The Crucible of Islam

222 Pages·2017·4.723 MB·English

by  G.W. Bowersock

THE CRUCIBLE OF ISLAM
THE
C RU C I B L E
I S L A M
OF
G. W. Bowersock
Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England
2017
Copyright © 2017 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
all rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First printing
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bowersock, G. W. (Glen Warren), 1936– author.
Title: The crucible of Islam / G. W. Bowersock.
Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University
Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016046008 | ISBN 9780674057760 (alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Islam—History. | Arabs—History—To 622. |
Islamic Empire—History—622–661.
Classification: LCC BP50 .B69 2017 | DDC 297.09/021—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn .loc .gov /2016046008
Jacket art: Spandrel from the octagonal arcade, inner face of the
east side, Dome of the Rock, courtesy of Said Nuseibeh
Design: Jill Breitbarth
CONTENTS
Prologue 1
1 The Arabian Kingdom of Abraha 14
2 Arab Paganism in Late Antiquity 33
3 Late Antique Mecca 48
4 Ethiopia and Arabia 64
5 The Persians in Jerusalem 81
6 Muḥammad and Medina 101
7 Interregnum of the Four Caliphs 115
8 A New Dispensation 130
9 The Dome of the Rock 140
Notes 163
Select Bibliography 189
Acknowledgments 193
Index 197
Yathrib Najd Abd al-QaysFDx
Khuzā‘aal-Ḥijāz Muzayna Hawāzin Kind a Tamīm
MeQccuarayshal-(cid:28)‘āU’ikfāTẓhaqīfHudhayl Qaryat al-Fāw
Kināna Azd al-Tabāla Ḥubāsha Kinda
S
Red Sea Tihuārāmha Najrān Kinda
Farasān Murād m a w t
Ṣan‘ā’ Ma’rib Ḥ a ḍ r a
N
Zula Qāni’
Axum Ẓafār
‘Aden In dian O cean
SOUTHWEST
ARABIA 0 100 300 km
Map of Southwest Arabia, prepared by Fabrice Delrieux.
FDx
Ju dTahbūākm ‘Abs (R aalm-lN aĀflūidj) A sad Tamï
Taymā’ m
al-Rawwāfa al-Ḥijr /
Madā’in Şaliḥ
al-‘Ulā Ţay’ al al-Dahnā
-
JuhKahyaynbara YamāmaḤanīfa
Fadak
Ḥajr
Yanbu‘ Suwā alYathrib / Medina Najd
-
Khuzā‘aḤijāz Muzayna Hawāzin Kinda
JiMddeQacucaraayl-DMshahūjāz‘Ualk-a(cid:30)ālẓā-L’iāfJtiḥarThaqHīufdhayl Bi’r Murayghān Qaryat al-Fāw
Kinā TaAbāla Kinda
Red Sea na zd al-SurāhJurash Ḥubāsha N
ḤIJĀZ Tihāma Najrān 0 100 km
Map of the Ḥijāz, prepared by Fabrice Delrieux.
THE CRUCIBLE OF ISLAM
PROLOGUE
The faith that drove the armies of Arabs out of
the Arabian peninsula to take possession of Palestine,
North Africa, and Syria within a few de cades in the
first half of the seventh c entury remains t oday a
power ful force in world affairs. What generated this
force is as obscure now as it was in the beginning, and
historians have been impeded by the tendentious
character of most of the sources for this g reat up-
heaval, as well as by their own prejudices. It is difficult
for non- Muslims, above all Jews and Christians, to
be dispassionate in confronting the tide of Muslim
conquests that swept over the ancient cultures of the
Near East. It is no less difficult for Muslims to apply
scholarly rigor to the word of God as well as to a
historiographical tradition that significantly post-
dates the events it rec ords. Yet in view of the im mense
authority of Islam in the modern world it becomes
more imperative than ever for both sides to make
the effort.
1
THE CRUCIBLE OF ISLAM
The pioneering generation of Islamicists in the
West, including Theodor Nöldeke, Julius Wellhausen,
and Ignaz Goldziher, applied the methods of classical
philology as they had been successfully imported into
the study of the New Testament and the Hebrew Bible
by Erasmus and Gesenius. As these scholars recog-
nized, the transmission of t hese old texts was sus-
ceptible to critical analy sis, which in the fullness of
time could be supplemented by surviving documents
on stone, papyri, and coins, and eventually the dis-
coveries of archaeological excavation. For Islam the
authority of the Qur’ān, being the revealed word of
God, notoriously resisted the Erasmian challenge,
because of the vast hiatus between its creation, at
what ever time and by what ever means, and very much
later reports of the context from which it came. It
took nearly two centuries for Islamic exegetes to
acquire a corpus of what was known about the gen-
esis of their religion. By then a complex pro cess of
textual contamination was already in place. During
those two centuries non- Muslim chroniclers, inter-
preters, and historians had been at work in a variety
of languages—G reek, Latin, Armenian, Syriac, and Ar-
abic above all. They had conspicuously exploited one
another’s material, which left traces of their bor-
2
PROLOgUE
rowing in the texts they wrote, but naturally they
had their own doctrinal perspectives.
Three recent books illustrate the dilemma facing
anyone looking into the crucible in which Islam was
forged.1 Although there is little doubt that this cru-
cible lay in the northwestern Arabian peninsula, con-
tacts between that region and the surrounding cultures
of Palestine, Himyar, Ethiopia, and Persia i nevitably
contributed to a potentially explosive mixture. So
did indigenous traditions of polytheism that had
been there all along, as well as a more recent evolu-
tion of Jewish and Christian communities that was
replete with hostility and massacre. The three new
books attempt to examine the rise of Islam in very
dif fer ent ways. Yet they all traverse the familiar path
that starts the rise of Islam with Muḥammad’s birth
at Mecca about 570 and the revelations he received
from Gabriel, and they then pro gress to his subse-
quent emigration (hijra) to Medina in 622. They all
continue with a series of traditional dates, battles,
and conquests. All three books rec ord Muḥammad’s
canonical death in 632 and go on to examine the tur-
bulent reigns of the four so- called orthodox caliphs
who succeeded him before the establishment of the
Umayyad dynasty in Damascus about 661.2 By their
3