Patricia Crone

Patricia Crone (March 28, 1945 – July 11, 2015) was a Danish-American author, scholar, orientalist, and historian, specializing in early Islamic history.^[1]

She worked from 1997 until her retirement in 2014 at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.^[2]

Career

Crone was born in Kyndeløse, Roskilde, Denmark, on March 28, 1945.^[3] After taking the forprøve, or preliminary exam, at Copenhagen University, she went to Paris to learn French, and then to London where she determined to get into a university to become fluent in English. In 1974 she earned her PhD at the University of London, where she was a Senior Research Fellow at the Warburg Institute until 1977. She was accepted as an occasional student at King's College London and followed a course in medieval European history, especially church-state relations. In 1977, Crone became a University Lecturer in Islamic history and a Fellow of Jesus College at Oxford University. Crone became Assistant University Lecturer in Islamic studies and Fellow of Gonville and Caius College at Cambridge University in 1990 and held several positions at Cambridge.^[4] She served as University Lecturer in Islamic studies from 1992 to 1994, and as Reader in Islamic history from 1994-97. In 1997, she was appointed to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where she was named as Andrew W. Mellon Professor. From 2002 until her death in 2015, she was a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Social Evolution & History.^[5]

In their book Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World (1977), Crone and her associate Michael Cook, working at The School of Oriental Studies, London at the time, provided a new analysis of early Islamic history by studying the only surviving contemporary accounts of the rise of Islam, which were written in Armenian, Greek, Aramaic and Syriac by witnesses. By using non-Arabic sources, they could study more of the context for the rise of Islam. They argued that Islam, as represented by contemporary, non-Muslim sources, was in essence a tribal rebellion against incursions by the Byzantine and Persian empires. They noted that it had deep roots in Judaism, and that Arabs and Jews were allies in these conquering communities.^[6]

In her book Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (1987), Crone argued that the importance of the pre-Islamic Meccan trade has been grossly exaggerated. She also suggested that while Muhammad never traveled much beyond the Hijaz, internal evidence in the Qur'an, such as its description of Muhammad's polytheist opponents as "olive growers", might indicate that the events surrounding the Prophet took place near the Mediterranean region.^[6]

Beginning as a scholar of early military and economic history of the Middle East, Crone's later career focused mainly on "the Qur’an and the cultural and religious traditions of Iraq, Iran, and the formerly Iranian part of Central Asia".^[7]

She died on July 11, 2015, aged 70, from cancer.^[8]

Bibliography

Sole author

• Slaves on Horses: The Evolution of the Islamic Polity (1980); ISBN 0-521-52940-9
• Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (1987); ISBN 1-59333-102-9
• Roman, Provincial and Islamic Law : The Origins of the Islamic Patronate (1987, Paperback: 2002); ISBN 0-521-52949-2
• Pre-Industrial Societies: Anatomy of the Pre-Modern World (2003); ISBN 1-85168-311-9
• God's Rule: Government and Islam - Six Centuries of Medieval Islamic Political Thought (2004). Columbia University Press; ISBN 0-231-13290-5/ISBN 0-231-13291-3.
• Medieval Islamic Political Thought (2005). Edinburgh University Press; ISBN 0-7486-2194-6
• From Arabian Tribes to Islamic Empire : Army, State and Society in the Near East c. 600–850 (2008); ISBN 978-0-7546-5925-9
• The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran: Rural Revolt and Local Zoroastrianism (2012). Cambridge University Press; ISBN 978-1107018792

Coauthor

• with M.A. Cook, Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World (1977); ISBN 0-521-29754-0
• with Martin Hinds, God's Caliph: Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam (2003; orig. 1986); ISBN 0-521-54111-5
• with Shmuel Moreh, The Book of Strangers: Medieval Arabic Graffiti on the Theme of Nostalgia (1999) Princeton Series on the Middle-East; ISBN 978-1558762152

Articles

• Patricia Crone, "What do we actually know about Mohammed?", Open Democracy, June 10, 2008.
• Patricia Crone, "'Jihad': idea and history", Open Democracy, April 30, 2007.

References

External links

• Institute for Advanced Study: Faculty and Emeriti: Crone
• Review: God's Rule, Columbia University Press
• Patricia Crone, "The Rise of Islam", Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam, section beginning at page 231, dealing with rise of Islam as reaction to Byzantine and Persian influence in Arabia, hosted at Fordham University.