What do we actually know about Mohammed? PATRICIA CRONE (2008) // Patricia Crone: memoir of a superb Islamic scholar
It is notoriously difficult to know anything for sure about
the founder of a world religion. Just as one shrine after the other obliterates
the contours of the localities in which he was active, so one doctrine after
another reshapes him as a figure for veneration and imitation for a vast number
of people in times and places that he never knew.
In the case of Mohammed, Muslim literary sources for his
life only begin around 750-800 CE (common era), some four to five generations
after his death, and few Islamicists (specialists in the history and study of
Islam) these days assume them to be straightforward historical accounts. For
all that, we probably know more about Mohammed than we do about Jesus (let
alone Moses or the Buddha), and we certainly have the potential to know a great
deal more.
There is no doubt that Mohammed existed, occasional attempts
to deny it notwithstanding. His neighbours in Byzantine Syria got to hear of him within two years of
his death at the latest; a Greek text written during the Arab invasion of Syria
between 632 and 634 mentions that "a false prophet has appeared among the
Saracens" and dismisses him as an impostor on the ground that prophets do
not come "with sword and chariot". It thus conveys the impression
that he was actually leading the invasions.
Mohammed's death is normally placed in 632, but the
possibility that it should be placed two or three years later cannot be
completely excluded. The Muslim calendar was instituted after Mohammed's death,
with a starting-point of his emigration (hijra) to Medina (then Yathrib)
ten years earlier. Some Muslims, however, seem to have correlated this point of
origin with the year which came to span 624-5 in the Gregorian calendar rather
than the canonical year of 622.
If such a revised date is accurate, the evidence of the
Greek text would mean that Mohammed is the only founder of
a world religion who is attested in a contemporary source. But in any case,
this source gives us pretty irrefutable evidence that he was an historical
figure. Moreover, an Armenian document probably written shortly after 661
identifies him by name and gives a recognisable account of his monotheist
preaching.
Patricia Crone's main recent work is Medieval
Islamic Political Thought (2004); published in the United States as God's
Rule: Government and Islam (2004)
On the Islamic side, sources dating from the mid-8th century
onwards preserve a document drawn up between Mohammed and the inhabitants of
Yathrib, which there are good reasons to accept as broadly authentic; Mohammed
is also mentioned by name, and identified as a messenger of God, four times in
theQur'an (on which more below).
True, on Arabic coins and inscriptions, and in papyri and
other documentary evidence in the language, Mohammed only appears in the 680s,
some fifty years after his death (whatever its exact date). This is the ground
on which some, notably Yehuda
D Nevo and Judith Koren, have questioned his existence. But few would
accept the implied premise that history has to be reconstructed on the sole
basis of documentary evidence (i.e. information which has not been handed down
from one generation to the next, but rather been inscribed on stone or metal or
dug up from the ground and thus preserved in its original form). The evidence
that a prophet was active among the Arabs in the early decades of the 7th
century, on the eve of the Arab conquest of the middle east, must be said to be
exceptionally good.
Everything else about Mohammed is more uncertain,
but we can still say a fair amount with reasonable assurance. Most importantly,
we can be reasonably sure that the Qur'an is a collection of utterances that he
made in the belief that they had been revealed to him by God. The book may not
preserve all the messages he claimed to have received, and he is not
responsible for the arrangement in which we have them. They were collected
after his death – how long after is controversial. But that he uttered all or
most of them is difficult to doubt. Those who deny the existence of an Arabian
prophet dispute it, of course, but it causes too many problems with later
evidence, and indeed with the Qur'an itself, for the attempt to be persuasive.
The text and the message: For all that, the book is difficult to use as a historical
source. The roots of this difficulty include unresolved questions about how it
reached its classical form, and the fact that it still is not available in a
scholarly edition. But they are also internal to the text. The earliest versions of the Qur'an offer only the
consonantal skeleton of the text. No vowels are marked, and worse, there are no
diacritical marks, so that many consonants can also be read in a number of
ways.
Modern scholars usually assure themselves that since the
Qur'an was recited from the start, we can rely on the oral tradition to supply
us with the correct reading. But there is often considerable disagreement in
the tradition – usually to do with vowelling, but sometimes involving
consonants as well – over the correct way in which a word should be read. This
rarely affects the overall meaning of the text, but it does affect the details
which are so important for historical reconstruction.
In any case, with or without uncertainty over the reading, the
Qur'an is often highly obscure. Sometimes it uses expressions that were unknown
even to the earliest exegetes, or words that do not seem to fit entirely,
though they can be made to fit more or less; sometimes it seems to give us
fragments detached from a long-lost context; and the style is highly allusive.
One explanation for these features would be that the prophet
formulated his message in the liturgical language current in
the religious community in which he grew up, adapting and/or imitating ancient
texts such as hymns, recitations, and prayers, which had been translated or
adapted from another Semitic language in their turn. This idea has been
explored in two German works, by Günter Lüling and Christoph
Luxenberg, and there is much to be said for it. At the same time, however,
both books are open to so many scholarly objections (notably amateurism in
Luxenberg's case) that they cannot be said to have done the field much good.
The attempt to relate the linguistic and stylistic features
of the Qur'an to those of earlier religious texts calls for a mastery of
Semitic languages and literature that few today possess, and those who do so
tend to work on other things. This is sensible, perhaps, given that the field
has become highly charged politically. Luxenberg's work is a case in point: it was picked up by the
press and paraded in a sensationalist vein on the strength of what to a
specialist was its worst idea – to instruct Muslims living in the west that
they ought to become enlightened. Neither Muslims nor Islamicists were amused… Read more:
The great historian
of early Islam, Patricia Crone, died peacefully on July 11 after a long battle
with cancer. This memoir by her friend and colleague was written earlier this
year for a volume of essays in her honour and links to her outstanding essay on Mohammed
see also:
The religious persecution of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (1945-2010)/ Interview: My life fighting intolerance/ Mahmoud Mohammed Taha & the Second Message of Islam
Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd's Legacy (Library of writings)
Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd's Legacy (Library of writings)
Mahmoud Mohammed Taha was a Sudanese religious thinker and leader executed for apostasy at the age of 76 by the regime of Gaafar Nimeiry. (See his Court statement)
