Revisionist school of Islamic studies
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The revisionist school of Islamic studies (also critical school of Islamic studies and critical historians of Islam)[1] is a scientific movement in Islamic studies[2][3][4] that questions traditional Muslim narratives of Islam's origins.[5][6]
In the early 1970s some non-Muslim Islamic scholars[7] (called "revisionists" later) began to question the traditional / conventional accounts of the rise of Islam. This origin story and the reliability of its traditional "literary sources" was subscribed to not only by the Islamic world but in large part[8] by most non-Muslim Islamic scholars.[9][6] Revisionists had doubts about these traditional sources[10] -- which included accounts of what the Islamic prophet Muhammad and his followers said, did, approved of, etc., passed down orally and then written 150 to 250 years afterwards -- which (the new scholars argued) were subject to biases of and embellishments by the authors and transmitters.[11] To these traditional sources revisionists proposed employing a "source-critical" approach, including relevant archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics and contemporary non-Arabic literature,[10] that they argued provided "hard facts" and an ability to crosscheck.[11]
Revisionist scholars include John Wansbrough and his students Andrew Rippin, Norman Calder, G. R. Hawting, Patricia Crone and Michael Cook; as well as Fred Donner, Günter Lüling, Yehuda D. Nevo and Christoph Luxenberg;[12] popular historian Tom Holland,[13][14] and ex-Muslim Ibn Warraq; who all drew on the earlier work of Ignác Goldziher and Joseph Schacht.
Their theories are "by no means monolithic", but they do share some "methodological premises",[15] and theories:[16][17] namely that Muhammad did not come from Mecca and the belief that he did is an invented tradition from decades after his death; that the relationship between Muhammad and Jews and Christians may have originally been much less adversarial than traditionally described; that what we know of as Islam (its basic principles)[a] was formed not during the ten years of Muhammad's mission (622–632 CE) before the 7th-century Arab invasion of Byzantine and Persian empires, but over a longer period including Muhammad's mission, Rashidun caliphs and the Umayyad Caliphs; that the religious, political, cultural break between the civilizations of Persia and Byzantium, and the new 7th-century Arab empire, was not as abrupt as the traditional history describes.[b] Issues not agreed on include the historicity of Muhammad and questions on the Quran such as when it first appeared, how it was written, and how it was transmitted from one generation to another in its early years.[c]
Origins and methodology
Study of Islam in the West
The influence of the different tendencies in the study of Islam in the West has waxed and waned. Ibn Warraq believes "the rise of this revisionist school" may be dated from the Fifth Colloquium of the Near Eastern History Group of Oxford University in July 1975,[19] and Robert Hoyland believes that revisionists were ascendant in the 1970s and 1980s.[1]
Prior to that time, scholar Charles Adams[21] describes two different eras of approach to the study of Islam in the West -- before World War II "Western Orientalism" may have been guilty of "the sins of unsympathetic, hostile, or interested approaches" in its study of the religion; this being followed by a movement stretching from the end of the War to sometime around the mid-1970s, represented in both religious and academic circles, that endeavored to show "a new attitude" and "greater appreciation" towards Islam. Herbert Berg gives Wilfred Cantwell Smith and W. Montgomery Watt as examples of proponents of this post-war "irenic" approach to Islamic history,[22] and notes that the approach necessarily clashed with scholarship that questioned Islamic doctrine (as the revisionists did).
Sources for the different accounts of the origins of Islam
During this "irenic" era (1950s to early 1970s),[7] non-Muslim Islamic scholars, accepted the Islamic origin story[23] "in most of its details",[8] (though not the accounts of supernatural activity, such as how angels descended to fight a battle on behalf of Muhammad),[23] and the reliability of the story's basis -- the Muslim "literary sources" used in traditional religious historical scholarship. These sources include early tafsir (commentaries on the Quran),[24] and sīrah (biography of the prophet) mentioned above, and also khabar (reports or stories about historical events from early Islam, also a “narrative of biographical character”),[25] qissa ("edifying narratives of the prophets" often spiced with colorful stories "intended to keep the attention of the audience"),[26] mathal (narratives or a sayings intended to prove an element of doctrine or "explain a circumstance of life",[27] maghazi (narratives of Muhammad's military campaigns),[28] and hadith (records of the words, actions, and the silent approval of accounts of Muhammad -- which like the Quran qualify as God's revelation according to the traditional Islamic history).[d]
Studies of hadith
The first literary source to be studied was hadith -- not in the early 1970s but the early and mid 20th century, and not by revisionists but by their forerunners, Islamic scholars Ignác Goldziher (1850–1921) and Joseph Schacht (1902–1969). Goldziher and Schacht argued that the traditional Islamic accounts about Islam's early times, written generations after Muhammad died, cannot be relied on as historical sources.[30] Goldziher argued, in the words of R.S. Humphreys, "that a vast number of hadith accepted even in the most rigorously critical Muslim collections were outright forgeries from the late 8th and 9th centuries—and as a consequence, that the meticulous isnads which supported them were utterly fictitious."[31]
Schacht argued Islamic law was not passed down without deviation from Muhammad but "developed... out of popular and administrative practice under the Umayyads, and this practice often diverged from the intentions and even the explicit wording of the Koran... norms derived from the Koran were introduced into Muhammadan law almost invariably at a secondary stage."[32][33]
Extension of arguments
The revisionists extended that argument beyond hadith to other facets of Islamic "literary sources" mentioned above: Muhammad's biography; the history of the Quran's formation; and the historical developments under the first Islamic dynasty. Revisionists believe that traditional Islamic accounts, not just hadith, written generations after Muhammad, are/were subject to biases of and embellishments by the authors and transmitters,[11] and that the true historical events of the earliest times of Islam must be newly researched and reconstructed by applying the aforementioned historical-critical method,[4] (the process of evaluating the validity, reliability, relevance, etc., of a source, to the subject under investigation), or alternately, in the words of Cook and Crone, historians must "step outside the Islamic tradition altogether and start again."[34] That requires using the
- "source-critical approach to both the Koran and the Muslim literary accounts of the rise of Islam, the Conquest and the Umayyad period";[35]
- comparing traditional accounts with
- accounts from the seventh and eighth century CE that are external to the Muslim tradition;[35]
- 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]
Contradictions, confusions, inconsistencies
Accounts in the traditional literature of what went on in the time of early Muslims (and shortly before and after) contain "contradictions, confusions, inconsistencies",[43] (some examples being: Meccans first traded with foreigners who came to Mecca but stopped in the pre-Islam past; contradicted by another story of Arabs stopping trade after Islam triumphed to have more time to pray. The Meccans went to Syria every summer and winter; contradicted by Meccans going to Syria in one season and to Yemen the next).[44] Examining sīrah, revisionist scholar Patricia Crone found a pattern, where the farther a commentary was removed in time from the life of Muhammad and the events in the Quran, the more information the commentaries provided, despite the fact that they depended on the earlier sources for their contents. Crone attributed this phenomenon to storytellers' embellishment.
If one storyteller should happen to mention a raid, the next storyteller would know the date of this raid, while the third would know everything that an audience might wish to hear about.[45][46]
An example was the oldest prophetic biography — that of Ibn Ishaq (died 767) — which was much smaller than the commentary of Al-Waqidi (d.823), despite the fact that Waqidi's later works covered a shorter periods of time (only Muhammad's period in Medina).[45]
Waqidi will always give precise dates, locations, names, where Ibn Ishaq has none, accounts of what triggered the expedition, miscellaneous information to lend color to the event
Later historical accounts
Orthodox Muslims, including compilers of the accounts (in particular hadith), agree the original sources contained many falsified historical accounts, but maintain that the traditional religious scholarly discipline, "science of hadith", has determined their accuracy. Revisionists dispute this.[47] One concern is that rather than decreasing in number over time as they were lost or forgotten, the number of hadith increased, a red flag that fabrications must have been added. Patricia Crone argues that it's not possible to find a "core" of authentic hadith because we do not know when the fabrication of them started.
Bukhari [810–870 CE] is said to have examined a total of 600,000 traditions attributed to the Prophet; he preserved some 7000 (including repetitions), or in other words dismissed some 593,000 as inauthentic. If Ibn Hanbal [780–855 CE] examined a similar number of traditions, he must have rejected about 570,000, his collection containing some 30,000 (again including repetitions). Of Ibn Hanbal's traditions, 1,710 (including repetitions) are transmitted by the companion Abd Allah ibn Abbas [619–687 CE]. Yet less than fifty years earlier one scholar had estimated that Ibn Abbas had only heard nine traditions from the Prophet, while another thought that the correct figure might be ten. If Ibn Abbas had heard ten traditions from the Prophet in the years around 800, but over a thousand by about 850 CE, how many had he heard in 700 or 632? Even if we accept that ten of Ibn Abbas' traditions are authentic, how do we identify them in the pool of 1,710?[47][48]
In their study of the traditional Islamic accounts of early conquest (known as khabar rather than hadith), historians Albrecht Noth and Lawrence Conrad found the conquests of several key cities -- Damascus and Caesarea in Syria, Babilyn/al-Fusat and Alexandria in Egypt, Tustar in Khuzistan and Cordoba in Spain — are described as having been conquered by Muslims in the same way. There is a
"traitor who, ... points out a weak spot in the city's fortification to the Muslim besiegers; a celebration in the city which diverts the attention of the besieged; then a few assault troops who scale the walls, ... a shout of 'Allahu akbar!' ... from the assault troops as a sign that they have entered the town; the opening of one of the gates from inside, and the onslaught of the entire army."[49]
Revisionists found this unlikely, and in one instance of where an Islamic account could be compared with that of a non-Muslim one (the conquest of the island of Arwad, 3 km off the Syrian coast, in 29 A.H/650 CE, chronicled by Theophilus of Edessa), the two differed to an "extraordinary extent" and were "irreconcilable".[49][50]
Quranic text
- 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
Traditional account
The standard version of the origin of Islam – based on hadith, tafsir, sirah, etc. criticized above and described by historians such as G. R. Hawting, Tamim Ansary, Robert G. Hoyland, Suliman Bashear, Ibn Warraq — has God revealing the holy book, (the Quran), to his messenger Muhammad, an illiterate trader based in the wealthy pagan, Western Arabian trading city of Mecca,[58] who preaches and spreads this new religion, superseding Judaism and Christianity, purified of idolatry and polytheism.[59][60] After his death his disciples (companions), outnumbered but full of zeal,[61][62] and with God on their side,[63] continue Islam's expansion, conquering a vast area in record time;[64] replacing not only the law and religious doctrine of the diverse defeated people with Arabian Islam, but the language and culture — not over centuries, but by the end of the seventh century.[65][66][67]
Implications of "hard sources"
Revisionists (R. Hoyland, Yehuda D. Nevo, J. Koren) point out that elements of this account should be reflected in the physical remains of archaeology, papyri, rock inscriptions and coins, dating from the first century or so after Muhammad's death (i.e. 630-730 CE). For example,
Byzantine (in languages such as Armenian, Greek, or Syriac), Jewish or Persian literature from 7th century, (such as chronicles), [g] should mention:
- Arab conquests (Syria and Palestine in 641 CE, Mesopotamia in 636 CE, Egypt between 639 and 646 CE, and the rest of the Persian/Sassanid empire by 651);
- the reign of the Rashidun ("Rightly Guided") Caliphs (632–661 CE) and how they brought a new religion, new laws, new ways of doing things, ruling with justice and piety.
Archaeological digs should find things like
- remains of major battles, ruins of overrun forts, destroyed symbols of Byzantine authority, etc., dating to the times given by the traditional account.
- coins with verses or parts of verses from the Quran and mention of Muhammad and the caliphate dating from after the conquest, (because coins are common archaeological artifacts and "official pronouncements" of the state that minted them, and coins of later Islamic states include these features).[70]
The thousands of rock inscriptions in the Arabian Peninsula and Syro-Jordanian desert made during different eras,[70] that (as far as they can be deciphered) should indicate a pagan era before 630 CE and an Islamic era after, with some overlap (e.g. Islamic inscriptions and mentions of paganism or pagan names).[70]
Conflict between traditional account and "hard sources"
But in fact revisionists argue there are numerous contradictions between physical remains and the traditional/conventional historical account,[10] including:
Lack of sharp division you'd expect between the victorious conquering invaders and the defeated Christians and Persians:[71]
- A failure for "at least" a decade, of chroniclers among the Christian inhabitants to recognized Arabs as rulers/conquerors -- rather than just "immigrants" (mhaggraye, magaritai, muhājir ) or raiders (S.P. Brock).[72]
- No attempt by the conquered people to rebel against the Arab immigrants/conquerors despite outnumbering them by a wide margin (for example the Arabs took over Jerusalem by negotiations rather than by siege) (Tom Holland).[73]
- In archeological digging, a lack of abrupt changes—in destruction, style of pottery, etc.—usually found in uncovering a conquest of a civilization in Palestine (F. Donner, R. Hoyland).[71] [h]
Lack of specific Islamic characteristics (such as the mention of Muhammad and his prophethood, the "rightly guided" caliphs who succeed him, the new religion of Islam, its holy book the Quran, laws based on the divine revelation of Muhammad's sayings and doings), in epigraphs, coins, documents of the Arab invaders until around 700 CE.[75]
- when the new Arab invaders/immigrants are recognized as rulers by Christian chroniclers/observers they're described "mostly" in ethnic rather than religious terms (R. Hoyland),[76] (S.P. Brock);[i] the chroniclers observe that "among them (Arabs) there are many Christians..." (Abdul-Massih Saadi),[79] (Fred Donner);[j] That Muhammad was commonly referred to as simply the first of the Arab kings, rather than by the standard Islamic title of "prophet" or "apostle" (S.P. Brock).[77][78]
- The fact that when the Christians did talk of the religion of the immigrants/invaders they did not mention the "Quran", "Islam", or that (at least some of) the immigrants/conquerors were of a new religion (Abdul-Massih Saadi).[75][k]
- The religion of the Arabs they do mention was monotheism "in accordance" with the Torah and "Old Law (Old Testament)", as expressed at a post-conquest religious colloquium.[l]
- A lack of Islamic iconography on coins (God in the Arabic form, "Allah", is found, but not "Muhammad is the Messenger of God") until the reign of Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (646-705 CE),[80][m] and no use of the name of Muhammad on Arab-Sassanian coins until sometime after 685 CE,[84] despite traditional sources claiming Syria and Palestine were conquered by Arabs in 641 CE (Y. Nevo, J. Koren).[70][n] (Other "documentary evidence" from the era before 685 CE -- such as papyuri -- also make no mention of the messenger of God (Rasul Allah) "at all".)[o]
- No appearance of the words “Muhammad", "Muslims” and “Islam” and references to distinctly Islamic rituals and the Prophet are found before 690 CE among the many medieval stone inscriptions in Arabic in western Arabia, (Ilkka Lindstedt,[p] Y. Nevo, J. Koren).[80]
- A legal system based not on what is now known as shariah (Islamic law), but on the "mixed custom-administrative law" of the outer provinces of the Roman empire, prior to the changes made by Abbasid era legal scholar Al-Shafi‘i who died almost 200 years after Muhammad (820 CE). In this "pre-Islamic sunnah" of Arabia, and later the "living traditions" of the newly formed Islamic schools (J. Schacht),[32] caliphs were "free to make and unmake Sunnah as they wished";[87] early Muslim scholars observed that citing hadith of the prophet as the basis of law was an innovation from past practices.[88][89]
- No mention in the early sources found by historians of any offers by Arab warriors to Persians and Byzantines to avoid conquest by converting to Islam (R. Hoyland);[90] (as one of three choices of "conversion, surrender with a payment of a poll tax, or death in battle").[91][90] Tribute paid to the Arabs was the cost of being conquered, not of being non-Muslims (Robert Hoyland),[92] and once paid a subject was allowed to remain "whatever faith he wished".[q] Some who did avoid paying tribute did so by serving as guides and spies (Samaritans),[91] frontier guards (Jarajima of the Black Mountain region),[91] or allied military forces (Persians of Darband). (R. Hoyland)[91]
- No mention by the conquered Christians, nor by Arabs in coins, inscriptions, or documents, of the "rightly guided" caliphs (R. Hoyland),[r]
- No mention of the legendary futūḥ battles (i.e. the early Arab-Muslim conquests which facilitated the spread of Islam and Islamic civilization) (Y. Nevo, J. Koren).[80][81]
Lack of evidence connecting Muhammad with Mecca or that it was a place of significance in Muhammad's time.[58]
- The ignorance of the putatively major trading center and oasis in Hijaz of Mecca by ancient Roman and Greek diplomats, geographers, historians,[94][95][96] traders,[97] mercenary recruiters,[98] and even by the conquered peoples (at least "for a long time") (P. Crone).[99][100] Before the Arab conquests, "not a single" source outside Arabia mentioned a city called Mecca.[58]
- No archaeological evidence (as of 1990, despite "extensive" work), "of local Arab cultures" in the region Muhammad is traditionally thought to have lived in (Hijaz) during the time he is thought to have lived there (sixth and early seventh centuries),[101] nor any trace of Jewish settlements in Medina. Remains have been found, but of other cultures -- Hellenistic, Nabatean, Roman, and early Byzantine (Nevo and Koren).[102][s]
- Indirect evidence in the Quran indicates it could not have been revealed in west central Arabia. "the Qur'an describes [Muhammad's] polytheist opponents as agriculturalists who cultivated wheat, grapes, olives, and date palms. Wheat, grapes and olives are the three staples of the Mediterranean; date palms take us southwards, but Mecca was not suitable for any kind of agriculture, and one could not possibly have produced olives there." (Crone)[58] On two occasions the Qur'an describes its enemies as living in the nearby a settlement destroyed for its sins by God. Northwest Arabia has more than a few such ruined sites. (Crone)[58]
- And indirect evidence indicates it could have been revealed near Palestine. Quran 37:137-138 refers to the remains of Lot's people, that "you pass by them in the morning and in the evening". Traditionally Lot's remains are thought to be somewhere near the Dead Sea.[58]
Confusion over dates. Traditional sources tell that the Hegira—the migration of Muhammad and his followers from Mecca to Medina—was chosen to be the first year of the Islamic calendar. But there is a lack of any seventh century source confirming what event was chosen to be year zero of the calendar. The "only clue to its nature" found by at least two scholars (P. Crone and M. Cook) comes from two Nestorian Christian documents of 676 and 680 that call it the year of the 'the rule of the Arabs'".[103] Early sources also don't agree on the dates of the Prophet's birthday and death. "[W]ell into the second century A.H. scholarly opinion of the birth date of the Prophet displayed a range of variance of 85 years." (Lawrence Conrad).[104]
Some other conflicts between revisionism and traditional features of Islamic narrative are: Lack of hostility towards Jewish tribes. Traditional accounts tell of Jewish tribes being punished for their treachery — being driven into exile (the Banu Qaynuqa and Banu Nadir tribes) or massacred and "dumped into pits" (the Banu Qurayza tribe). But no early documents say anything about this.[105] Instead The "treaty of Medina" shows,[t] the Jews were initially part of the Umma and were addressed as "believers" (Fred Donner).[107][108] When the Arabs first conquered Jerusalem they lifted the Christian established ban on Jews being allowed into the city (T. Holland),[109] and allowed them to pray on the temple mount.
Explanations offered by revisionists
Revisionists offer alternatives to traditional Islamic history to explain the discrepancies between the "hard facts" and the traditional Muslim "literary sources", starting with explanations for invasion's success.
Explanations for the invasion and its success
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 began 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.)
Results
Nature of early Islam
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]
Reshaped identity of early Islam
- 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]
- Robert G. Hoyland also argues that if the basis for sharia was the doings and sayings of Muhammad, as mainstream Islam maintains, they must have been carefully noted and carefully transmitted to later ulama by the early salaf generation. However, that doctrine is belied by quotes of salaf Islamic scholars who specifically deny common use of hadith of Muhammad:
- "I spent a year sitting with Abdullah ibn Umar [d. 693 CE, son of the second Caliph] and I did not hear him transmit anything from the prophet";[158][89]
- "I never heard Jabir ibn Zayd (d. c. 720) say 'the prophet said ...' and yet the young men round here are saying it twenty times an hour".[159][89]
- According to Tom Holland, the conquering Arab warriors were overwhelmingly illiterate, and the early Ulama (the class of guardians, transmitters, and interpreters of religious knowledge in Islam) consisted overwhelmingly of conquered peoples (Zoroastrians and Jews), who had a strong scholarly tradition before converting to Islam.[160]
Major representatives
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]
Robert B. Spencer, a notable critic of Islam, wrote a popular work on Islamic revisionist studies titled Did Muhammad Exist?.
Heyday of the revisionist school
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]
See also
Notes
- 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]
- "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]
- 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]
- 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]
- 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. ISBN 978-0-691-00856-1. 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