Medina (for no earlysource attests to the historicity of this event), but as

anemigration of the Ishmaelites (Arabs) from Arabia to the PromisedLand.The

Arabs soon quarreled with the Jews, and their attitude toChristians softened;

the Christians posed less of a political threat.There still remained a need to

develop a positive religious identity,which they proceeded to do by elaborating

a full-scale religion ofAbraham, incorporating many pagan practices but under a

new Abrahamicaegis. But they still lacked the basic religious

structures to beable to stand on their two feet, as an independent

religiouscommunity. Here they were enormously influenced by the Samaritans.The

origins of the Samaritans are rather obscure. They are Israelitesof central

Palestine, generally considered the descendants of thosewho were planted in

Samaria by the Assyrian kings, in about 722B.C.E. The faith of the Samaritans

was Jewish monotheism, but theyhad shaken off the influence of Judaism by

developing their ownreligious identity, rather in the way the Arabs were to do

later on.The Samaritan canon included only the Pentateuch, which wasconsidered

the sole source and standard for faith and conduct.The formula "There is no God

but the One" is an ever-recurringrefrain in Samaritan liturgies. A constant

theme in their literatureis the unity of God and His absolute holiness and

righteousness. Wecan immediately notice the similarity of the Muslim

proclamation

offaith: "There is no God but Allah." And, of course, the unity of Godis a

fundamental principle in Islam. The Muslim formula "In the nameof God"

(bismillah) is found in Samaritan scripture as beshem. Theopening chapter of

the Koran is known as the Fatiha, opening or gate,often considered as a

succinct confession of faith. A Samaritanprayer, which can also be considered a

confession of faith, beginswith the words: Amadti kamekha al fatah rahmeka, "I

stand before Theeat the gate of Thy mercy." Fatah is the Fatiha, opening or

gate.The sacred book of the Samaritans was the Pentateuch, which embodiedthe

supreme revelation of the divine will, and was accordingly highlyvenerated.

Muhammad also seems to know the Pentateuch and Psalmsonly, and shows no

knowledge of the prophetic or historical writings.The Samaritans held Moses in

high regard, Moses being the prophetthrough whom the Law was revealed. For the

Samaritans, Mt. Gerizimwas the rightful center for the worship of Yahweh; and it

was furtherassociated with Adam, Seth, and Noah, and Abraham's sacrifice

ofIsaac. The expectation of a coming Messiah was also an article offaith; the

name given to their Messiah was the Restorer. Here we canalso notice the

similarity of the Muslim notion of the Mahdi.We can tabulate the close

parallels between the doctrines of theSamaritans and the Muslims in this

way:MOSES EXODUS PENTATEUCH MT. SINAI/GERIZIM SHECHEMMuhammad Hijra Koran Mt.

Hira MeccaUnder the influence of the Samaritans, the Arabs proceeded to

castMuhammad in the role of Moses as the leader of an exodus (hijra), asthe

bearer of a new revelation (Koran) received on an appropriate(Arabian) sacred

mountain, Mt. Hira. It remained for them to composea sacred book. CC point to

the tradition that the Koran had been manybooks but of which `Uthman (the third

caliph after Muhammad) had leftonly one. We have the further testimony of a

Christian monk whodistinguishes between the Koran and the Surat al-baqara as

sources oflaw. In other documents, we are told that Hajjaj (661-714),

thegovernor of Iraq, had collected and destroyed all the writings of theearly

Muslims. Then, following Wansbrough, CC conclude that theKoran, "is strikingly

lacking in overall structure, frequentlyobscure and inconsequential in both

language and content, perfunctoryin its linking of disparate materials and

given to the repetition ofwhole passages in variant versions. On this basis it

can be plausiblyargued that the book [Koran] is the product of the belated

andimperfect editing of materials from a plurality of traditions."The

Samaritans had rejected the sanctity of Jerusalem, and hadreplaced it by the

older Israelite sanctuary of Shechem. When theearly Muslims disengaged from

Jerusalem, Shechem

provided anappropriate model for the creation of a sanctuary of their own.The

parallelism is striking. Each presents the same binary structureof a sacred

city closely associated with a nearby holy mountain, andin each case the

fundamental rite is a pilgrimage from the city tothe mountain. In each case the

sanctuary is an Abrahamic foundation,the pillar on which Abraham sacrificed in

Shechem finding itsequivalent in the rukn [the Yamai corner of the Ka'ba] of

the Meccansanctuary. Finally, the urban sanctuary is in each case

closelyassociated with the grave of the appropriate patriarch: Joseph

(asopposed to Judah in the Samaritan case, Ishmael (as opposed to Isaac)in the

Meccan.CC go on to argue that the town we now know as Mecca in centralArabia

(Hijaz) could not have been the theater of the momentousevents so beloved of

Muslim tradition. Apart from the lack of anyearly non-Muslim references to

Mecca, we do

have the startling factthat the direction in which the early Muslims prayed (the

qibla) wasnorthwest Arabia. The evidence comes from the alignment of

certainearly mosques, and the literary evidence of Christian sources. Inother

words, Mecca, as the Muslim sanctuary, was only chosen muchlater by the

Muslims, in order to relocate their early history withinArabia, to complete

their break with Judaism, and finally establishtheir separate religious

identity.In the rest of their fascinating book, CC go on to show how

Islamassimilated all the foreign influences that it came under inconsequence of

their rapid conquests; how Islam acquired itsparticular identity on encountering

the older civilizations ofantiquity, through its contacts with rabbinic Judaism,

Christianity(Jacobite and Nestorian), Hellenism and Persian ideas (Rabbinic

Law,Greek philosophy, Neoplatonism, Roman Law, and Byzantine art

andarchitecture). But they

also point out that all this was achieved atgreat cultural cost: "The Arab

conquests rapidly destroyed oneempire, and permanently detached large

territories of another. Thiswas, for the states in question, an appalling

catastrophe."In Slaves on Horses: The Evolution of the Islamic Polity

(1980),Patricia Crone dismisses the Muslim traditions concerning the

earlycaliphate (down to the 680s) as useless fictions. In Meccan Trade andthe

Rise of Islam (1987), she argues that many so-called historicalreports are

"fanciful elaborations on difficult Koranic passages." Inthe latter work, Crone

convincingly shows how the Koran "generatedmasses of spurious information." The

numerous historical events whichare supposed to have been the causes of certain

revelations (forexample, the battle of Badr, see above), "are likely to owe at

leastsome of their features, occasionally their very existence, to theQuran."

Clearly

storytellers were the first to invent historicalcontexts for particular verses

of the Koran. But much of theirinformation is contradictory (for example, we

are told that whenMuhammad arrived in Medina for the first time it was torn by

feuds,and yet at the same time we are asked to believe that the people ofMedina

were united under their undisputed leader Ibn Ubayyl), andthere was a tendency

"for apparently independent accounts to collapseinto variations on a common

theme" (for example, the large number ofstories which exist around the theme of

"Muhammad's encounter withthe representatives of non-Islamic religions who

recognize him as afuture prophet"). Finally, there was a tendency for the

informationto grow the further away one went from the events described;

forexample, if one storyteller should happen to mention a raid, the nextone

would tell you the exact date of this raid, and the third onewould furnish you

even

more details. Waqidi (d. 823), who wrote yearsafter Ibn Ishaq (d. 768),will

always give precise dates, locations, names, where Ibn Ishaq hasnone, accounts

of what triggered the expedition, miscellaneousinformation to lend color to the

event, as well as reasons why, aswas usually the case, no fighting took place.

No wonder that scholarsare fond of Waqidi: where else does one find such

wonderfully preciseinformation about everything one wishes to know? But given

that thisinformation was all unknown to Ibn Ishaq, its value is doubtful inthe

extreme. And if spurious information accumulated at this rate inthe two

generations between Ibn Ishaq and Waqidi, it is hard to avoidthe conclusion

that even more must have accumulated in the threegenerations between the

Prophet and Ibn Ishaq.It is obvious that these early Muslim historians drew on

a commonpool of material fabricated by the storytellers.Crone takes to task

certain conservative modern historians, such asWatt, for being unjustifiably

optimistic about the historical worthof the Muslim sources on the rise of

Islam. And we shall end thischapter on the sources with Crone's conclusions

regarding all theseMuslim sources:[Watt's methodology rests] on a misjudgment

of these sources. Theproblem is the very mode of origin of the tradition, not

some minordistortions subsequently introduced. Allowing for distortions

arisingfrom various allegiances within Islam such as those to a particulararea,

tribe, sect or school does nothing to correct thetendentiousness arising from

allegiance to Islam itself. The entiretradition is tendentious, its aim being

the elaboration of an ArabianHeilgeschichte, and this tendentiousness has

shaped the facts as wehave them, not merely added some partisan statements we

can deduct.Editorial Note Most of the articles in this collection were

originally publishedmore than fifty years ago (and a couple dare to the

nineteenthcentury), when there was little consistency in the way Arabic

termswere transliterated into English. Thus, the name of Islam's holy bookwas

variously written as Kortan, Kur'an, Quran, Qur'an, Coran, etc.,and the name of

Islam's Prophet was transliterated as Mahomet,Mohammed, Muhammad, etc. To leave

the diverse forms of these names,and many other Arabic terms, would confuse the

reader; in some casesit might even obscure the fact that two authors are

discussing thesame person or text. Therefore, the original spellings have

beenchanged where necessary to make them conform to modern usage and toensure

that a consistent spelling is used in every article.Accordingly, Islam's sacred

book is always referred to by its mostrecognizable form—Koran (even though

Qur'an is preferred by scholarsand is closer to the actual Arabic

pronunciation). The

name ofIslam's founder is consistently spelled Muhammad. Arabic names thatused

to be transliterated with an o will be spelled with a u,e.g, `Uthman, `Umar

(not Othman, Omar). The symbol ` is used toexpress Arabic ain, the symbol '

expresses Arabic hamca. Otherdiacritical marks have been eliminated since they

mean little ornothing to nonspecialists and specialists already know the

originalArabic to which the transliteration refers. The term "Prophet" with

acapital "p," when used by itself, refers to Muhammad, in contrast tothe same

word with a lowercase "p," which refers to prophets fromother

religions.--info (AT) SecularIslam (DOT) org

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