Quest for the Historical Muhammad is an anthology of 15 studies examining the origins of Islam and the Qur'an edited by Ibn Warraq.
Using the highest standards of objective historical scholarship the experts listed in the Quest for the Historical Muhammad present their compelling research and conclusions. The picture presented by the evidence is that traditional Islamic views of its history and the origins of the Qur'an are fictitious and based on nothing more than historical concoctions and blatant revisionism aimed at forging a religious arab identity.Summary
- Although the unreliability of the Arabic literary sources has been known for a century, only recently have scholars begun to explore its full implications, thanks largely to the ground-breaking work of the British scholar John Wansbrough.
- Philologists and scholars look skeptically at the Arabic written sources and conclude that these are a form of "salvation history" - self-serving, unreliable accounts by the faithful.
- The huge body of material, that Islamic revisionist scholars find, is mostly spurious. So unreliable do the revisionists find the traditional account, Patricia Crone has memorably written, that "one could, were one so inclined, rewrite most of Montgomery Watt's biography of Muhammad in reverse." For example, an inscription and a Greek account leads Lawrence Conrad to fix Muhammad's birth in 552, not 570.
- Patricia Crone finds that Muhammad's career took place not in Mecca but hundreds of kilometers to the north.
- Yehuda D. Nevo and Judith Koren find that the classical Arabic language was developed not in today's Saudi Arabia but in the Levant, and that it reached Arabia only through the colonizing efforts of one of the early caliphs.
- The Arab tribesmen who conquered great swathes of territory in the seventh century were not Muslims, perhaps they were pagans.
- The Qu'ran is a not "a product of Muhammad or even of Arabia," but a collection of adaptations from earlier Judeo-Christian liturgical materials stitched together to meet the needs of a later age.
- Most broadly, "there was no Islam as we know it" until two or three hundred years after the traditional version has it (more like CE 830 than 630);
- Islam developed not in the distant deserts of Arabia but through the interaction of Arab conquerors and their more civilized subject peoples.
- Quest for the Historical Muhammad raises basic questions for Moslems concerning the prophet's role as a moral paragon; the sources of Islamic law; and the God-given nature of the Koran.
Contents
PART ONE: INTRODUCTION
- Studies on Muhammad and the rise of Islam : a critical survey - Ibn Warraq
- Origins of Islam : a critical look at the sources - Ibn Rawandi
PART TWO:
- Muhammad and the origans of Islam - Ernest Renan
PART THREE:
- Koran and tradition : how the life of Muhammad was composed - Henri Lammens
- The age of Muhammad and the chronology of the Sira - Henri Lammens
- Fatima and the daughters of Muhammad - Henri Lammens
- Matters of principle concerning Lammens' Sira studies - C.H. Becker
PART FOUR: MODERN PERIOD
- - Arthur Jeffery
- A revaluation of Islamic traditions - Joseph Schacht
- Abraham and Muhammad : some observations apropos of chronology and literarry topoi in the early Arabic historical traditon - Lawrence I.Conrad
- The function of asbab al-nuzul in Quaranic exegesis - Andrew Rippin
- Methodological approaches to Islamic studies - Judith Koren and Yehuda D. Nevo
- The quest of the historical Muhammad -F. E. Peters
- Recovering lost texts : some methodological issues - Lawrence I. Conrad
PART FIVE: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF JOHN WANSBROUGH
- The implicatons of, and opposition to, the methods of John Wansbrough - Herbert Berg
- John Wansbrough, Islam, and monotheism - G.R. Hawting.
- Glossary
- Abbreviations
- Dramatis Personae: Explanatory List of Individuals and Tribes
- Genealogical Table
- Map of Western Asia and Arabia
- Chronological Table and the Islamic Dynasties
- Contributors
Further reading
- The Quest for the Historical Muhammad Prometheus Books (March 1, 2000) ISBN 1573927872
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