The study of islam post-1969 and post John Wansbrough

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Jul 10, 2011 at 09:43

In my previous post I discussed the two books of John Wansbrough and that these two books changed the way we view early islam and the reaction to these two books here in the west can be divided into two groups

1. Those that support his theories about the origin of early islam went on to study some of his findings and conclusions

2. And those that wanted to have nothing to do with what he is saying. But those that disagreed with him were really disagreeing with his conclusions when they should have been critical of his methodology. And as far as I know no one has been able to prove that his methodology is faulty.

In the Muslim world

1. In the Arab world there is complete silence and it is a shame as his books have not been translated in Arabic as far as I know

2. In Muslim India and Pakistan: All I have seen is polemics but no real attempts to refute what he is saying

The most important thing as an outcome of Wansbrough's books are the studies that these two books generated and I will provide you with a few great works

1. Hagarsim by Patrica Crone and Michael Cook. What Crone examines is the very early extant non Muslim literary sources and what such sources tell us about early islam from the civilizations that were conquered by the invading Arabs. The real problem with this book as was pointed out by Wansbrough is that yes the islamic literary sources are just unreliable to tell us about what really happened but so are the non Islamic sources. But some of the oustanding findings by Crone is that the invading Arabs did not call themselves Arabs or Muslims but called themselves al-muhajiruun (mhgraye in Syriac and Moagaritoi in Greek) and why is that? and that the word Islam appears in the islamic sources for the first time in al-masjid al-aqsa inscriptions or some 72 years after the death of Muhammad and even the name of Muhammad does not appear in the literary sources until 72 years after his death and why is that? and the word al-muslimeen does not appear in the islamic extant literary sources until 767CE and why is that?

Very thought provoking book but Crone attempts to reconstruct what really happeded based on the early non Muslims sources is where she falters

2. God's Kalifa by Patrica Crone where she proves that early on al-khalifa was called khalifatu allah and much later the title was changed to khalifat rasul allah. The word khlifa really has no clear meaning but it is understood as he who follows or the successor so it seems that early on the khalifa was Allah's deputy on earth and he was the religious as well as the political leader and later on the khalifa became the successor of Muhammad which means that the ulama were now the ones in charge of the religious and the khalifa became the political leader and indeed it means that Islam really evolved with time as would be excepted and non of it dropt from the sky and in her words: Religions do not spring fully fledged from the heads of prophet

3. Roman, provincial and islamic law by Patrica Crone and in this book Crone proves that the claim by the islamic historical tradition that islamic law dropt from the sky (or historical discontinuity was in action) is far from the truth. She proves that Ignaz Godlziher claim that islamic law is no more than Roman law is not true and she proves that Islamic law is no more than provincial law in the case Syria and of Egypt ( where there were two sets of laws Roman and Egyptian) and this explains the very arcane laws of inheritance in Egyptian law in the late antique period are very mcuh not unlike islamic law and it for sure explains why female genital mutilation which was practiced in Egypt in the late antique became sunna in Islamic law in the case of Egypt. And as fare as i know this book has never been refuted. And so much for the claim that islamic law dropped from the sky

4. Slaves on horses Crone examines Muslim historiography and proves once and for all that the tradition is late and tendentious and that what we have is no more than qissas (read this as stories of fiction) that mean nothing and lead us no where and that the tradition is so vast and we will find the yes and the no and the only allahu a3lam to juts about anything

5. Meccan Trade and the rise of islam and in this book Crone examines the so called Meccan Trade and what is most surprising about the Islamic claim about Mecca being a center of trade and about caravans travelling along the desert high ways of Arabia to Syria or is it Yemen or is it Ethiopia is that in 633CE when the arabs invaded the civilized Middle East no one had a clue about Muhammad al-tajir or the trader or this so called Meccan Trade and it just did not exist. She proves that Meccans were only trading locally in food stuff and cheap leather goods and she proves that without surat Quraish we would not have had anything about this so called Meccan trade or in other words the Quranic logias that had no clear meaning were generating exegesis and therefore this Meccan trade that never happened

And so much for Meccan trade

6. Robert Hoyland in his monumental survery of the early non as well as Islamic sources is a must reading for anyone who is interested in the study of early Islam and he also collected the early extant islamic literary sources and he divides them into: From 632CE until 692CE and then from 692CE until 750CE and you will not find an extant copy of the Qur'an and you will not find the name of Muhammad and the word Islam until 692CE. Great book indeed

7. Arabia from the Bronze Age until the coming of islam where Hoyland examines all the extant sources be it papyri, ostraca, monuments, coins and epigraphy and indeed there are no extant sources that we have that come from the Hijaz prior to 632CE and more evidence that the claim of the islamic tradition about Mecca is far from the truth

But it seems that the 9/11 atrocity as you shall see in the next post changed the way we view the history of early islam

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