Muhammad, the Qur'an & Islam

433 Pages·2013·1.91 MB·English

Muhammad,
the Qur’an & Islam
N. A. Newman
Interdisciplinary Biblical
Research Institute
Hatfield, Pennsylvania
USA
Muhammad, the Qur’an & Islam
Copyright 1996 by N. A. Newman
Revised Edition
Published by the
Interdisciplinary Biblical Research Institute
P.O. Box 423, Hatfield, PA 19440-0423 USA
Phone [phone]x153 (voice mail)
Fax [phone]
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 96-78495
hardcover ISBN 0-944788-85-8
paperback ISBN 0-944788-86-6
Cover design by James I. Newman
Table of Contents

Introduction vii
Pre-Islamic Arabia 1
The Sources for Muhammad's Biography 15
Muhammad: Birth to Ministry 25
Muhammad: His Call 39
Muhammad: Meccan Opposition 77
Muhammad: The Hijra 139
Muhammad: Break with the Jews 187
Muhammad: Victory and Death 245
The Qur'an 311
Islamic Tradition 323
Appendix A: Sira Traditions 329
Appendix B: Sura Orderings 349
Appendix C: Qur'anic Time Chart 357
Appendix D: Qur'anic Narratives 363
Appendix E: Qur'anic Prophets and Persons 391
Appendix F: Verse Source Information 409
Bibliography 419
iii
iv
Key to Abbreviations
for works referenced
ECMD The Early Christian-Muslim Dialogue
EI2 Encyclopedia of Islam (2nd edition)
GQ Geschichte des Qorans
JRAS Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society
JSAI Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam
MW The Moslem World
SEI Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam
WMJA Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthumme
aufgenommen?
ZDMG Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen
Gesellschaft
v
Introduction

Over the centuries, much research has been done on the life of Muhammad,
the text of the Qur'an and the development of Islam. Almost no works,
however, have sought to systematically integrate the various results of the
research in these areas. The discrepancies, for instance, between the
biographical (Sira) traditions about Muhammad and the inherent witness of
the Qur'an have certainly been known to those familiar with both of these
sciences. What is not well known, though, is why no one has tried to
generally reconcile these discrepancies.
One prominent Western biographer of Muhammad, for instance, has openly
defended his own neglect1 of research into the direct "sources" of the
Qur'an by appealing to the example of Shakespeare's work Hamlet and
reasoning that:2
1) "the study of sources does not explain away the ideas
whose sources are found, nor does it detract from their
truth and validity."
2) "Shakespeare's play of Hamlet remains a very great play
even after we have found the 'source' from which
Shakespeare derived the outline of the story."
3) "No more does our knowledge of the source tell us
anything of importance about the creative processes
Shakespeare's mind."
These arguments appear to be unjustified, however, since:
1) The proper study of sources is not to "explain away the
ideas whose sources are found," but rather to aid in better
understanding the text at hand. The choice of Hamlet as a
comparison for the Qur'an was inadequate, since
Shakespeare claims neither truthfulness (historicity) nor
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Muhammad, the Qur'an and Islam
validity for Hamlet, and his audience certainly expects
neither of these.
2) As a piece of entertainment, Shakespeare's Hamlet
remains a great play in the opinion of many, even after
the sources of its plot have been found.
3) With respect to Hamlet, "the creative processes in
Shakespeare's mind" can only be realized by comparing
the sources to his production and then noting all of the
modifications which Shakespeare himself made.
As opposed to Shakespeare's Hamlet, the Qur'an not only claims historicity
and validity, but it also professes to be God's Word. It is indeed the
magnitude of these claims which warrants serious investigation of both the
text of the Qur'an and its possible sources. Furthermore, as the development
of Islamic tradition indicates, one's knowledge of Muhammad's life and the
earliest stages of Islam is greatly enhanced by practically any aspect of
Qur'anic research.
This present work discusses and references the findings and theories of
many generations of scholars concerning the possible sources of the Qur'an.
Nevertheless, the conclusive evaluation of these materials is left to each
individual reader.
One non-Qur'anic illustration of how source information can be employed
in a theological sense, may be found in the development of traditions
surrounding the Old Testament priest Zachariah, the son of Jehoiada: In II
Chr. 24:21f the priest Zachariah is shown as having been murdered in the
court of the Temple at Jerusalem as he called for the Lord's vengeance. This
request of Zachariah was then at least partially fulfilled when Joash, the
king who had ordered Zachariah's killing, was murdered by his own
servants (II Chr. 24:25). As an apparent exegetical elaboration on Ezek.
24:7f,3 Jewish rabbis claimed that Zachariah's death was avenged by the
Babylonian Nebuzaradan during the destruction of Jerusalem in the time of
Nebuchadnezzar.4 The apocryphal Protevangelion, which was used by sects
that had broken off from Christianity, seems to have confused Zachariah,
the son of Jehoiada, with Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist in a story
similar to the Jewish legends.5 The Islamic accounts, whose plots are even
more dependent on the Jewish traditions about vengeance for Zachariah,
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Introduction
not only exchange John the Baptist for Zachariah, but they also maintain
that the Babylonians invaded Jerusalem after John had been executed.6
Clearly, II Chr. 24:21f is the ultimate source of these traditions,7 which was
subsequently modified and changed in the accounts mentioned above.
Jewish traditions seem to have wanted Ezek. 24:7f to have been fulfilled by
the Babylonians as a vengeance for Zachariah's death, and the writers of the
Protevangelion may have simply desired to depict Zacharias as a martyr
(Prot. 16:14). None of the Islamic traditions about the vengeance for John
the Baptist's execution are said to have originated with Muhammad, but the
"corrected" version of the story (where Nebuzaradan appears in place of
Nebuchadnezzar)8 strongly suggests that a non-Christian exegesis of Qur'an
17:4-8 may have been the main motive for modifying the earlier accounts.9
Although some sources can be traced with relative certainty, such as in the
previous example, others are more indefinite. For example, the "wife of the
Pharaoh" (in the time of Moses), who is depicted as having been a
"believer" in Qur'an 66:11, was named "Asiya" by later Muslim authorities.
One Western scholar10 thinks that "Asiya" was probably derived from
"Asenath," the wife of Joseph (cf. Gen. 41:45), but this name could rather
have come from a 4th century AD Coptic work, in which Monophysites
claim that "Assia" was one of the daughters of Joseph the carpenter from a
previous marriage.11
Similar to the examples discussed above, the Qur'an often makes allusion to
narratives which ultimately came from the Bible. Although Muslims of
later generations have charged that the Bible was corrupted by its
transmitters (e.g. in passages portraying Jesus as the Son of God), it can
rather easily be shown that the Bible manuscripts pre-, ante- and postdating
Muhammad bear none of the changes which Muslims purport. Moreover,
throughout the centuries Muslims exegetes have often availed themselves
of information from the Bible in order to either fill in a Qur'anic narrative,
or simply to better understand the text of the Qur'an. As an additional form
of source research, Muslim scholars tried to find the etymologies for
foreign vocabulary in the Qur'an and attempted to trace the lives of persons
named or mentioned in the Qur'an. Later, this science attracted scholars
from Judaism and Christianity, who though less familiar with the Qur'an,
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Muhammad, the Qur'an and Islam
were more acquainted with the non-Arabic languages of the Middle East,
the Bible and Judeo-Christian traditions.
Whereas biographers of Muhammad's life have generally favored the Sira
traditions at the expense of Qur'anic research, scholars of the Qur'an have
pretty much done the opposite in favoring Qur'anic research over Islamic
tradition. Early Muslim scholars were the first to try to arrange the Qur'an's
suras chronologically,12 and although this established the broadest link to
the Sira traditions, the results of this research were not implemented in
conjunction with them. Later, Western sura orderings were also
constructed, which were more or less "chronological" by virtue of their
dependence on the chronological Islamic orderings.13 Nevertheless,
Western scholars also did not attempt to integrate these findings generally
with the Sira traditions.
It is the view of the present author that the most accurate understanding of
the Qur'an, the biography of Muhammad and the earliest developments in
Islam is obtained by attempting to reconcile the widest spectrum of
information about them.
Unfortunately, modern Western research of Islam seems to be approaching
the limit of historical skepticism. Many of the critics of Islamic tradition,
for example, have concluded that there is practically nothing reliable to be
found in tradition, and some have maintained that the most (if not only)
trustworthy Islamic source is the Qur'an.14 In the field of Qur'anic research,
however, the notion of "chronological sura orderings" has been
abandoned,15 and the Qur'an is said to have been revealed in passages from
indefinite time periods.16 At least one Western scholar claims that the
"standard text" of the Qur'an "as implied in the `Uthman recension
traditions"17 could hardly have predated the 3rd century AH.18
x
Introduction
As will be shown in the pages that follow, there is rather solid evidence
which shows that the Qur'an has not been preserved to our generation
without modifications or loss. At the same time, some of the "hadith" (in
the broadest sense of "Islamic traditions," whether they come from the Sira
or later canonical collections) can be shown to have been at least
"improvements" of later Islamic theologians. Nevertheless, as one of the
tenets of source research implies, some parts of the Qur'an appear to have
been modified because there was earlier something there to modify, some
parts of the Qur'an have apparently been lost because there must have been
something there originally, and some hadith were improved because there
was previously something there to improve.
A bibliography of the references which were used in this work is provided
at the close of this book. Frequently in the notes an editor or translator of a
reference is shown in the position of the author simply as a means of briefly
identifying the work cited; the abbreviation "f" is also used for "ff" in the
interest of saving space. The author apologizes for the (at times) abrupt
style of he book, but the transfer of information was deemed to be more
important than having a "flowing" literary style which would have
significantly lengthened the text.19 The collections of Sira traditions which
have been used are given in Appendix A, and the sura orderings of Nöldeke
have been employed, with some alterations.20 The identification of Qur'an
passages follows the Cairo system of verse division, and references to the
canonical hadith of Bukhari, Muslim and Abu Dawud are from the editions
listed in the bibliography.
The author would like to thank IBRI for their willingness to publish and
distribute the present work, and gratefully acknowledges the resource
assistance of Dr. Robert C. Newman, Peter Reinecke and Eugen Pietras.
--------------
Notes:
[1] Watt in Introduction, p. vi; cf. Watt, Muhammad, p. 46.
[2] Watt, Introduction, pp. 184 f.
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