The Mecca Mystery: Probing the Black Hole at the Heart of Muslim History

1225 Pages·2018·2.67 MB·English

by  Peter Townsend

The Mecca Mystery - Probing the
Black Hole at the Heart of Muslim
History

Peter Townsend
Copyright Peter Townsend 2018

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or
used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the
author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Cover and Book Design by [email protected]

ISBN-13: 978-0-6483132-0-5
Contents

Introduction

Navigating this Book

A Brief Geographical Orientation

1. What is the Basis for Traditional Beliefs About the Early Years of Islam?
1.1. The Past as a Battlefield
1.2. Dealing with Sources: Some Basic Historiographical Principles
1.3. Primary and Secondary Historical Sources
1.4. The Place of Oral Tradition in Historiography
1.5. The Islamic Sources under the Lens
1.5.1. The Qur’an as a Historical Source
1.5.2. The Hadiths to the Rescue?
1.5.3. Biographies of Muhammad
1.5.4. Early Islamic Historical Texts and Their Legacy
1.5.5. The Current State of Play: A Puzzling Lack of Critical
Engagement
1.6. Not So Silent After All: Finding Alternative Sources
1.7. Chapter Summary

2. The Incredible Vanishing City: Mecca and Pre-Islamic Arabia
2.1. The Centrality of the ‘Mother of all Cities’
2.2. Najran: A Case Study
2.3. Investigating the Evidence for the Ancient Existence of Mecca
2.3.1. Mecca and its Near Neighbors
2.3.2. Mecca and Ancient Imperial Records
2.3.3. Mecca as a great trading city?
2.3.4. Mecca as an Ancient Religious Center?
2.3.5. Could Ptolemy’s ‘Macoraba’ be Mecca?
2.3.6. Psalm 84, ‘The Valley of Baka’ and Mecca
2.4. Chapter Summary
3. Setting the Scene: The Arabian Peninsula at the Dawn of Islam
3.1. The Religious Make-Up of the Arabian Peninsula at the Dawn of
Islam
3.1.1. Arabian Paganism
3.1.2. Judaism in the Arabian Peninsula
3.1.3. Christianity in the Arabian Peninsula
3.2. The Arabian Geopolitical Scene at the Dawn of Islam
3.2.1. Arab Tribalism
3.2.2. The Roman Empire and the Arabian Peninsula
3.2.3. The Persian Empire and the Arabian Peninsula
3.3. Chapter Summary

4. Where did Islam Originate? Examining the Islamic Sources
4.1. Geographical Clues in the Qur’an
4.1.1. Linguistic Clues Relating to the Origins of the Qur’an
4.1.2. Geographical References in the Qur'an
4.1.3. Mecca in the Qur'an
4.1.4. Bakka, Mecca and the Possibility of an Alternative Focus for
Early Muslim worship
4.1.5. Indirect Geographical References in the Qur'an
4.2. Geographical References in the Hadiths
4.2.1. The Reliability of the Hadiths Revisited
4.2.2. The Holy City of Islam in the Hadiths and Classical Sources
4.2.3. Geographical Clues Related to Place of Composition of the
Hadiths
4.2.4. Zoroastrianism and the Rise of Islam
4.2.5. Mesopotamian Judaism and its Influence of Islam
4.3. Chapter Summary

5. Finding Muhammad behind the Shadows
5.1. In Search of the Historical Muhammad
5.2. Muhammad in the Qur’an
5.3. Muhammad in the Hadiths and Traditional Sources
5.3.1. Muhammad as a Prophet
5.3.2. Muhammad’s Family Life and Relationships
5.3.3. Muhammad as a War Leader
5.3.4. Cross Referencing Key Events from Muhammad’s Biography with
Recorded History
5.3.5. Muhammad in Contemporary Arabic Sources
5.3.6. Muhammad in Contemporary Non-Arabic Sources
5.4. Chapter Summary

6. The Qur’an: Proof of Islam’s Origin Narrative?
6.1. Examining the Official Account of Qur’anic Origins
6.2. The Traditional Account of Qur’anic Origins under Scrutiny
6.3. A Text Critical Investigation of the Qur’anic Text
6.3.1. Investigating the Earliest Qur’anic Manuscripts (the Uthmanic
Mushafs)
6.3.2. Divergence within the Accepted Textual Tradition
6.3.3. The Sana’a Qur’an and the Uthmanic Tradition
6.3.4. What about the Birmingham Folios?
6.3.5. The Hadiths on Qur’anic Completeness
6.3.6. The Crucifixion Verse: Evidence of a Later Addition?
6.4. How did the Qur’an Came into Being?
6.4.1. Syrian Christian Material
6.4.2. Jewish Writings
6.4.3. Extra-Biblical Christian Gospels
6.4.4. Stories, Legends and Myths
6.4.5. Zoroastrian Influence
6.4.6. The Compilation and Editing of the Qur’anic Text
6.5. Chapter Summary

7. The Post-Muhammad Period: Muslim Conquest and Victory?
7.1. Muslim or Arab Conquest?
7.2. Non-Arab Writings on the Arab Conquests
7.3. The Missing Caliphs
7.4. Misdirected Mosques
7.5. The Survival of Paganism
7.6. The Early Umayyad Caliphate: Archaeological and Documentary
Sources
7.7. Civil War, the Marwanids and the Emergence of Islam
7.8. The Dome of the Rock: Islam Finally Steps from the Shadows
7.9. Chapter Summary

8. What Happened? Some Tentative Conclusions
8.1. Nabataea: A Forgotten Kingdom Worth Remembering
8.2. Arabian Paganism as the Bedrock of Proto-Islam
8.3. The Arabs and the Superpowers
8.4. A ‘Hijra’, But Not as You Know It.
8.5. The Arab-Syriac Encounter
8.6. Proto-Islam and Judaism
8.7. Proto-Islam and Near Eastern Christianities
8.8. In Search of Identity
8.9. Muawiya and Pan-Arab Monotheism
8.10. The Marwanids and the Birth of Islam
8.11. Salvation in the Desert: Why it was Necessary to Invent Mecca
8.12. The Creation of a Scriptural Tradition
8.13. By the Rivers of Babylon: The Final Strand is Added
8.14. Chapter Summary: An Attempt at an Updated History

9. Whereto from Here?
9.1. Commit to Honest, In-Depth Research
9.2. Bring Questions about Islam’s History into the Open
9.3. Challenge the Culture of Fear
9.4. Use Historical Facts to Undermine Islam
9.5. Conclusion: What if the ‘Full Light of History’ is a Mirage?

More from Peter Townsend

Bibliography

Endnotes
Introduction
There is total silence in the mosque as the Imam begins his Friday sermon.
Over the next few minutes he holds the congregation in breathless sway as he
recounts the glorious occasion of the Prophet Muhammad entering Mecca, after
years of struggle, at the head of a victorious army. You can almost feel the
elation as the assembled believers hang on to every word of the preacher as he
transports them to a time and place that are in some ways more real to them than
their present surroundings. As they delight in their beloved prophet’s victory in
the name of Allah, at a location which some of them have visited in person, not a
few of those present reflect on how very grateful they are that their faith is based
on such a rock-solid historical foundation.

History. It underpins every aspect of the Muslim faith. From the descriptions of
how a man named Muhammad was called from his humdrum existence to a life
of prophethood, to blow-by-blow accounts of the major battles of the post-
Muhammad conquests. Historical accounts are pervasive when it comes to
Muslim self-understanding and these accounts act as the foundation for Islamic
faith and practice at every turn. How could it be otherwise? Islam is based upon
the fundamental idea that God intervened at a specific time, in a specific place
and through a specific person to bring his message to an unbelieving world. It is,
therefore, of the utmost importance that the historical record upon which Islamic
teaching is based should be accurate and verifiable.

Most practicing Muslims would instinctively and passionately argue that this is
indeed the case. As far as they are concerned, there exists an unbroken and
impeccable historical record that links modern Muslims with the distant Islamic
past; a past during which events played out exactly as described in the countless
biographies of the prophet and descriptions of the early Arab conquests that line
the shelves of Islamic bookshops all around the world. A lot will depend on
whether this is, in fact, the case.

In light of the above, it is of the utmost importance that historians honestly and
seriously strive to get to the bottom of the questions relating to the origins of
early Islam. A basic question to start with is: "How reliable are the historical
accounts upon which the faith of more than a billion Muslims rest?" I fully
realize that many people will see this question as verging on the nonsensical. It
is, after all, common knowledge that Islam, as Ernest Renan memorably put it,
1
emerged in the 'full light of history'.

The problem is that the 'common knowledge' about Islam’s origins rests, as is
so often the case with common knowledge, on some potentially profound
untested assumptions. Chief among these assumptions is the conviction that
certain key historical documents, written hundreds of years after the time of
Muhammad, are the most reliable window into the early origins of Islam that we
have.

The issue of the reliability of the Islamic historical record is too important to
allow the mostly uncritical acceptance of certain entrenched positions to remain
untested. The purpose of this book is, therefore, to pursue the following related
lines of enquiry:
Whether the classical sources underpinning Muslim history stack up as
reliable records of the period and the events they seek to describe?
Whether there are other reliable sources, perhaps largely ignored by
those responsible for the traditional accounts that provide alternative yet
credible perspectives into the periods and events under discussion?

These are the type of questions that historians should ask as a matter of course
when the history of any period is discussed, but the traditional version of Islamic
history has largely received a 'free pass' when it comes to serious critical
scrutiny.

The result is that documents claiming to shed light on the earliest years of
Islam are often accepted as intrinsically trustworthy without even the most basic
questions about historical accuracy or reliable transmission being asked. This
happens despite the fact that the key texts of other major world religions have
2
now been subjected to more than a century of the most searching investigations.

There are several reasons behind the fact that Islamic sources have so far
escaped thorough historical re-examination. Perhaps most significant is the
simple fact that this is an exercise fraught with danger. Scholars in the Muslim
world face the prospect of being branded as apostates if they are perceived to be
deviating too far from accepted versions of Islamic theology and history. This
can have very serious consequences. Throughout history, those who challenged
Islamic orthodoxy from within the bosom of Islam quickly discovered that this is
not something to undertake lightly. The fact that this is not an observation that
3
only applies to the distant past (e.g. the slaughtering of Mutazalite scholars in
10th century Baghdad4) can be seen in the case of Muhammad Taha, who was
executed by the Sudanese government in 1985 for proposing a re-evaluation of
5
the way in which the Qur’an is interpreted.

The fear-factor and the sheer ubiquity of the traditional sources means that
very little is happening inside the Muslim world itself as far as a critical re-