Revisionist school of Islamic studies
The revisionist school of Islamic studies (also historical-critical school of Islamic studies and skeptic-revisionist Islamic historians)[1] is a movement in Islamic studies[2][3][4] that questions traditional Muslim narratives of Islam's origins.[5][6]
Until the early 1970s,
The school is thought to have originated in the 1970s and includes (or included) scholars such as
Main theses
The events in early Islamic times have to be newly researched and reconstructed with the help of the historical-critical/source critical method (the process of evaluating the validity, reliability, relevance, etc., of a source, to the subject under investigation). Revisionists are unwilling to rely on the Quran and Hadith. Based on alternate primary sources from the surrounding milieus, they argue that Islam started as a monotheistic movement that included Arabs and Jews alike. This movement arose 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 what was said about him was not a historical, but a legendary figure[Note 1][16] (as well as Jesus and Moses).[17] According to Volker Popp, Ali and Muhammad were not names, but titles of these figures.[18]
The revisionists view the 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:
Nature of early Islam
- Islam did not rise among polytheistic pagans in Mecca, but in a milieu where Jewish and Christian texts were well-known. The "infidels" were not pagan polytheists but monotheists who were polemically considered to deviate slightly from monotheism (G.R. Hawting, Fred Doner).[19][20]
- The Anti-Jewish texts such as, for example, the account of the slaughter of the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza came into being long after Muhammad when Islam had separated from Judaism (Fred Donner).[21]
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 conquered the spiritual power from the caliphs (Patricia Crone, Martin Hinds).[22]
Location of early Islam
- The geographical descriptions in the Quran and later traditions do not fit Mecca. They rather point to a place somewhere in north-western Arabia, e.g. Petra in Jordan (Patricia Crone, Michael Cook).[23]
Expansion of Islam
- The Islamic expansion was probably not Islamic, religiously motivated, expansion, but a secular, Arab expansion. The expansion did not yet result in oppression of the non-Muslim population (Robert G. Hoyland).[24]
Reshaped identity of early Islam
- After Muhammad there were at least two phases which were of major importance for the formation of Islam in its later shape:
- The 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 coins were minted in the Arabic empire showing Christian symbols. Abd al-Malik also plays a major role in the reworking of the Quranic text (Patricia Crone, Michael Cook).[26]
- It was during the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258) that practically all Islamic traditional texts about Islam's beginnings were written. The Abbasids, as the victorious party in the conflict with the Umayyads, had great interest in legitimizing their rule. This motivation obviously crept into the traditional texts (Patricia Crone).[27]
- The
Influence of conquered peoples
- Muawiya in particular" employed, became what we now call sharia after a "long period of adjustments by the ulama".[29]
- Robert G. Hoyland also argues that if the basis for sharia was the doings and sayings of Muhammad, these must have been carefully noted and carefully transmitted to later ulama by the early salaf generation. But this doctrine is belied by quotes of early (salaf) Islamic scholars who specifically deny common use of hadith of Muhammad:
- "I spent a year sitting with Abdullah ibn Umar (son of the second Caliph, d.693) and I did not hear him transmit anything from the prophet";[30][31]
- "I never heard Jabir ibn Zayd (d. ca. 720) say 'the prophet said ...' and yet the young men round here are saying it twenty times an hour".[32][31]
- According to Tom Holland, the conquering Arab warriors were overwhelmingly illiterate, while the early Ulama (the class of guardians, transmitters and interpreters of religious knowledge in Islam) consisted overwhelmingly of conquered peoples -- namely Zoroastrians and Jews -- who converted to Islam and had a strong scholarly tradition.[33]
Textual integrity of the Quran
- The Quranic text as is 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 to this, many small deviations came into the text as with other ancient texts which were manually copied and copied again (John Wansbrough).[34]
- The existence and significance of Muhammad as a historical person depends especially on the question whether any, and 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 this question (Yehuda D. Nevo).[35] Fred Donner suggests an early date for the Quran.[36] (This thesis has been abandoned by many in the 21st century thanks to studies and dating of early manuscripts.[37] Michael Cook, who earlier supported it, says recent studies are “a testimony to the continuing accuracy of the transmission of the variants”.[38] Tom Holland also agrees 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".)[39]
- 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 which was forgotten later. This could be a possible explanation of why a fifth of the Quranic text is difficult to understand (Karl-Heinz Ohlig).[40]
Origins and methodology
The influence of the different tendencies in the study of Islam in the West has waxed and waned.
Until the early 1970s,
Post-War scholarship
From World War II to sometime around the mid-1970s, there was what scholar Charles Adams describes as "a distinctive movement in the West, represented in both religious circles and the universities, whose purpose" was to show both a "greater appreciation of Islamic religiousness" and to foster "a new attitude toward it"[Note 2] and in doing so make "restitution for the sins of unsympathetic, hostile, or interested approaches that have plagued the [pre-World War II] tradition of Western Orientalism".[43] Herbert Berg gives Wilfred Cantwell Smith and W. Montgomery Watt as examples of proponents of this "irenic" approach to Islamic history,[44] and notes that the approach necessarily clashed with the questions and potential answers of revisionists since these clashed with Islamic doctrine.
Studies of Hadith
The revisionist school has been said to be based on the study of
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."[47][48]
Extension of hadith-arguments
The revisionists extended this argument beyond hadith to other facets of Islamic literature—
- "source-critical approach to both the Koran and the Muslim literary accounts of the rise of Islam, the Conquest and the Umayyad period";[50]
- comparing traditional accounts with
- accounts from the seventh and eighth century CE that are external to the Muslim tradition;[50]
- archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics[11] from the seventh and eighth century CE—sources which should be preferred when there is a conflict with Muslim literary sources.[50]
Revisionists believe that the results of these methods indicates that (among other things) the break between the religion, governance, culture of the pre-Islamic Persian and Byzantine civilization, and that of the 7th century Arab conquerors was not as abrupt as the traditional history describes (an idea advanced in the statement of the Fifth colloquium of the Near Eastern History Group of
Heyday of the revisionist school
Hoyland 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, "favored the traditionalist [i.e. pre-revisionist] approach", while "pushing skeptics/revisionists to become more extreme". (Hoyland seeks to find a middle way between revisionism and uncritical "traditionalism".)[1]
The designation Revisionism was coined first by the opponents of the new academic movement and is used by them partially still today with a less than positive connotation.[51][52] Then, the media took up this designation in order to call the new movement with a concise catchword.[53] Today, the adherents of the new movement also use Revisionism to designate themselves, yet mostly written in quotation marks and with a slightly self-mocking undertone.[54]
Major representatives
Among the "foremost" proponents of revisionism are
In Germany at the
James A. Bellamy has done textual criticism of the Quran and his proposed "emendations", i.e. corrections of the traditional text of the Quran. Fred Donner, in his several books on early Islamic history has argued that only during the reign Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (685-705) did the early ecumenical monotheism of the Arab conquerors begin to separate from Christians and Jews.
Popular historian Tom Holland's work In the Shadow of the Sword (2012)[57][58] has 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
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 in the time of Muhammad[61] for several reasons. It was not on the overland trade route from Southern Arabia to Syria, and it is far more likely Muhammad's career took place not in Mecca and Medina or in southwest Arabia at all, but in northwest 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 because of 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, the historically questionable traditions are of great importance for the interpretation and understanding of 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 these historically questionable traditions, the interpretation of the Quran has been restricted ever since.
Non-scholarly
Robert Spencer, a notable Islam critic, wrote a popular work on Islamic Revisionist Studies called Did Muhammad Exist?
Criticism of revisionism
The consequent historical-critical analysis of early Islam met severe resistance in the beginning since then provocative theses with far-reaching meaning were published without sufficient evidence. 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 and uncautious publications. [68]
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.[69] A certain tendency to take revisionists seriously becomes obvious e.g. by the fact that opponents address their criticism not any longer to "revisionism" alone but to "extreme revisionism" or "ultra-revisionism".[70]
Gregor Schoeler discusses the revisionist school and depicts the early controversies. Schoeler considers revisionism to be too radical yet 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'."[71]
François de Blois, who is Teaching Fellow at the Department of the Study of Religions at SOAS, London, rejects the application of the
See also
- Historicity of Muhammad
- Historiography of early Islam
- History of the Quran
- Narratives of Islamic Origins
- Nabataeans
References
Notes
- ^ in his 2003 work Crossroads to Islam: The Origins of the Arab Religion and the Arab State
- ^ Adams was writing in 1976 and didn't mention revisionism [42]
- ^ in his 2003 work Crossroads to Islam: The Origins of the Arab Religion and the Arab State
- ^ Kalisch rejected the idea of teaching Islamic theology without taking into consideration the new results of historical-critical research and as of 2008 was teaching the history of ideas in the Near East in Late Antiquity in Münster Germany.[16][17]
Citations
- ^ a b c d Hoyland, In God's Path, 2015: p.232
- ^ François de Blois, Islam in its Arabian Context, S. 615, in: The Qur'an in Context, edited by Angelika Neuwirth etc., 2010
- ^ Alexander Stille: Scholars Are Quietly Offering New Theories of the Koran, New York Times 02 March 2002
- ^ a b c d Lester, Toby (January 1999). "What Is the Koran?". The Atlantic (January 1999). Retrieved 16 January 2020.
- ^ Holland, 'In the Shadow of the Sword, 2012: p.38
- ISBN 978-0-385-53135-1. Retrieved 29 August 2019.
- ^ a b Donner, "Quran in Recent Scholarship", 2008: p.30
- ^ a b Holland, In the Shadow of the Sword, 2012: p.45
- ^ a b Donner, "Quran in Recent Scholarship", 2008: p.29
- ^ ISBN 9780691054803.
- ^ a b c Nevo & Koren, "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies", 2000: p.420
- ^ a b Nevo & Koren, "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies", 2000: p.422-6
- ^ Reynolds, "Quranic studies and its controversies", 2008: p.8
- ^ Nevo & Koren, "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies", 2000: p.420-441
- ^ Nevo & Koren, "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies", 2000: p.421
- ^ a b c Neues Aufgabengebiet für Sven Kalisch| WWU Munster| 13 July 2010
- ^ a b c "Professor Hired for Outreach to Muslims Delivers a Jolt". The Wall Street Journal. November 15, 2008. Retrieved 2011-07-16.
- ^ 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. Volker Popp, Bildliche Darstellungen aus der Frühzeit des Islam (IV), in: imprimatur 5+6, 2004; Volker Popp, Die frühe Islamgeschichte nach inschriftlichen und numismatischen Zeugnissen, in: Karl-Heinz Ohlig (ed.), Die dunklen Anfänge. Neue Forschungen zur Entstehung und frühen Geschichte des Islam, Berlin 2005, pp. 16–123 (here p. 63 ff.
- ^ G. R. Hawting: The Idea of Idolatry and the Rise of Islam: From Polemic to History (1999)
- ^ Fred Donner: Muhammad and the Believers. At the Origins of Islam (2010) p. 59
- ^ Fred Donner: Muhammad and the Believers. At the Origins of Islam (2010) pp. 68 ff.; cf. also Hans Jansen: Mohammed (2005/7) pp. 311-317 (German edition 2008)
- ^ Patricia Crone / Martin Hinds: God's Caliph: Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam (1986)
- ^ Patricia Crone / Michael Cook: Hagarism (1977) pp. 22-24; Patricia Crone: Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (1987); and the private researcher Dan Gibson: Quranic Geography (2011)
- ^ Robert G. Hoyland: In God's Path. The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire (2015)
- ISBN 978-0-674-05097-6
- ^ Patricia Crone / Michael Cook: Hagarism (1977) p. 29; Yehuda D. Nevo: Crossroads to Islam: The Origins of the Arab Religion and the Arab State (2003) pp. 410-413; Karl-Heinz Ohlig (Hrsg.): Der frühe Islam. Eine historisch-kritische Rekonstruktion anhand zeitgenössischer Quellen (2007) pp. 336 ff.
- ^ Patricia Crone: Slaves on Horses. The Evolution of the Islamic Polity (1980) pp. 7, 12, 15; auch Hans Jansen: Mohammed (2005/7)
- ^ Crone, Patricia (1987). Roman, Provincial and Islamic Law: The Origins of the Islamic Patronate. Cambridge. p. 99.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) cited in cited in Ibn Warraq, ed. (2000). "2. Origins of Islam: A Critical Look at the Sources". The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. Prometheus. p. 99. - ^ Ibn al-Rawandi, "Origins of Islam: A Critical Look at the Sources", 2000: p.98
- ^ Ibn Sa'd (d.845), Tabaqat, ed. E. Sachau (Leiden, 1904-1940), 4.1.106, citing al-Sha'bi ('Abdullah)
- ^ a b Hoyland, In God's Path, 2015: p.137
- ^ Fasawi (d.890), Kitab al-Ma'rifa wa-l-ta'rikh, ed.A.D. al'Umari (Beirut, 1981), 2.15 (Jabir ibn Zayd)
- ^ Holland, 'In the Shadow of the Sword, 2012: p.409
- ^ John Wansbrough: Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation (1977) pp. 43 ff.; Gerd-Rüdiger Puin: Observations on Early Qur'an Manuscripts in San’a’, in: Stefan Wild (Hrsg.): The Qur’an as Text. Brill, Leiden 1996; pp. 107-111
- ^ Yehuda D. Nevo: Crossroads to Islam: The Origins of the Arab Religion and the Arab State (2003); Karl-Heinz Ohlig (Hrsg.): Der frühe Islam. Eine historisch-kritische Rekonstruktion anhand zeitgenössischer Quellen (2007)
- ^ Fred Donner: Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing (1998), p. 60
- S2CID 231797181. Retrieved 25 March 2021.
- ^ Lumbard, Joseph E. B. (24 July 2015). "New Light on the History of the Quranic Text?". Huffington Post. Retrieved 24 March 2021.
- ^ "Tom Holland on The Origins of Islam." Video of talk given at Rancho Mirage Writers Festival, January 28-29, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDQh2nk8ih4&t=23s
- ^ Karl-Heinz Ohlig (Hrsg.): Der frühe Islam. Eine historisch-kritische Rekonstruktion anhand zeitgenössischer Quellen (2007) pp. 377 ff.; Christoph Luxenberg: The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran – A Contribution to the Decoding of the Koran (2007).
- ^ ISBN 9781573927871.
- ^ Adams, Charles (1976). "The Islamic Religious Tradition". In Binder, Louis (ed.). The Study of the Middle East: Research and Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences. John Wiley and Sons. p. 38.
- ISBN 9781573927871.
- ISBN 9781573927871.
- ^ a b Feroz-ud-Din Shah Khagga, M.; Warraich, M. Mahmood (April 2015). "Revisionism: A Modern Orientalistic Wave in the Qurʾānic Criticism". Al-Qalam: 2. Retrieved 26 November 2019.
- ^ Humphreys, R.S. Islamic History, A Framework for Inquiry, Princeton, 1991, p.83
- ^ Schacht, Joseph (1950). The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence. Oxford: Clarendon.
- ^ Ibn Rawandi, "Origins of Islam", 2000: p.97
- ^ Hagarism; The Making Of The Islamic World Crone, Cook, p.3
- ^ a b c Nevo & Koren, "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies", 2000: p.426
- ^ Cf. e.g. François de Blois, Islam in its Arabian Context, S. 615, in: The Qur'an in Context, ed. by Angelika Neuwirth etc., 2010.
- ^ Judith Herrin, Patricia Crone: memoir of a superb Islamic Scholar, openDemocracy 12 July 2015
- ^ Cf. e.g. Toby Lester: Lester, Toby (January 1999). "What Is the Koran?". The Atlantic (January 1999). Retrieved 16 January 2020.
- ^ Cf. e.g. Patricia Crone: Among the Believers, Tablet Magazine 10 August 2010
- ISBN 9780791481912. Retrieved 16 January 2020.
- ^ Khan, Muhammad (29 September 2017). "Revisionist account of early Islamic history and culture". Muslim News. Retrieved 16 January 2020.
- ^ Bowersock, Glen (4 May 2012). "In the Shadow of the Sword by Tom Holland – review". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 November 2019.
- ^ Brown, Jonathan (26 July 2015). "Tom Holland, the Five Daily Prayers and they Hypocrisy of Revisionism". Dr. Jonathan Brown. Retrieved 16 January 2020.
- ISBN 978-0-521-53906-7.
- ISBN 978-0-691-21423-8.
- ^ a b c Nevo & Koren, "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies", 2000: p.431
- ^ Crone, Patricia (1987). "2". Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam. Princeton University Press.
- ^ Crone, Patricia (1987). "4". Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam. Princeton University Press.
- ^ Crone, Patricia (1987). "5". Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam. Princeton University Press.
- ^ Patricia Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (Princeton, U.S.A: Princeton University Press, 1987), p.134
- ^ Nevo & Koren, "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies", 2000: p.432
- ^ Fred Donner: Review of: The Quest for the Historical Muhammad, by Ibn Warraq, Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, 35(1), pp. 75–76.
- ^ Cf. e.g. Toby Lester: What is the Koran?, in: The Atlantic, issue January 1999
- ^ Cf. e.g. Tilman Nagel: Befreit den Propheten aus seiner religiösen Umklammerung! in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 21 September 2009
- ^ Cf. e.g. Marion Holmes Katz: Body of Text: The Emergence of the Sunni Law of Ritual Purity (2012), p. 27
- ^ Gregor Schoeler, Charakter und Authentie der muslimischen Überlieferung über das Leben Mohammeds, de Gruyter 1996. pp. 18 f., 23 f. 142 f.; original citation p. 24: "dies alles und noch manches Beachtenswerte mehr uns zum ersten Mal -- oder erneut -- zu bedenken gegeben zu haben, ist zweifellos ein Verdienst der neuen Generation der 'Skeptiker'."
- ^ Cf. e.g. François de Blois, Islam in its Arabian Context, p. 615, in: The Qur'an in Context, ed. by Angelika Neuwirth etc., 2010
Bibliography
- Cook, Michael (2000). The Koran : A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0192853449.
The Koran : A Very Short Introduction.
- Crone, Patricia (1987). Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (PDF). Princeton University Press.
- Crone, Patricia (1980). Slaves on Horses (PDF). Cambridge University Press. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
- Crone, Patricia; Hinds, Martin (1986). God's Caliph: Religious Authority In the First Centuries of Islam (PDF). Cambridge University Press. Retrieved 24 November 2019.
- Fred Donner: Muhammad and the Believers. At the Origins of Islam, Harvard University Press, 2010 ISBN 978-0-674-05097-6
- Holland, Tom (2012). In the Shadow of the Sword. UK: Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-53135-1. Retrieved 29 August 2019.
- Holland, Tom (January 28–29, 2017). Tom Holland on The Origins of Islam (video). Rancho Mirage Writers Festival: youtube. eDQh2nk8ih4&t=1s. Retrieved 14 January 2020.
- Holland, Tom (8 August 2015). Islam : The Untold Story (video). Channel 4. Documentary. j9S_xbjIRgE&t=. Retrieved 18 January 2020.
- Hoyland, Robert G. (2015). In God's Path: the Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire. Oxford University Press.
- Donner, Fred M. (2008). "The Quran in Recent Scholarship". In Reynolds, Gabriel Said (ed.). The Quran in its Historical Context. Routledge. pp. 29-50.
- Reynolds, Gabriel Said (2008). "Introduction, Quranic studies and its controversies". In Reynolds, Gabriel Said (ed.). The Quran in its Historical Context. Routledge. pp. 1-26.
- Nevo, Yehuda D.; Koren, Judith (2000). "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies". The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. New York: Prometheus Books. pp. 420–443.
- Ibn Warraq, ed. (2000). "2. Origins of Islam: A Critical Look at the Sources". The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. Prometheus. pp. 89-124. ISBN 9781573927871.
- Schacht, Joseph (1950). The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence. Oxford: Clarendon.
- Lester, Toby (January 1999). "What is the Koran?". The Atlantic (January 1999). Retrieved 20 November 2019.
- Ibn Warraq, ed. (2000). "1. Studies on Muhammad and the Rise of Islam". The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. Prometheus. pp. 55. ISBN 9781573927871.
- Wansbrough, J. (1978). Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation. Oxford.
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Further reading
- Carlos Segovia: J. Wansbrough and the Problem of Islamic Origins in Recent Scholarship: A Farewell to the Traditional Account, book chapter in: The Coming of the Comforter: When, Where, and to Whom? Studies on the Rise of Islam and Various Other Topics in Memory of John Wansbrough, ed. by Carlos A. Segovia and Basil Lourié, Gorgias Press, 2012, pp. xv–xxiv.
External links
- Daniel Pipes (2012), Uncovering early Islam, National Review
- Razib Khan, The myth of Arabian paganism, and the Jewish-Christian origins of the Umayyads