Seeing Islam as Others Saw It

Seeing Islam As Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam from the Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam series is a book by scholar of the Middle East Robert G. Hoyland.

AuthorRobert G. Hoyland

LanguageEnglish

SeriesStudies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam

Subject

• Islamic Empire—History—622–661—Historiography
• Islamic Empire—History—661–750—Historiography
• Middle East—Civilization—To 622—Historiography

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Seeing Islam as Others Saw It

Book cover
Author	Robert G. Hoyland
Language	English
Series	Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam
Subject	Islamic Empire—History—622–661—Historiography Islamic Empire—History—661–750—Historiography Middle East—Civilization—To 622—Historiography
Publisher	Darwin Press
Publication date	1997
Publication place	United States
Media type	Hardcover
Pages	872
ISBN	0-87850-125-8
OCLC	36884186
Dewey Decimal	939.4 21
LC Class	DS38.1 .H69 1997

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The book contains an extensive collection of Greek, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Latin, Jewish, Persian, and Chinese primary sources written between 620 and 780 AD in the Middle East, which provides a survey of eyewitness accounts of historical events during the formative period of Islam.

The book presents the evidentiary text of over 120 seventh-century sources, one of which (Thomas the Presbyter) contains what Hoyland believes is the "first explicit reference to Muhammad in a non-Muslim source:"^[1]

According to Michael G. Morony, Hoyland emphasizes the parallels between Muslim and non-Muslim accounts of history emphasizing that non-Muslim texts often explain the same history as the Muslim ones even though they were recorded earlier. He concludes "Hoyland's treatment of the materials is judicious, honest, complex, and extremely useful."^[2]