彼らの理論は「決して一枚岩ではない」が、いくつかの「方法論的前提」[ 15 ]と理論を共有している。[ 16 ] [ 17 ]すなわち、ムハンマドはメッカ出身ではなく、彼がメッカ出身であるという信念は彼の死後数十年経って作られた伝統であること。ムハンマドとユダヤ人やキリスト教徒との関係は、伝統的に説明されているよりも元々ははるかに敵対的ではなかった可能性があること。私たちがイスラム教（その基本原則）[ a ]として知っているものは、7世紀のアラブによるビザンツ帝国とペルシャ帝国の侵略以前のムハンマドの10年間の使命（西暦622～632年）の間ではなく、ムハンマドの使命、ラシードゥン朝カリフ、ウマイヤ朝カリフを含むより長い期間にわたって形成されたこと。ペルシャとビザンツの文明と、新たに成立した7世紀のアラブ帝国との間の宗教的、政治的、文化的断絶は、伝統的な歴史が描写するほど急激なものではなかった。[ b ] 合意が得られていない問題には、ムハンマドの歴史性や、コーランがいつ最初に現れたのか、どのように書かれたのか、初期の頃どのように世代から世代へと伝えられたのかといった問題が含まれる。[ c ]
archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics,[10] from the seventh and eighth century CE—sources which should be preferred when there is a conflict with Muslim literary sources.[35]
Main Revisionist theses
Questioning historical sources
Some of the reasons revisionists consider the Quran, hadith and other religious sources unreliable, are:
Early sources
Purposes
Their purpose is to strengthen religious faith, not to investigate and find out what actually happened.[36] Traditions of early Islamic military campaigns, for example, do not describe things like planning, tactics and weaponry, troop strength, layout, or movement, but rather tell stories of "past glories and heroic exploits" to encourage the troops.[36] The literature sometimes include supernatural elements, such as sīrah author Ibn Ishaq telling of hosts of angels coming to the aid of Muhammad at the Battle of Badr.[37]
Dates
In the words of revisionist G.R. Hawting,
We have no biography of Muhammad, no commentary on the Quran, no law book, no collection of Hadiths, no history of early Islam, etc. which can be said to predate, in the form in which we have it, [e] the beginning of the third Islamic century."[38]
Oral and written transmission over generations subjects literature to distortion both intentional and unintentional.[39] Most Islamic literature was said to be passed down orally for generations before being committed to writing. Oral history may distort the original account unintentionally (as in the children's game "Chinese whispers"), or intentionally tell readers what they thought happened or wanted to believe happened, instead of what the transmitter actually heard or saw, (for example, substituting "Muhammad" for "The Prophet"—since the copyist "knows" The Prophet is Muhammad),[40]
Gold dinar minted by the Umayyads in 695, which likely depicts Abd al-Malik.[f] The historian Robert Hoyland, however, argues that this may be a near-contemporary depiction of the prophet Muhammad.[42]
The Quranic text in use today shows many differences to the earliest existing manuscripts. A core part of the Quran may derive from Muhammad's annunciations, yet some parts of the Quran were definitively added later or were reworked later. In addition, many small deviations came into the text, as with other ancient texts that were manually copied and copied again.[51] (See: Ahruf)
The existence and significance of Muhammad as a historical person depends especially on the question of whether any or, if so, how many, parts of the Quran can be attributed to his time or whether all or most parts of the Quran came into being only after Muhammad's time. The researchers' opinions differ over that question.[52] Fred Donner suggests an early date for the Quran.[53] (That thesis has been abandoned by many revisionists in the 21st century because of studies and dating of early manuscripts.[54] Tom Holland states that "the evidence seems to suggest" that the contemporary standard Quran "was uttered by Muhammad in the period that Muslim tradition has insisted that he lived".)[55]
The Quran is not written in a "pure" Arabic, as the Syriac language seems to have had a certain influence on the language of the Quran that was forgotten later. That could provide a possible explanation of why something like one fifth of the Quranic text is difficult to understand,[56][57] (according to Gerd R. Puin).[4] (See: The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran)
Questions about how the Arabs brought the new religion of Islam
Both the conquered Byzantines and Arab conquerors blamed the success of the invaders on "God's decree"; for Christians this was God's punishment for their sins, for Arabs "His reward for following the true faith" (R. Hoyland).[62] But secular historians (traditional and revisionist) credit the weakening of the two empires by a devastating financial and manpower drain from A) the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 which exhausted both empires, and B) the bouts of plague in the region starting in around the mid 6th century CE,[110][111] which may have caused the deaths of up to a quarter of the human population of the Eastern Mediterranean.[112]
Rather than overcoming superior forces in their takeover of Syria and Persia to the north, the Arabs moved into ravaged empires -- where in the case of the Byzantium, the emperor Heraclius "could raise no more troops to opposed the Ishmaelites [i.e. Arabs]", according to a Christian bishop.[113][114] "Archaeological evidence" indicating Byzantium had begun withdrawing militarily from the Arab border decades before the invasion.[115]
Also explaining their success was evidence that contrary to the idea that 'a horde of nomads with no military experience',[116] had invaded Byzantium and Persia, many Arabs had military experience as mercenaries for both empires. By the time of 530 CE, of Arab mercenaries leaders were established enough for there to be Romano-Arab and Perso-Arab mini-states with dynasties extending "three, four, or more generations", (R. Hoyland).[117] Arabs served both in regiments in the imperial army and "as independent vassals allied to the empire".[118] Thus they had "acquired valuable training in the weaponry and military tactics of the empires",[119] but were also known to sometimes rebel against their employers.[120][121] As plague and/or destructive wars weakened the empires and dried up payments to mercenaries, these fighters may have become receptive to declarations from Muhammad and the Quran that booty from attacking their former employers was divinely approved,[122][74] and to the suggestion that they turn on their former masters.
If Arab attacks on Persia and Byzantium were raids motivated by desire for loot, rather than military campaigns seeking conquest in the name of religion; and if those raiders found abandoned forts and watch posts of empires ruined by war and disease, and stayed to rule, collect tribute, and intermarry; this would explain:
reports by conquered Byzantines of Christians among their conquerors; Christians who later converted, or whose descendants later converted, to Islam (Hoyland).[123].
the lack of recognition for several years by the inhabitants of the Fertile Crescent that the mercenaries-turned-raiders were actually their new rulers (Nevo & Koren).[124]
the lack of any mention by the conquered of any of the famous futūḥ battles,[80][81] and the suspiciously formulaic descriptions of them by traditional literature,[49][50] (these more satisfying tales of "How We Beat the Romans" being an invention of "the late Umayyad and early Abbasid" era --Nevo & Koren).[124]
the lack of destruction found by aochaeologists, since the invaders background as mercenaries would make them closely acquainted with the empires and the advantages of their civilization, less likely to see them as alien and corrupt, and more interested in ruling the empires than destroying them (Hoyland).[74]
The success of the Arabs rather than other warlike peoples like the Avars and Turks, to the north and east, can be explained by
the geographic position of the Arabs rather than superior zeal. There was little standing between Arabs and the southern soft "underbelly" of the two empires; whereas others were hindered from raiding and pillaging by substantial man-made and natural obstacles (Hoyland).[125]
Explanations for lack of early signs of Islamicity
Revisionists, in contrast, argue that the lack of any mention of Muhammad, Islam, Muslims in early epigraphs, coins, and documents; the failure of early Christian observers to find the religion of the invaders different from Judaism; the Arab invaders use of "mixed custom-administrative law"; can be explained by Islam being formed gradually, becoming a distinct religion after, not before, the Arab conquest of Syria and Persia. (The same explanations for the nature of the invasion and its success (imperial weakness, etc. -- not religious passion) also support this hypothesis of gradual development.)
Explanations for why a gradual evolution of Islam makes more sense include:
a "striking" scarcity of evidence, aside from Muslim literature, for the idea that the Arabs were Muslim at all at the time of the Arab conquest (Y. Nevo and J. Koren).[126]
the improbability that the Arab conquest could have swallowed up such a large number of ethnicities, languages, religions and cultures within so short a span of time (Suliman Bashear);[u]
the likelihood that an Islamic empire followed the pattern of other conquests of advanced civilizations -- China, Roman Western Europe, etc. -- where fierce nomad warriors conquerors dominated the conquered militarily and politically, but adopted many cultural features of the conquered civilizations (G.R. Hawking).[128]
the similarities between the religion of Islam and those of Judaism and Christianity -- each having a book of revelation and a prophet "as a model for moral conduct", but Islam having a different book and prophet which legitimizes the rule of the invaders and provide cohesion for the empire, Muslims (Ibn Rawandi, Ibn Warraq).[129][130]
The distinction between conquerors and conquered -- with many privileges going to conquerors -- gradually evolved into one of Muslims and non-Muslims, as the (minority) non-Muslims among the conquerors converted to Islam (Hoyland).[123]
Revisionist estimates of when Islam was fully formed include not until about the mid (Fred Donner).[71] or late Umayyad era (Tom Holland),[131][132][133]
Influence of the conquered on Islam
As the powerful and privileged class evolved from being based on the status of conquerors to the status as Muslims, converting to Islam[134] "served as a medium whereby non-Arabs could join the conquest elite" (Hoyland).[92]
Hoyland estimates that the invaders cum rulers of Byzantium and Persia (though not all Arab or "believers") were outnumbered by their subject 100 to 1 (about 25-30 million to 250,000-300,000).[92] Hoyland postulates that while for the first fifty year the Arabs lived apart from most of their subjects in garrison towns, even in these locations there were non-Arab prisoners-of-war, slave/servants, who served as tutors, scribes, wives, concubines. As the first generation of conquerors died off, their descendants grew up in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Iran, far away from their father's homeland, dependent upon and outnumbered by the non-Arab natives. Consequently, "it was not long before blood was mixed, boundaries blurred, and religion and society fast transformed."[92] As the conquered natives converted to Islam, they shaped its culture and ideology more than passively accepting it.[92]
Another Revisionist (Fred Donner) argues that the Christians among the invaders, the lack of violence in the Arab takeover (which reflected a lack of a need to crush/wipe clean the existing social/political/religious system), the lack of rebellion by the non-Arab conquered against the outnumbered conquerors, and archeological evidence of a couple of churches (including St. John in Damascus) having both Christian and Muslim worship characteristics, suggests that the first Arab invaders were leading a “believers movement”, a general “monotheist revival movement” with (ecumenical) multi-faith membership that gradually evolved into Islam. This would explain a lack of violence in the Arab takeover as the Arabs would not feel a need to crush (or wipe clean) the existing social/political/religious system.
Explanation for lack of evidence for ancient Mecca being important and having a connection with the Quran and Muhammad
In the traditional account, Muslims should look to the first half century of Islam (613-661 CE) to find an era of pure Islam and models to emulate.[135][136] It was then that the Quran was revealed and Islam was "perfected".[135] As a messenger of God, Muhammad was a model for all Muslims, as to a lesser extent were his "earliest and closest Companions", including his successors the Rashidun.[136]
Revisionists, in contrast, argue that the lack of any mention of Muhammad, Islam, Muslims in early epigraphs, coins, and documents; the failure of early Christian observers to find the religion of the invaders different from Judaism; the Arab invaders use of "mixed custom-administrative law"; can be explained by Islam being formed gradually, becoming a distinct religion after, not before, the Arab conquest of Syria and Persia. (The same explanations for the nature of the invasion and its success (imperial weakness, etc. -- not religious passion) also support this hypothesis of gradual development.)
But if Muhammad was not from Mecca and Islam did not arise there, where did he and it come from? Some of the locations suggested are Palestine (Jerusalem); the southern desert fringes of Palestine (Tom Holland); the northern Negev desert (Nevo and Koren), Northwest Arabia, south of Palestine (Crone).[Note 1] (All these regions are either different descriptions of the same region or close to each other.)
Missing Jewish traitors
The traditional narrative story of three Jewish tribes of Medina who ending up being driven into exile (the Banu Qaynuqa and Banu Nadir tribes) or massacred or enslaved (Banu Qurayza tribe) for their alleged treachery to Muhammad, but are missing from mention in old sources[139] and whose story clashes with what we know about Arab Jewish relations at that time.[107]
An explanation offered by Holland is that the sources talking about this exile and slaughter are all suspicious in being written long after the alleged treachery occurred and from the era of "Muslim greatness" when "authors would have had incentive to spin a story of how the Prophet for the brusquely slapped down of "uppity infidels."[140][141] (When the Arabs first conquered Jerusalem they lifted the ban on Jews being allowed into the city,[109] and allowed them to pray on the temple mount.)
From the study of alternative primary sources from the surrounding milieus, revisionists argue that Islam started as a monotheistic movement that included Arabs and Jews alike. The movement arose not in Mecca and Medina, but hundreds of km to the north, at the northern fringe of the Arabian peninsula, close to the Byzantine and Persian Empires. The change of the qibla, the direction of prayer, from Jerusalem to Mecca may be an echo of this earlier movement. A group of researchers rejected the historical existence of Muhammad and stated that his biography dealt not with an historical figure, but with a legendary one[v][143] (comparable to the debates about the historicity of Jesus or of Moses).[144] According to Volker Popp, "Ali" and "Muhammad" were not names, but titles of these figures.[w]
The revisionists view the initial "Islamic expansion" as a secular Arab expansion; only after the ascension of the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750 CE) was an exclusive Arabian Islamic identity shaped, shifting the origin narrative to the Arabian peninsula. In broader outline the revisionists argue that:
Islam did not rise among polytheistic pagans in Mecca but in a milieu in which Jewish and Christian texts were well known. The "infidels" were not pagan polytheists but monotheists who were polemically considered to deviate slightly from monotheism.[147][148]
The connection between Muslims and Jews was very close in the early times of Islam. Jews too were called "believers" and were part of the ummah. Anti-Jewish texts such as the account of the slaughter in 5 AH of the Jewish Banu Qurayza tribe came into being long after Muhammad when Islam had separated from Judaism.[149]
Consolidation of religious authority
In the beginning, secular and spiritual power were united in the person of the caliph. There were no special religious scholars. Religious scholars came into being only later and wrested the spiritual power from the caliphs.[150]
Expansion of Islam
The Islamic expansion was probably not an Islamic religiously motivated expansion but a secular Arab expansion. The expansion did not initially result in oppression of the non-Muslim population.[151]
After Muhammad, at least two phases were of major importance for the formation of Islam in its later shape:
The Umayyad Caliphate (661–750 CE), especially under Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (647–705, r.685–705), shaped the Islamic narrative, creating an exclusive Arabian Islamic identity.[153] Under the fifth Umayyad caliph, Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem was built. There the word "Islam" appears for the first time. Until this moment the Muslims called themselves simply "believers", and the Arab empire minted coins showing Christian symbols. Abd al-Malik also plays a major role in the reworking of the Quranic text.[154]
During the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258) practically all Islamic traditional texts about Islam's beginnings were written. The Abbasids, having overthrown the Umayyads, had great interest in legitimizing their rule. This motivation can be seen in the traditional texts.[155]
Influence of conquered peoples
Patricia Crone argues that Sharia was founded not on traditions of Muhammad, rasul allah, the messenger of God, but on the law "of the Near East as it had developed under Alexander. The Muslims sifted and systematized this law in the name of God, imprinting it with their own image in the process."[156] This provincial law that "the Umayyad caliphate in general and Muawiya in particular" employed, became what we now call sharia after a "long period of adjustments by the ulama."[157]
Among the "foremost" proponents of revisionism are John Wansbrough (1928–2002), Patricia Crone (1945–2015), Michael Cook, Yehuda D. Nevo (1932–1992), and Fred M. Donner.[30] The new movement originated at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London with the publications of two works by Wansbrough: Quranic Studies (1977) and The Sectarian Milieu (1978). Andrew Rippin (1950–2016), Norman Calder, G. R. Hawting, Patricia Crone and Michael Cook were students of Wansbrough. In 1977 Crone and Cook published Hagarism, which postulated, among other things, that Islam was established after, not before, the Arab conquests and that Mecca was not the original Islamic sanctuary.[4] Later, both distanced themselves from the theses of Hagarism as too far-reaching but continued to "challenge both Muslim and Western orthodox views of Islamic history."[4]Martin Hinds (1941–1988),[161] also studied at SOAS and Robert G. Hoyland was a student of Patricia Crone.[162]
In Germany at the Saarland University, Günter Lüling (1928–2014) and Gerd-Rüdiger Puin focused on the historical-critical research of the development of the Quran starting in the 1970s, and in the 2000s, Karl-Heinz Ohlig, Volker Popp, Christoph Luxenberg and Markus Groß argued that Muhammad was a legendary, not historical, figure. Hans Jansen from the Netherlands published a work in 2005/7 arguing in detail why he assumed that known accounts of Muhammad's life were legendary. Yehuda D. Nevo also questioned the historicity of Muhammad.[x]Sven Kalisch, a convert to Islam, taught Islamic theology before he left the faith in 2008[143] and questioned the historicity of Mohammad (as well as those of Jesus and Moses).[144][y]
James A. Bellamy has done textual criticism of the Quran and his proposed "emendations," or corrections, of the traditional text of the Quran. Fred Donner, in his several books on early Islamic history, argued that it was only during the reign Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (685–705) that the early ecumenical monotheism of the Arab conquerors began to separate from Christians and Jews.
The popular historian Tom Holland's work In the Shadow of the Sword (2012)[163][14] popularized the new research results and depicted a possible synthesis of the various revisionist approaches.
Publications
Scholarly
Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World (1977)
In Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World, Patricia Crone and Michael Cook set aside traditional Islamic history to draw on archaeological evidence and contemporary documents in Arabic, Armenian, Coptic, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin and Syriac. They depict a 7th-century Arab conquest of Byzantine and Persian lands that is not yet "Islamic."[164] According to various sources the conquered people (Greek Magaritai, Syriac Mahgre or Mahgraye) call their conquerors "Hagarenes," rather than Muslims. Instead of being inspired to conquest by a new prophet, holy book, and religion, the Arabs are described as being in alliance with the Jews by following a Jewish messianism to reclaim the Promised Land from the Byzantine Empire. The Qur'an came later, according to the authors, as a product of 8th-century edits of various materials drawn from a variety of Judeo-Christian and Middle-Eastern sources, and Muhammad was the herald of Umar, "the redeemer," a Judaic messiah.[165]
Patricia Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (1987)
In Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam, Patricia Crone argues that Mecca could not have been a hub of overland trade from Southern Arabia to Syria during the time of Muhammad,[166] for several reasons. It was not on the overland trade route from Southern Arabia to Syria,[166] and even if it had been, that land route was not very important compared to the maritime trade route[166] and had ceased to be used by the end of the 2nd century CE.[167] Meccan trade, except for Yemeni perfume, was mainly in cheap leather goods and clothing and occasionally in basic foodstuffs,[168] which were not exported north to Syria, which already had plenty of them, but to nearby regions.[169] Furthermore, the literature of Arab trading partners who kept track of Arab affairs (Greek, Latin, Syriac, Aramaic, and Coptic) makes no mention "of Quraysh (the tribe of Muhammad) and their trading center Mecca."[170] All of that suggests traditional "histories" passed down about Muhammad's life as a Meccan merchant traveling far and wide and suffering at the hands of powerful Meccan tribes are "pure fabrications"[78] and that it is far more likely Muhammad's career took place not in Mecca and Medina or in Southwestern Arabia at all but in Northwestern Arabia.
Hans Jansen, De Historische Mohammed (2005/2007)
The arguments against the plausibility of the classical Islamic traditions about Islam's beginnings were summarized by Hans Jansen in his work De Historische Mohammed. Jansen points out that the cryptic nature of the Quran, which usually alludes to events, rather than describing them, and seldom describes the situation for which a revelation was made causes the historically questionable traditions to be very important to interpret and understand the Quran. Many Islamic traditions came into being long after Muhammad on the basis of mere guesses for what situation a Quranic verse had been revealed. Because of those historically questionable traditions, the interpretation of the Quran has been restricted ever since.
Non-scholarly
Ibn Warraq, an author known for his criticism of Islam, compiled several revisionist essays in his book The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. Fred Donner, reviewing the book, noted that by favoring Wansbrough's school of revisionism, the author presents a "one-sided selection," which fails to consider the challenges to that line of revisionism. The result is "a book that is likely to mislead many an unwary general reader."[171]
Hoyland, who seeks to compromise between revisionism and traditionalism, believes the "heyday" of revisionism occurred sometime before the 1980s, when the "public profile of Islam" increased "massively," and, Hoyland argues, the "left-leaning" tendency of Western academics "shy" of criticizing Islam and "favored the traditionalist approach," while "pushing skeptics/revisionists to become more extreme."[1]
The designation revisionism was coined first by the opponents of the new academic movement and is still used by them partially with a less than positive connotation.[172][173] Then, the media took up that designation to call the new movement with a concise catchword.[174] Today, the adherents of the new movement also use Revisionism to designate themselves, but it mostly written in quotation marks and with a slightly self-mocking undertone.[175]
Criticism of revisionism
The consequent historical-critical analysis of early Islam met severe resistance in the beginning since theses with far-reaching meaning were published. Especially Patricia Crone's and Michael Cook's book Hagarism (1977) stirred up a lot of harsh criticism. Important representatives of Revisionism like Crone and Cook meanwhile distanced themselves from such radical theses.[176]
Criticism is expressed by researchers like Tilman Nagel, who aims at the speculative nature of some theses and shows that some revisionists lack some scholarly standards. On the other hand, Nagel accepts the basic impulse of the new movement to put more emphasis on the application of the historical-critical method.[177] A certain tendency to take revisionists seriously becomes obvious such as by the fact that opponents address their criticism not any longer to "revisionism" alone but to "extreme revisionism" or "ultra-revisionism."[178]
Gregor Schoeler discusses the revisionist school and depicts the early controversies. Schoeler considers revisionism to be too radical, but he welcomes the general impulse: "To have made us thinking about this all and much more remarkable things for the first time—or again, is without any doubt a merit of the new generation of the 'skeptics'."[179]
François de Blois, who is Teaching Fellow at the Department of the Study of Religions at SOAS, London, rejects the application of the historical-critical method to Islamic texts. He argues that method was developed with Christian texts in mind and thus, although it has been accepted as sound to be applied universally to any text, religious or not, there is no reason to apply the method to Islamic texts.[180]
↑for example: many believe scripture says Islam was "completed" just before the death of Muhammad. "... [The] Prophet completed his Final Sermon, and upon it, ... the revelation came down: '…This day have I perfected your religion for you, completed My Grace upon you, and have chosen Islam for you as your religion…' (Quran 5:3)"[18]
↑(an idea advanced in the statement of the Fifth colloquium of the Near Eastern History Group of Oxford University). Colloquium organizers argued that if "we begin by assuming that there must have been some continuity, we need either go beyond the Islamic sources or ... reinterpret them".[19]
↑On the question of whether Muhammad was an historical figure, as Muslim believe, and not a mythical figure, some revisionists believe the answer is yes (including Patricia Crone, Michael Cook, Fred Donner, Tom Holland, Günter Lüling); and some no (John Wansbrough, Hans Jansen, Karl-Heinz Ohlig, Yehuda D. Nevo). Even more disagree over the origins of the holy book of Islam, the Quran, on issues such as (in the words of Fred Donner): "When did it first appear? How was it first written? In what kind of language was -- is -- it written? What form did it first take? Who constituted its first audience? How was it transmitted from one generation to another, especially in its early years? When, how and by whom was it codified?" [8]
↑“The full systems of Islamic theology and law are not derived primarily from the Quran. Muhammad’s sunna was a second but far more detailed living scripture, and later Muslim scholars would thus often refer to the Prophet as `The Possessor of Two Revelations`”[29]
↑"it is true that there are a few traditional texts conventionally attributed to figures who died before 800 C.E. (notably Ibn Ishaq and Malik b. Anas)" but "we only have those works in recensions made by Muslim scholars of later generations, and none of the works available to us were put into the form in which we know them earlier than the ninth century C.E. (the third century of Islam).[38]
↑The general view among historians and numismatists is that the human figure depicted in the coins minted by Abd al-Malik between 693 and 697, which have come to be known as the "standing caliph" issue, represent Abd al-Malik.[41]
↑at least for the first 60 years, documents produced "from within the community of the prophet Muhammad" are scarce and primarily "army requisition notes, tax demands, prayers and coin legends", and so less than helpful for historical purposes;[68] "original documents—diaries, letters, tax registers, decrees, inscriptions, and so on—together with monuments, artworks, coins and the like. Regrettably, very little of that kind has come down to us …. (Humphreys, Mu’awiya, 10. quoted in Little, Joshua (21 October 2022). "The New Historiography of Islamic Origins: A Review of Some Recent Trends in the Field". Islamic Origins. Retrieved 14 December 2025.); "The most substantial corpus" of material from the seventh-century that have survived for historians are the numerous papyri, starting in 21/642 CE, concerning the local Arab administration in Egypt and the feeding, housing, equipping of the new Arab armies.[69]
↑Unlike most conquests in Palestine, the Arab conquest left no layer of destruction for archeologists to find, the kind and/or style of pottery doesn’t change, so its difficult to distinguishing archaeologically examining the layers of sediment, debris, rock, and other materials that form or accumulate to create Stratigraphy. (Fred Donner),[71] Hoyland also states that "the Arab conquests were not particularly destructive".)[74]
↑It would be "generally true" to say that "the Syriac sources of this period see the conquests primarily as Arab, and not Muslim" (S.P. Brock);[77][78]
↑ Christians were soldiers in the Arab immigration/invasion (Fred Donner);[71]
↑Saadi did not examine the sources of Arab Mhaggraye because none have been found.[79]
↑(This was described in connection with a religious colloquium between the immigrant/invaders and the locals, where the Arab emir is accompanied by "learned Jews", though none of the sources describe the immigrants as Jews.[75]
↑coins of the region and era (Arab-Sassanian coins) finds a period between the Arab conquest and around 70 AH (689/690 CE, during the reign of Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan 646-705 CE), when coins used monotheist phrases such as bism Allah, bism Allah rabbi/al-malik, rabbi Allah, but no specifically Islamic phrases, such as the name of Muhammad (Y. Nevo, J. Koren).[80][81] Another indication of Arabs practicing monotheism influenced by Judaism before Islam comes from Sozomen, a Greek from Gaza, writing a couple centuries before Muhammad, who describes Arabs who believed "that Abraham had bequeathed a monotheist religion" to Arabs, "including descent from Ishmael and Hagar and prohibition of pork and other Jewish practices",[82] (though there is no proof this belief was found throughout the Arabian peninsula).[83]
↑ in the words of archaeologist Yehuda Nevo and researcher Judith Koren --
"legends on coins are official pronouncements of current state attitudes (in this case to religion), intended for wide promulgation. Merely placing religious formulae on coins involves a conscious act of choice regarding what to say and what to omit."[70]
↑ Crone and Hinds note how "striking" it is that the documentary evidence that "survives from the Sufyanid period (661-684) makes no mention of the messenger of God [Rasul Allah] at all. The papyuri do not refer to him. The Arabic inscriptions of the Arab-Sassanian coins only invoke Allah, not his rasul" (messenger).[85]
↑'According to the epigraphic [stone inscriptions] corpus, distinctly Islamic identity began to be articulated in the first decades of the eighth century CE, with an emphasis on specific rituals and the Prophet, as well as with the appearance of the words “Muslims” and “Islam” as references to the religious group.' [86]
↑A Christian source, John of Fenek, writes not of proselytizing by the conquerors, but that "of each person" the Arabs "required only tribute, allowing him to remain in whatever faith he wished."[90]
↑Robert Hoyland states that "writers who lived at the same time as the first four caliphs ... recorded next to nothing about them, and their names do not appear on coins, inscriptions, or documents. It is only with the fifth caliph ... Mu'awiya (661-680), that was have evidence of a functioning Arab government, since his name appears on all official state media."[93]
↑Nevo and Koren state that "extensive ... large scale, systematic surveys and excavations" archaeological work for several decades up to 1990 in Hijaz (Nevo & Koren state that "This work is published continuously in Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, Abhat, and Atlal. For an impressive example of such field work, see M. Khan and A. Mughannam "Ancient Dams in the Ta'if Area 1981 (1401)," Atlal 6.)[102] has found, contrary to Islamic tradition, "no signs of local Arab cultures from the sixth and early seventh centuries" including no pagan cites or sanctuaries",[101] and no trace of Jewish settlement at Medina, Khaybar or Wadi al-Qurrar. This is despite finding the remains of many other cultures (Hellenistic, Nabatean, Roman, and Early Byzantine), and a "wealth" of pagan shrines and stone stelae in an area to the north -- the central Negev desert (between Arabia and Palestine) -- indicating (also contrary to Islamic tradition), that "active pagans must have formed a considerable part of the Negev population right through the first one-and-a-half centuries of the Muslim era".[101] "Shrines and stone stale testify to a continuous cult of stela worship [in the Negev] from the Nabataean period" down to the mid-eighth century (start of the Abbasid era). Until 160-170 A.H. there were "over thirty" pagan sites that were periodically visited and had pagan ceremonies performed in them". The largest of these, at Sde Boqer, has been partly excavated:
for the report see Nevo and Rothenberg, Sde Boqer 1983-84;
for the Muslim accounts: Hawting, G.R. "We Were Not Ordered With Entering It" BSOAS 47 (1984) 228-42; Rubin, Uri "The Ka'aba: Aspects of its Ritual, Functions, and Position in Pre-Islamic and Early Islamic Times" JSAI 8 (1986): 97-131;
for a comparison of the two: Nevo, Yehuda D. and Koren, Judith (1990) "The Origins of the Muslim Descriptions of the Jahili Meccan Sanctuary" Journal of Near Eastern studies, 49 (1990): 23-44[101]
↑ widely considered authentic according to R. Stephen Humphreys and others. Humphreys, R. Stephen (1991). Islamic History: A Framework for Inquiry – Revised Edition. Princeton University Press. p.92. ISBN978-0-691-00856-1. Including revisionist Patricia Crone who is quoted as saying that 'in Ibn Ishaq's sīrah, "it sticks out like a piece of solid rock in an accumulation of rubble."' [106]
↑Suliman Bashear argues that it is unlikely that the Arab invasion and conquest could have effected "such changes in world affairs within so short a span of time" that the diversity in "languages, ethnicities, cultures, and religions" were "suddenly swallowed up by Arabian Islam in the early seventh century" as Arabic historical sources of the third AH/ninth CE. century described.[127] And that it is much more likely that Arab invasion preceded "Arabian Islam as we know it" and that Islam was fused with the Arab polity sometime after "the beginning of the second/eighth century".[66][67]
↑ In Nevo & Koren (2003): Crossroads to Islam: The Origins of the Arab Religion and the Arab State
↑The titles given to Jesus by Assyrian Christians living in the Sasanian Empire are equivalent to Muhammad's New Testament benedictus, ευλογημένος. In a numismatic study, Popp identified coins dating to 16 AH inscribed with mhmd (Arabic written without vowels, but lacking the rasulullah, which became common later). Popp added Arab-Sasanian and Syrian coins inscribed with MHMT in the Pahlavi script, and also partly with mhmd in the Arabic script, combined with Christian symbolism in some cases.[145][146]
↑ in his 2003 work Crossroads to Islam: The Origins of the Arab Religion and the Arab State
↑Kalisch rejected the idea of teaching Islamic theology without taking into consideration the new results of historical-critical research and as of 2008 was teaching the history of ideas in the Near East in Late Antiquity in Münster, Germany.[143][144]
↑Petra, east of Palestine, (Another suggested location for the Quran and Muhammad in north-western Arabia (based on the Quran and later traditions is somewhere around Petra in Jordan.)[137][138]
↑In the Shadow of the Sword (2012), cited in Bowersock, Glen (4 May 2012). "In the Shadow of the Sword by Tom Holland – review". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 November 2019.
12Brown, Jonathan (26 July 2015). "Tom Holland, the Five Daily Prayers and the Hypocrisy of Revisionism". Dr. Jonathan Brown. Retrieved 16 January 2020.
↑Ismail, Salwa (2004). "The Politics of Historical Revisionism: New Re-Readings of the Early Islamic Period"". In Michaelle Browers; Charles Kurzman (eds.). An Islamic Reformation?. Lexington Books. pp.101–124, especially p. 114 and footnotes 43, 44. ISBN9780739105542. Retrieved 26 March 2020.
↑Karl-Heinz Ohlig: Islam und Islamismus, in: imprimatur No. 48, 2015, pp. 48-53
↑"PROPHET MUHAMMAD'S LAST SERMON: A FINAL ADMONITION". The Religion of Islam. Retrieved 22 March 2020.
12statement of the July 1975 Fifth colloquium of the Near Eastern History Group of Oxford University, cited in Ibn Warraq, ed. (2000). "1. Studies on Muhammad and the Rise of Islam". The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. Prometheus. p.55.
↑"Chapter 1. “A Prophet Has Appeared, Coming with the Saracens”: Muhammad’s Leadership during the Conquest of Palestine According to Seventh- and Eighth-Century Sources". The Death of a Prophet: The End of Muhammad's Life and the Beginnings of Islam, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012, pp. 18-72. https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812205138.18
↑Adams, Charles (1976). "The Islamic Religious Tradition". In Binder, Louis (ed.). The Study of the Middle East: Research and Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences. John Wiley and Sons. p.50. cited in Berg, Herbert (2000). "15. Implications of, and Opposition to, the Methods and Theories of John Wansbrough". In Ibn Warraq (ed.). The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. Prometheus. p.502. ISBN9781573927871.
↑Berg, Herbert (2000). "15. Implications of, and Opposition to, the Methods and Theories of John Wansbrough". In Ibn Warraq (ed.). The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. Prometheus. p.502. ISBN9781573927871.
12Feroz-ud-Din Shah Khagga, M.; Warraich, M. Mahmood (April 2015). "Revisionism: A Modern Orientalistic Wave in the Qurʾānic Criticism". Al-Qalam: 2. Retrieved 26 November 2019.
↑Humphreys, R.S. Islamic History, A Framework for Inquiry, Princeton, 1991, p.83
12Schacht, Joseph (1950). The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence. Oxford: Clarendon.
↑Holland, Tom (January 28–29, 2017). Tom Holland on The Origins of Islam(video). Rancho Mirage Writers Festival: youtube. eDQh2nk8ih4&t=1s. Retrieved 14 January 2020.
↑Pickard, John (2013). Behind the Myths: The Foundations of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. AuthorHouse. p.352. ISBN9781481783637. Retrieved 18 October 2019.
12Crone, P., Roman, Provincial, and Islamic Law, p.33
123Conrad, Lawrence I., "The conquest of Arwad: A Source-Critical Study in the Historiography of the Early Medieval Near East" in The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, 308-309
↑ホイランド、ロバート G. (2014).神の道：アラブの征服とイスラム帝国の創造。オックスフォード大学出版局。 2020年1月14日取得。
↑ Bashear, S. (1997). Arabs and Others in Early Islam . New Jersey. p. 113. [敗北した民族の]言語、民族、文化、宗教の多様性は、徐々にではなく、後になってからではなく、[7世紀までに]「アラビア・イスラム」に取って代わられた。{{cite book}}: CS1メンテナンス: 場所の発行元が見つかりません (リンク)
↑ Brock, SP (1982). "Syriac Views of Emergent Islam". In GHA Juynboll (ed.). Studies on the First Century of Islamic Society . Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. pp. 20–21 . Retrieved 30 August 2024. 1 つのことは非常に明確です。おそらくわずか 10 年ほどの不確実な期間の後、人々は新しいアラブ帝国 (malkuta)が出現し、ササン朝を完全に、そしてビザンツ帝国の半分を置き換えたことを認識しました。...おそらくテルマーレのディオニュシオス (845 年没) によって初めて、イスラム教が新しい宗教として完全に認識されるようになったのでしょう。（ Nevo & Koren著『イスラム研究への方法論的アプローチ』2000年、433ページより引用）
↑ Lindstedt, Ilkka (2019). "WHO IS IN, WHO IS OUT? EARLY MUSLIM IDENTITY THROUGH EPIGRAPHY AND THEORY" . JSAI (Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam) . 46 : 147 . 2024年9月10日取得.
↑イブン・カスティール p. 2、 Al-Bidāya wa-n-Nihāya ( البداية والنهاية ) The Beginning and The End要約版は英語で入手可能、 al Bidayah wan Nihayah Ibn Kathir Early Days。 2017 年 3 月 30 日。
↑イブン・カスティール p. 2、 Al-Bidāya wa-n-Nihāya ( البداية والنهاية ) The Beginning and The End要約版は英語で入手可能、 al Bidayah wan Nihayah Ibn Kathir Early Days。 2017 年 3 月 30 日。
↑ホランド著『剣の影の中で』第6章、注132参照。ハンス・ヤンセン（1942-2015）著『ムハンマド神話』（ De Historische Mohammed）
↑オーリグ、カール・ハインツ。プイン、ゲルト＝リュディガー (2006)。Die dunklen Anfänge: neue Forshungen zur Entstehung und frühen Geschichte des Islam。 H. シラー。16 ～ 123ページ。ISBN3899301285。
↑Patricia Crone / Martin Hinds: God's Caliph: Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam (1986)
↑Robert G. Hoyland: In God's Path. The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire (2015)
↑As the Arabs of the Ḥejāz had used the drahms of the Sasanian-style, the only silver coinage in the world at that time, it was natural for them to leave many of the Sasanian mints in operation by striking coins like those of the emperors in every detail except for the addition of brief Arabic inscriptions like besmellāh in the margins.https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/coins-and-coinage-
↑Fred M. Donner, Muhammad and the Believers. At the Origins of Islam (Harvard University Press; 2010) ISBN978-0-674-05097-6, pp 217-8 - "Another feature of the transformation of the Believers' movement into Islam was the articulation, for the first time, of a consciously 'Arab' political identity [...] . As a political identity, membership in this group gave one special political privileges, in particular, the right to be considered part of the ruling caste of the new Umayyad/Muslim empire."
↑Patricia Crone / Michael Cook: Hagarism (1977) p. 29; Yehuda D. Nevo: Crossroads to Islam: The Origins of the Arab Religion and the Arab State (2003) pp. 410-413; Karl-Heinz Ohlig (Hrsg.): Der frühe Islam. Eine historisch-kritische Rekonstruktion anhand zeitgenössischer Quellen (2007) pp. 336 ff.
↑Patricia Crone: Slaves on Horses. The Evolution of the Islamic Polity (1980) pp. 7, 12, 15; auch Hans Jansen: Mohammed (2005/7)
↑Crone, Patricia (1987). Roman, Provincial and Islamic Law: The Origins of the Islamic Patronate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p.99. cited in Ibn Warraq, ed. (2000). "2: Origins of Islam: A Critical Look at the Sources". The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. Prometheus. p.99. ISBN978-1-57392-787-1.
↑Takim, Liyakat N. (2006). Heirs of the Prophet, The: Charisma and Religious Authority in Shi'ite Islam. NY: SUNY. p.187. ISBN9780791481912. Retrieved 16 January 2020.
↑Khan, Muhammad (29 September 2017). "Revisionist account of early Islamic history and culture". Muslim News. Retrieved 16 January 2020.
↑Bowersock, Glen (4 May 2012). "In the Shadow of the Sword by Tom Holland – review". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 November 2019.
↑Waines, David (2003). "Excursus on Islamic origins". An Introduction to Islam (2ed.). Cambridge University Press. p.307. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511801037.012. ISBN978-0-521-53906-7.
↑Humphreys, R. Stephen (1992). "Early historical tradition and the first Islamic polity". Islamic History: A Framework for Inquiry. Princeton University Press. pp.84–85. doi:10.1515/9780691214238-005. ISBN978-0-691-21423-8.
↑ Gregor Schoeler、『 Charakter und Authentie der muslimischen Überlieferung über das Leben Mohammeds』、de Gruyter 1996。18 ページ、23 ページ。 142f;元の引用 p. 24: 「死はすべてビーチテンスヴェルテ・メア・ウンス・ツム・エルステン・マル――オーデル・アーノイト――ズ・ベデンケン・ゲゲベン・ツ・ハベン、イスト・ツヴァイフェロス・アイン・ヴァーディエンスト・デア・ノイエン・ジェネレーション・デア『スケプティカー』である。」
Hoyland, Robert G. (2015). In God's Path: the Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire. Oxford University Press.
Donner, Fred M. (2008). "The Quran in Recent Scholarship". In Reynolds, Gabriel Said (ed.). The Quran in its Historical Context. Routledge. pp.29-50.
Lester, Toby (January 1999). "What is the Koran?". The Atlantic (January 1999). Retrieved 20 November 2019.
Nevo, Yehuda D.; Koren, Judith (2003). Crossroads to Islam: The Origins of the Arab Religion and the Arab State (Islamic Studies). New York: Prometheus Books.
Nevo, Yehuda D.; Koren, Judith (2000). "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies". The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. New York: Prometheus Books. pp.420–443.
Reynolds, Gabriel Said (2008). "Introduction, Quranic studies and its controversies". In Reynolds, Gabriel Said (ed.). The Quran in its Historical Context. Routledge. pp.1-26.
Schacht, Joseph (1950). The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence. Oxford: Clarendon.
Sirry, Mun'im (2021). Controversies Over Islamic Origins: An Introduction to Traditionalism and Revisionism. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Ibn Warraq, ed. (2000). "1. Studies on Muhammad and the Rise of Islam". The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. Prometheus. pp.55. ISBN9781573927871.
Ibn Warraq, ed. (2000). "2. Origins of Islam: A Critical Look at the Sources". The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. Prometheus. pp.89-124. ISBN9781573927871.
Wansbrough, J. (1978). Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Further reading
Carlos Segovia: J. Wansbrough and the Problem of Islamic Origins in Recent Scholarship: A Farewell to the Traditional Account, book chapter in: The Coming of the Comforter: When, Where, and to Whom? Studies on the Rise of Islam and Various Other Topics in Memory of John Wansbrough, ed. by Carlos A. Segovia and Basil Lourié, Gorgias Press, 2012, pp. xv–xxiv.
