Before and After Muhammad: The First Millennium Refocused

284 Pages·2013·2.92 MB·English

by  Garth Fowden

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BEFORE AND AFTER MU AMMAD
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BEFORE AND AFTER MU AMMAD
THE FIRST MILLENNIUM REFOCUSED
Garth Fowden
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON AND OXFORD
Copyright © 2014 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41
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ISBN 978-0-691-15853-2
Library of Congress Control Number 2013942727
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This book has been composed in
Garamond Premier Pro Printed on acid-free paper. ∞
Printed in the United States of America 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
aug. mmix
Contents
PREFATORY NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix
ABBREVIATIONS xi
Chapter 1. INCLUDING ISLAM 1
The West and the Rest 1
Edward Gibbon 5
Islam and late Antiquity 9
Summary 15
Chapter 2. TIME: BEYOND LATE ANTIQUITY 18
The roots of late antique studies 18
Burckhardt to Strzygowski 23
The Orient and Islam: Views from Vienna 30
Pirenne to the present 37
Chapter 3. A NEW PERIODIZATION: THE FIRST MILLENNIUM 49
Decline versus transformation 49
Maturations 53
Monotheist historiography 68
For and against the First Millennium 82
Chapter 4. SPACE: AN EASTWARD SHIFT 92
Discovering the Mediterranean 92
Discovering the East 96
Empires and commonwealths 101
The Mountain Arena 116
Chapter 5. EXEGETICAL CULTURES 1: ARISTOTELIANISM 127
Greek Aristotelianism 129
Christian polemic 136
Aristotle in Latin, Armenian, and Syriac 139
Alexandria to Baghdad 146
Arabic Aristotelianism 153
Chapter 6. EXEGETICAL CULTURES 2: LAW AND RELIGION 164
Roman law 166
Rabbinic Judaism 173
Patristic Christianity 181
Islam 188
Chapter 7. VIEWPOINTS AROUND 1000: ṬŪS, BASRA, BAGHDAD, PISA 198
T
ūs/Iran 199
s
Ba ra/Encyclopedism 204
Baghdad/Rationality 207
Pisa/The Latin West 212
PROSPECTS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH 219
MAP: THE EURASIAN HINGE, WITH CIRCUM-ARABIAN TRADE ROUTES 106
INDEX 225
Prefatory Note and Acknowledgments
h
Before and after Mu ammad develops my attempt in Empire to
commonwealth (1993) to view Arsacid and Sasanid Iran, Rome, and the
Caliphate within a single frame. Since then I have approached the early
Caliphate by way of its material culture in Qusayr ʿAmra (2004), and
through philosophy (especially the Arabic Plotinus) in an uncompleted
book titled Rational Islam and the reinvention of Aristotle. Except in its
h
definition of the geographical framework, Before and after Mu ammad
barely overlaps with Empire to commonwealth; but it has been much
fertilized by Rational Islam. It lays out, and in its last two chapters
somewhat schematically exemplifies, a new historical periodization,
whose practical demonstration will be provided, in due course, by a
large-scale narrative to be titled The First Millennium: From Augustus to
Avicenna.
Unless specified otherwise, all dates are CE, and translations listed in
the notes are into English. There is no bibliography. All references are
given in full at their first occurrence and in abbreviated form thereafter,
with their first occurrence indicated in square brackets by chapter and
footnote number separated by a colon (e.g., [2:32]). The chapter 2
epigraph excerpt is reprinted by permission of the publisher from
Interpreting late Antiquity: Essays on the postclassical world, edited by G. W.
Bowersock, Peter Brown, and Oleg Grabar, p. ix: Cambridge, Mass.: The
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1999, 2001 by
the President and Fellows of Harvard College. The chapter 5 first
epigraph excerpt is from Sebastian Brock’s article “From antagonism to