For the history of the Qur’an we are mainly still in the world of “Alice in Wonderland” or to be more in the local color, in the world of the “Marvels of Aladdin’s Lamp,” when compared with research in the field of Biblical studies, for instance. For this reason Andrew Rippin can write: “In teaching undergraduate students, I have often encountered individuals who come to the study of Islam with a background in the historical study of the Hebrew Bible or early Christianity, and who express surprise at the lack of critical thought that appears in introductory textbooks on Islam.”(Reynolds, The Quran and its historical Context)
Below, a brief summary of the revisionist school of early Islam.
Prominent scholars among this school include Alphonso Mingana, Gunther Luling, John Wansbrough, Yehuda Nevo, John Burton, Patricia Crone, Michael A. Cook, and Christoph Luxenberg.
Qu’ran : 2 hypothesis
The first hypothesis argues that the genesis of the Qur’an occurred much earlier than is usually thought, with a heretofore unknown “Ur-Qur’an,” and the second hypothesis argues that this genesis occurred much later, with the collection of prophetical logia under the Abbasids.
First hypothesis: The Ur Quran (the Q source of Islam), i.e. the original document from which the current Qur’anic text derives (Luling, Mingana, Luxenberg).
The Qu’ran is a collection of adaptations from earlier Judeo-Christian liturgical materials compiled by later authors.
The thesis of
Luling http://theinimitablequran.com/LuxenbergOnTheQuran.pdfon the Qu’ran is that the Qur’ān has four textual strata:
Gunter Lüling’s successive monographs in German attempted to prove how 1/3 of the Qur’an was in fact prevailing Christian hymnal passages that had Arabic textual strata grafted onto it by later extensive manipulation. This manipulation, wholly motivated by political, dogmatic and tribal agendas, was directed at the consonantal ductus, individual characters and words as well as the strophic structures of the original hymnal passages. This manipulation was further compounded by superimposed emerging Islamic interpretations thus resulted in a Qur’ānic text that sublimated and subverted its alleged Syriac original. However, by reworking the Arabic text of the Qur’n with Syriac equivalents, one can uncover the true meanings and therefore reveal the true origin of the Qur’ān itself.
According to Lüling, the Qur’an contains four different textual levels. The first level, the original text, is a strophic hymnal, composed by the Christian community of Mecca. This community consisted both of Trinitarian and non-Trinitarian believers. The former had adopted the Nicene doctrines of the Byzantine empire, whereas the latter maintained the ancient (and true) teaching of Christ himself, that he was an angel of the divine council incarnate, sent to undermine the hierarchical, monotheistic Judaism of his day. The second level consists of passages from that hymnal which were edited and Islamized in Muhammad’s time. The third level contains those passages originally composed in Muhammad’s time, and which have an exclusively Islamic meaning. The fourth and most recent level are those passages altered by post-Muhammadan Muslims during the editing of the Arabic rasm, the process by which the Qur’anic text went from scriptio defectiva to scriptio plena. Reynolds, The Quran in its historical context.
The thesis of Christoph Luxenberg : the Qu’ran was a syro-aramaic lectionary.
1) The Qu’ran emerged in a region that was linguistically Arabic/Syro-Aramaic
2) A multiude of passage represent Syriac words and sentences written in Arabic letters
3) That the grammatical structure of the Arabic of the Qu’ran betrays Syriac influences throughout
4) Some original Arabic words were misinterpreted through the development of the fuller writing, that is, the fixing of the consonants through diacritical points, a process that took place as much two hundred years later. Completely new readings and expressions often emerge from these investigations into the Qu’ranic text, readings which point to a Christian background.
N.B: you must be aware of the anti-Islamic agenda behind Luxenberg :
Christoph Luxenberg is pseudonymic name which may be a play upon the name of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, the "destroyer of myths," since Lux (Latin) translates as Licht (German). Luxenberg himself claims to have chosen a pseudonym "upon the counsel of Arab friends, after these became familiar with my work theses," to protect himself against possible violent repercussions.[
The real identity of the person behind the pseudonym remains unknown. The most widely circulated version claims that he is a German scholar of Semitic languages. Hans Jansen, professor at Leyden University, has conjectured that Luxenberg is a Lebanese Christianwhereas François de Blois, writing in the Journal of Quranic Studies, has questioned Luxenberg's knowledge of Arabic
His book was largely promoted in the press, because he proposed a re-reading of Q 55:72 substituting white grapes for the fair virgins who, according to the traditional reading of the word
hur, await the faithful in Paradise.
Anyway, syriac influence on the Qu’ran is not a new thesis. Alphonse Mingana discovered it during the 1920’s. See A. Mingana, “Syriac influence on the style of the Kuran,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, see also, Reynolds, Qu’ran and his historical context, for a critical view of Luxenberg thesis.
In The Qur'an and its Biblical Subtext, Reynolds offers a theory of the Qur'an as homily. Review
http://www.relegere.org/relegere/article/view/408/524
To sum up, the Qu'ran is a plagiarism of all the litterature available at the time. Except for the OT and the NT, the writers of the Qu'ran plagiarize Christian lore, Coptic Christian writings, the Alexanger Legend, the Ethiopic Bible...
Second hypothesis: the Qu’ran was written during the Abbasid period (Wansbrough, Crone, Cook, Nevo).
The approach of John Wansbrough, argues that there was no Ur-Qur’an, and that the very idea of Mecca as the birthplace of Islam is a myth.
Wansbrough’s thesis begins with a basic problem of the non-Qur’anic sources. The earliest Arabic Islamic literary sources for Islamic origins are the biographical, exegetical, jurisprudential and grammatical texts written under the ‘Abbasids. Most of these texts, it is true, contend to be transmitting material from early generations, often from the Prophet Muhammad himself. This contention, however, has long been challenged by western scholars, most famously by Ignaz Goldziher in the late nineteenth century. The antiquity of the Qur’an, on the other hand, had not been challenged before. The Qur’an, at least, was thought to be a faithful record of Muhammad’s preaching in the Hijaz, western Arabia, in the early seventh century. Wansbrough thought otherwise. He argued that the final form of the Qur’an should not be dated prior to the period when the Qur’an became a source for biography, exegesis, jurisprudence and grammar: “Logically, it seems to me quite impossible that canonization should have preceded, not succeeded, recognition of the authority of scripture within the Muslim community.”
This canonization happened in the second/eight or third/ninth century, not the early seventh century, and in ‘Abbasid Iraq, not in the Hijaz. The origin of the Qur’an is to be found together with the origin of the other Arabic Islamic literary sources. Ibid. See, Wansbrough Quranic studies, and The Sectarian Milieu).
The origin of Islam: an offshoot of Judeo-Christian sects and the problem of non muslim sources referring to a new religion.
Several hypothesis :
John Wansbrough:
Wansbrough argues that the Qu’ran and the Hadith grew out of sectarian controversies over a long period, perhaps as long as two centuries, and then was projected back onto an invented Arabian point of origin. He further argued that Islam emerged only when it came into contact with and under the influence of Rabbinic Judaism. Proceeding from these conclusions, The sectarian Milieu analyses early Islamic historiography as a late manifestation of Old Testament salvation history.
Wansbrough caused a furor in the 1970s when his research on early Islamic manuscripts, including the analysis of the repeated use of monotheistic Judeo-Christian imagery found in the Qur'an led him to posit that the rise of Islam was a mutation of what was originally a Judeo-Christian sect trying to spread in Arab lands, rather than by simple cultural diffusion. As time evolved the Judeo-Christian scriptures were adapted to an Arab perspective and mutated into what became the Qur'an which was developed over centuries with contributions from various Arab tribal sources. Wansbrough's research suggests that a great deal of the traditional history of Islam appeared to be a fabrication of later generations seeking to forge and justify a unique religious identity. Within this context, the character of Muhammad could be seen as a manufactured myth created to provide the Arab tribes with their own Arab version of the Judeo-Christian prophets. (See, Qu’ranic studies, The Sectarian Milieu and J. Wansbrough and the Problem of Islamic Origins in Recent Scholarship: A Farewell to the Traditional Account
http://www.academia.edu/1534641/J._Wansbrough_and_the_Problem_of_Islamic_Origins_in_Recent_Scholarship_A_Farewell_to_the_Traditional_Account_2012_).
Following Wansbrough, Patricia Crone and Michael Cook try to demonstrate the jewish messianic roots of the Arab conquest. See: Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagarism:_The_Making_of_the_Islamic_World
According to the authors, 7th century Syriac, Armenian and Hebrew sources depict the formation of Islam as a Jewish messianic movement known as Hagarism, which migrated into the Fertile Crescent. It drew considerable influences from the Samaritans and Babylonian Judaism. Around 690 AD the movement shed its Judaic identity to develop into what would later become Arab Islam. The surviving records of the period describe the followers of Muhammad as Hagarenes, because of the way Muhammad invoked the Jewish god in order to introduce an alien monotheistic faith to the Arabs.
In Meccan trade and the rise of Islam
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meccan_Trade_and_the_Rise_of_Islam, Crone argues that Islam did not originate in Mecca, located in western Saudi Arabia, but in northern Arabia.
The author argues that Mecca in central Arabia could not have been the theater of the momentous events so beloved of Muslim tradition. Apart from the lack of any early non-Muslim references to Mecca, we do have the startling fact that the direction in which the early Muslums prayed was northwest Arabia. The evidence comes from the alignement of certain early mosques, and the literary evidence of Christian sources. In other words, Mecca, as the Muslim sanctuary, was only chosen much later, by the Muslims, in order to relocate their early history within Arabia, to complete their break with Judaism, and finally establish their separate religious identity. (Warraq, The origins of the Koran).
The thesis of Karl-Heinz Ohlig
http://www.amazon.com/Early-Islam-Reconstruction-Contemporary-ebook/dp/B00CQZ5MRI/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1377675865&sr=8-3&keywords=Karl-Heinz+Ohlig is:
-Islam originally emerged as a sect of Christianity.
-Its central theological tenets were influenced by a pre-Nicean, Syrian Christianity.
Aramaic, the common language throughout the Near East for many centuries and the language of Syrian Christianity, significantly influenced the Arabic script and vocabulary used in the Koran.
-Finally, it was not until the end of the eighth and ninth centuries that Islam formed as a separate religion, and the Koran underwent a period of historical development of at least 200 years
In Crossroads to Islam
http://www.amazon.com/Crossroads-Islam-Origins-Religion-Islamic/dp/1591020832/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top, Nevo and Koren try to reconstruct the birth of Islam using only archaeological excavations, numismatics, and rock inscriptions. The Muslim literature is dismissed because it was written 100 to 150 years after the events:
In our opinion, then, the most reliable sources available for studying the early history of Islam and the Arab state are materials remains: the results of archeological surveys and excavations, epigaphry and coins. More problematic, but still valuable are literary sources contemporary with the events they describe. (…)
Non contemporary literary sources are, in our opinion, inadmissible as historical evidence. If one has no source of knowledge of the 7th century except texts written in the 9th century or later, one cannot know anything about the 7th century : one can only know what people in the 9th century or later believed about the 7th. (Crossroads to Islam).
Brief summary of Crossroads to Islam :
The theories of Nevo, who died in 1992, were edited by Judith Koren and recently published in their Crossroads to Islam. Here, however, the scope of argument is still broader. Like Wansbrough, Nevo and Koren deeply mistrust the Islamic sources, which they believe were the product of a community creating, not recording, a history. Yet unlike Wansbrough, Nevo and Koren believe that the actual succession of events that led to the Qur’an and Islam might be reconstructed. This is the task of Crossroads to Islam.
The key to its execution is material evidence: “We argue that postcontemporary sources cannot, per se, be accepted at face value, but must be checked against contemporary evidence. This evidence may include written accounts . . . . But even better are material remains from the period in question. A rock inscription presents no problems of transmission history.”
In Part 1 the authors argue that the Islamic conquests were no conquests at all. The Byzantine emperors intentionally implemented a policy (begun even by their Roman predecessor Diocletian, r. 284–305) of gradual withdrawal from the eastern Provinces, placing Arab tribes in their absence to act initially as clients ( foederati) and ultimately as independent, but subservient, rulers. This policy extended to religious affairs, as the Byzantines encouraged heterodox (especially monophysite but also East Syrian/Nestorian) Christianity in those provinces, to ensure that they would not leave the faithful behind.
Heraclius (r. 610–41), meanwhile, imposed the doctrine of Monotheletism so that when it was revoked after the planned withdrawal (at the Sixth Ecumenical Council, 680), even the heretofore orthodox Christians in the abandoned Provinces would now likewise be heretics.
In Part 2 Nevo and Koren turn to the rise of the Umayyad Empire. Mu‘awiya, by their reading, stands as the first historical ruler of the Arab Empire. But quite unlike his portrait in the Islamic sources, Mu‘awiya was no more than the warlord, or strongman, who emerged triumphant among the Arab foederati in Syria. Muhammad and the first four caliphs, on the other hand, are characters of myth. As proof for this contention the authors turn to the early Christian sources, pointing out that neither Muhammad (once the reference to a prophet in the Doctrina Jacobi is explained away), nor the rightly guided caliphs nor any of the famous battles of the Islamic futuhworks appear in them. They also call as witnesses the early Arab coins, noting that the earliest coins (i.e. pre-‘Abd al-Malik) still have Byzantine iconography, reflecting the Arabs’ continued clientage to Byzantium. Only with ‘Abd al-Malik (r. 65/685–86/705) does that imagery disappear, and the name of Muhammad appear.
It is Muhammad and the Qur’an that Nevo and Koren finally address directly in Part 3. They contend that until the time of ‘Abd al-Malik (and, not coincidentally, the Sixth Ecumenical Council), Arab religion was of two kinds. The general populace, and especially the Bedouins, continued to practice paganism; Sede Boqer was itself a pagan devotional site even through the time of Hisham (r. 105/724–125/743, although this contention has been widely rejected by other archaeologists). The elite, meanwhile, held to a sort of primitive monotheism, perhaps a sort of Abrahamism or Judaeo-Christianity. Yet with their increased separation from Byzantium by the time of ‘Abd al-Malik the Arabs needed their own national history, and their own prophet, for which reason the name Muhammad begins to appear on coins and on the Dome of the Rock. The Qur’an, however, was not fully codified in the Umayyad period.
The ‘Abbasids were moved to create a new scripture in part due to the Arab religion’s increasing incompatibility with Christianity, but above all due to the development of the legal code. In place of the Byzantine based law code of the Umayyads, the ‘Abbasids developed the system of shari‘a now known which, while preserving certain elements of precedent, was theoretically rooted in the idea of exegesis and scholarly consensus (ijma‘), not unlike Rabbinic Jewish jurisprudence. Exegesis, however, requires a formalized scripture.
Thus Muslim scholars codified certain homiletic sayings, or “prophetical logia” (as Wansbrough puts it), that had been circulating, and canonized them as the Word of God. Here Nevo and Koren are evidently following Wansbrough, who commented, “The employment of scriptural shawahid in halakhic controversy required a fixed and unambiguous text of revelation . . . . The result was the Quranic canon.”
This process, they conclude, must have been completed by the time Ibn Hisham (d. 218/833) composed his adaptation of Ibn Ishaq’s (d. 150/767) sira, in light of the preponderance of Qur’an-based (historicized) narratives therein. (Reynolds, The Qu’ran in its Historical Context).
Gallez : According to the French scholar Gallez, the author holds the view that the Arab conquest was the last of many efforts by heterodox Jews to gain Jerusalem and other Byzantine territories. (Gallez, Le messie et son prophète.)
The Arab conquest through the eyes of the contemporaries
In reviewing the VII century syriac sources about the Arab conquest, the author Abdul-Massih Saadi concludes (NASCENT ISLAM IN THE SEVENTH CENTURY SYRIAC SOURCES, in Reynolds,
Quran) :
Although the Syriac writers did not intend to write a history of early Islam per se, what they did write is vital for shedding more light on that controversial period of events. In addition, religiously speaking, the Syriac writers believed early Muslims (Mhaggrayê) to be the descendants of Abraham through Ishmael and Hagar, people confessing the One God, who were brought to the region to punish the heretics, and to cause the faithful to repent. In other words, they were seen as a people with a divine task, but they were also to be banished upon the completion of that task. However, there is no clear indication that the Syriac writers recognized or realized the birth of a new religion called Islam, a term that they never employed.
In
Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam, by Hoagland, a compilation of all the non-Muslim sources referring to Muslims and Islam during the VII and VIII centuries, the contemporaries Chroniclers speak about Arabs or Saracens, but not about a new religion. The first mention of Arab Muslims was only during the Abbasid times (in 753 on a coin).
Also, the pattern of the Arab conquest greatly resembles the conquest of Canaan depicted in the OT, i.e cometary bombardments rewrite in militaristic terms. Even outnumbered, the Muslim are always victorious. And if ordinary miracle is not sufficient, swarms of angles will come to the rescue. It's the same blueprint in the OT or in the Qu'ran. E.g., see the conquest of Damascus, Caesara, Alexandria, Cairo, and Tustan. Tripolis, for instance was conquered because the water receded and then started rising sharply, thereby defeating the enemy. Moreover, like in Jericho, there are stories that mention the collapse of city walls due to booming trombones.
One example :
An account of what appears to be the Battle of Yarmuk (636) follows, in which Heraclius releases the demonic hordes locked up above the Caspian behind brass gates by Alexander the Great, "and through them poured 150,000 mercenary warriors to fight the Saracens:" The latter, under two commanders, were approximately 200,000 strong. The two forces had camped quite near one another and were ready for an engagement on the following morning. But during that very night the army of Heraclius was smitten by the sword of God: 52,000 of his men died where they slept. When on the following day, at the moment of joining battle, his men saw that so large a part of their force had fallen by divine judgement, they no longer dared advance on the Saracens, but all retired whence they came. The Saracens proceeded, as was their habit, to lay waste the provinces of the empire that had fallen to them.(Seeing Islam)
Muhammad
No contemporary sources exist about the life of Muhammad. The first mention by non muslim sources is in 634, 2 years after his death, and we don't know if the word Muhammad refers to a person, or if it was an addition made by a copist. ( See, Seeing Islam)
All Muslim sources about the life of Muhammad were written between 100 and 300 years after his death. Therefore, they must be dismissed and must be considered as literary creation, not historical documents.
According to the revisionist school, the term Muhammad didn’t specify a name but was a title, like, e.g. the term Benedictus, a latin word meaning “bless” and also a Christian name “Benoît”. In The Hidden Origins of Islam, the authors argue that the term Muhammad was, in fact, referring to Jesus, and epigraphic inscriptions must be understood with a Christian background.
This textual analysis has shown that the gerundival participle Muhammad was not originally a personal name, but rather a commendation (“praised be”) connected with the servant of God, namely Jesus. It is only because later individuals understood this commendation as personal and assigned it to the prophet of Islam in the later “Sira”, the biography of the Prophet, that we must distinguish in the future between “Muhammad I” and a “Muhammad II. (Hidden Origins of Islam).
In other words, the Dome of the Rock build in 692 by Abd al-Malik, where you can find the first inscription of the title Muhammad, was not a mosque but a Byzantine-Syrian church.
The historical Muhammad ?
The Arab scholar Suliman Bashear
http://books.google.be/books?id=YEDlv8aouHUC&pg=PP17&lpg=PP17&dq=bashear+muqaddima+fi+al&source=bl&ots=8uxvDDmxxu&sig=W5wl6e7UJ_KUKMFANtl-jNnHmDw&hl=fr&sa=X&ei=UbgdUqSTJMnM0QWCnYCYAQ&ved=0CEYQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=bashear%20muqaddima%20fi%20al&f=false, argued that Muhammad’s biography is partly based upon the narratives about the life of the mid- to late 7th-century Arab prophet Muhammad b. al-Hanafiyya.(a son of Ali, a leader in the Hijaz, proclaimed as the Mahdi)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_ibn_al-Hanafiyyah. In other words, Bashear has shown that many of the events of the Prophet’s life are retrojections of events of al-Hanafiyya life in the Hijaz.
Also, others incidents mentioned in the Muhammad myth seem to have been derived from historic events, in particular the war of Heraclius against the Sassanid. E.g., the victorious battle of the Trench by Muhammad in 627, coincides with the year of the Byzantine victory at Nineveh, and the subsequent signing of the peace treaty in the year 628 corresponds to the treaty of Hudaybiyya in 630. In 630 the True Cross was returned to Jerusalem, and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was reopened in a festive ceremony. The same date according to Islamic tradition of the purification and opening of the Ka’aba.
The year 622 is important both for the Muhammad legend and the history of Byzantium. For the Muslim because it’s the Hijira (the migration of Muhammad and his followers from Mecca to Medina) and it’s also the year of the Heraclius campaign of 622, a major campaign in the Byzantine–Sassanid War of 602–628 that culminated in a crushing Byzantine victory in Anatolia.
The conquest of Spain
According to Ignacio Olagüe in
Les Arabes n'ont jamais envahi l'Espagne, it didn’t happen. It was, in fact, an emigration of Unitarian Christians from the Middle East due to earth changes. The seizure of southern Spain by the Berbers and Arabs in the early VIII century was not religiously motivated. The conquerors of Spain were Arian Berbers, or Arabs Christian.
When the Muslim Almovarides took power in Spain during the XI century, they rewrote the history of Spain and created the history of Muslim Al-Andalus (google translation) :
The conquest of Spain by Muslims is hardly known to us by late and unsafe Arabic texts. The Latin older sources especially VIII and IX centuries say nothing of the Arab presence in Spain. The invasion was also materially impossible given the technical means of all time tends rather to prove that the Iberian peninsula was like the rest of Mediterranean affected in the Middle Ages by social troubles due to climate change.
The social oppositions crystallized around two antagonistic religious trends :
-the current Trinity Orthodox Catholic
-and a movement demanding the dogma of unity of God with Gnostic tendencies and Arianism Islam would have been as special events.
While the rest of West rallied to the Trinitarian doctrines, VIII and IX centuries saw Unitarianism triumph in Spain through a period of political unrest and civil wars which later generations were to keep a confused recollection The field was well prepared for adoption Muslim doctrine bringing with it the Arabic language spread then on the southern shores of the Mediterranean because of religious contacts cultural and trade between East and West
This is when Islam was finally established in the peninsula and especially when the end of the eleventh century a final politico-religious convulsion of this world sub-Saharan Almoravid invasion was linked unequivocally Spain southern area of African and Eastern civilization to explain a chaotic past where we were misinformed stories were developed indicating a conquest by the Arabs in the early eighth century
Review in French
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/remmm_0035-1474_1970_num_8_1_1095 and
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/assr_0003-9659_1971_num_32_1_1875_t1_0250_0000_4
Further reading:
The Hidden Origins of Islam: New Research into Its Early History, Karl-Heinz Ohlig
Early Islam: A Critical Reconstruction Based on Contemporary Sources, Karl-Heinz Ohlig
A Brief Summary of the Views of Traditional and Radical Western Scholars
http://www.javedahmadghamidi.com/index.php/renaissance/view/appendix-b-a-brief-summary-of-the-views-of-traditional-and-radical-western
Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam, Hoagland
N.B: Ibn Warraq has a strong anti-Islamic bias (he wrote Why the West is Best). His books are compilations of various Islamic scholars.
The Quest for the Historical Muhammad, Ibn Warraq,
The Origins of The Koran: Classic Essays on Islam's Holy Book, Ibn Warraq,
Which Koran?: Variants, Manuscripts, and the Influence of Pre-Islamic Poetry, Ibn Warraq
The Qur'an and its Biblical Subtext, Gabriel Said Reynolds
The Quran in Its Historical Context, Vol I and II, Gabriel Said Reynolds.
Crossroads to Islam, Nevo and Koren
N.B: Wansbrough books are linguistic criticism. It's better to have a good knowledge of Arabic.
Qu’ranic Studies, John Wansbrough
The sectarian milieu, JohnWansbrough
The Coming of the Comforter: When, Where, and to Whom? Studies on the Rise of Islam and Other Various Topics in Memory of John Wansbrough, Carlos A. Segovia
Hagarism, Patricia Crone and Michael Cook
A Challenge to Islam for Reformation, Gunter Luling
