The Quest for the Historical Muhammad (Ibn Warraq)

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Quest for the Historical Muhammad, edited by Ibn Warraq, is an anthology of 15 studies examining the origins of Islam and the Qur'an.

The contributors listed in the Quest for the Historical Muhammad present their research and conclude that traditional Islamic views of its history and the origins of the Qur'an are fictitious and based on nothing more than historical revisionism aimed at forging a religious Arab identity.

1 Summary of arguments
2 Contents
3 Reviews
4 References
5 See also
6 Further reading

[edit] Summary of arguments

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 American scholar who worked in Britain, 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 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 830 AD 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.

[edit] 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 origins 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

The quest of the historical Muhammad - Arthur Jeffery
A revaluation of Islamic traditions - Joseph Schacht
Abraham and Muhammad : some observations apropos of chronology and literary topoi in the early Arabic historical tradition - 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 implications 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

[edit] Reviews

Asma Asfaruddin, a professor of Islamic studies, described the book as a "partisan work." She writes that ibn Warraq "clearly has an ideological axe to grind". Any traditional scholar, she states, "who revises, refines, challenges, or nuances the arguments of the rejectionist school are depicted as doing so from sinister motives, while those who unequivocally champion its views are understood to be motivated by the purest and most single-minded devotion to the indefatigable pursuit of Historical Truth. Poor editing, sloppy transliteration, and ad hominem attacks...add to the chagrin of the reader." She concludes that ibn Warraq regretably "continues to release more toxins into the air." ^[1]