Islamization and Arabization of egypt and the problem of the sources

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Mar 24, 2007 at 17:21

Hi Ianus,

Much of what I'm going to tell you is already known, but a revisit will sure help

I would urge you to check Hoyland's following books:

1. "Arabia and the Arabs from the Bronze age to the coming of Islam" where he reviews all available extant sources, be it epigraphy papyri coins monuments etc... from Arabia prior to islam and from the Hijaz we have nothing. No codices, papyri, coins, epigraphy or monuments! The sources from the Hijaz prior to the rise of islam are jsut not there. Then the only literary sources we have come to us from the 3rd century and as I said before written in distant Mesopotamia and Iran by non Arabs.

2. And this second book is a must reading for any student of early Islam and that is:

"Seeing Islam as others saw it. A survey and evaluation of Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian writings on early Islam"

You will notice that I refer to this book very often and indeed the picture that emerges from non Muslim sources is indeed very different (eg: Those Arab invaders calling themselves al-Muhajiroon which is Moagairtoi in Greek and Mihgraye in Syriac and they did not call themselves neither Muslims nor Arabs and why is that? Only Allahu A3lam)

Hoyland also provides a full survey of all the extant Muslim sources be it papyri, coins, epigraphy and monuments as follows;

A. The first 72 years after the death of Muhammad and what is really strange here is that the sources are silent about Muhammad and why is that? Well again only Allahu A3lam

B. From the year 72 until 750CE or the end of the Umayyad's and this is when we start to see more chancery papyri but no literature as of yet. And in this period we see real changes as in the evolution the Arabic language and of rukun al-Islam as in the case of the shihada from its primitive form in al-Masjad al-Aqsa to what we almost have now and Muhammad's name start to appear in the sources.

Then you wrote

>Bismillah

This is for sure a loan expression from Syriac and has always existed in Semitic religions as we have the famous:

Beshem and Beshem Alaha (Syriac) or in the name of God which is Arabized as Bi Ism Allah (written) and vocalized as Bismillah or in (Bi) the name (Ism) of Allah and notice that I left Allah as such as Muslims claim that it is a contaction of the word al-Ilah or The God. I do believe that Allah is a loan word from Syriac and it is the proper name of God as the word Alaha/Allaha (Nestorian) means God and not the God.

So you can see that the fact that the invading Arabs used the word Bismillah on coins does not mean very much as it is a loan expression.

As for the Qur'an there are indeed many puzzles and i will discuss only three examples here:

1. We cannot reconstruct the life of Muhammad from the Qur'an period we must go to sources outside the canon. His name is mentioned 4-5 times and one time he is called Ahmad. The sira must be seen as a form of exegesis of the Quranic allusions and it is for sure not an independent historical source. If you wish to know more here just ask and I will give you more details.

2. Those strange letters at the begining of some suras that have puzzled the 3Ulama back then and they are still a puzzle to this day.

3. There are indeed many strange words in the Qur'an and the locus classicus has always been the word Ilaf in surat Quraish it puzzled the 3Ulama back then and we still do not have a clue about what this strange word really means.

i just selected the above example to explain to you the nature of the Muslim sources as we have them and the real issue now becomes if the 3Ulama in the 3rd century had no clue about all of the above then we have one of two options as was suggested by Cook:

1. It is either that the Qur'an predates Muhammad (and for those of us that know Arabic I'm always amazed at the difference in the style of arabic used in the Qur'an and this difference was realized by the 3Ulama and their answer was to divide it into Meccan and Medina period).

2. Or the Qur'an was not canonized until the 3rd century (during the masora) and pesrons unknown collected those circulating pericopes and logias but by then no one had a clue what the material really means.

But both of the above will detach Muhammad from the Qur'an and even will detach Islam from Arabia

The most interesting puzzle is what Wansbrough called "variant traditions" as in the "Shu3ayb tradition" and the "Two Gardens Tradition' If you read the Qur'an you will notice that Allah repeates himself very often and this has been explained by the 3ulama as a result of asbab al-nuzul or reasons of revelatations. Wansbrough believes that such traditions could very well have been "independet possibly regional traditions incorporated more or less intact into the canonical compilation" (see Cook)

So the question to you is if the memory of the arabs was such a great memory how come we have all these puzzles? and why did the Arabs forget what these strange letters mean or what the word ilaf really means?

The answer is as I see it the 3Ulama were making things up period.

Stay tuned for more.

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