According to Islamic sources, Muhammad began receiving revelations in 610, and in 622 migrated from Mecca to Medina because of the hostility of the pagans in Mecca. In Medina he allied himself for a while with the many Jews in that city, though he broke with them fairly quickly. He also changed the direction in which his followers were supposed to pray from Jerusalem to the Ka’ba in Mecca. In 627 he and his followers conquered Mecca, and in 632, just as they were planning to conquer the outside world, Muhammad died. In that same year a number of Muslims who had memorized parts of the Qur’an died, which made collecting it into one volume necessary. However, this wasn’t done till 653, when it was done by someone named Uthman, who had variants burned.
The trouble with this history is that it all comes from decades and centuries later than the events described. Plus, the destruction of “variants,” whether by Uthman or later rulers, hampers us in determining the truth.
However, there are early Jewish and Christian sources which give us a glimpse of what was happening, and that glimpse is widely different from what Islamic sources relate. Here are the high points:
• Muhammad seems to have been still alive when Muslims were conquering places like Jerusalem.
• Muslims after conquering Jerusalem held it in high esteem and were very concerned to set up a place of worship at the Jerusalem Temple
• Muslims continued to face Jerusalem when praying long after (into the 680s at least) they supposedly had changed to Mecca.
• Muslims didn’t seem to call themselves Muslim at first, for the sources don’t use this term. Instead, they use a variety of terms including Saracens, nomads (tayyaye), and either Hagarenes or emigrants (mhaggraye).
• Nor did they seem to have a specific doctrine that set themselves apart from Jews and Christians. They seemed to have a vague Abrahamic faith that welcomed both groups without demanding that they renounce their faith.
• They did not have an early break with the Jews, as tradition claims. They allied with the Jews when they conquered Jerusalem.
• They believed that the end of the world was imminent. Muhammad may have preached the coming of the Messiah.
• They didn’t seem to have a book called the Qur’an at first. John of Damascus writing in the 730s talks of Islamic writings, some of which correspond to the Qur’an and some of which don’t. Moreover, he didn’t talk as though these writings were all part of the same book.
It seems that what caused the development of what we know as Islam was a change in the dynasties from the Ummayads to the Abbasids in 750, with the latter despising the former and basically writing the former out of the historical record as much as possible. (Just imagine if the wokesters’ version of the last three hundred years of history were to prevail.)
This is not my specialty, and I have no particular comments to make on it all, except one (which I will get to shortly). From the standpoint of radical Cartesian doubt, there is no particular reason to believe either the traditional account or the accounts of these Christians and Jews. But ignoring that level of doubt, we can say that a reason for trusting the latter is that they are closer in time to the events they are talking about, while those writing the traditional account did so later and also destroyed records they didn’t like. So, why trust them?
Anyway, the one comment I have on all this is that it is hard to imagine why anyone writing a biography of Muhammad would not want to record his feats in conquering areas outside of Arabia. Why say he died in 632 if he was commanding armies in 634 and beyond? Shoemaker does not explore this question in this book, but he does do so in another book (here) which I haven’t read. But it seems that the idea was that Muhammad predicted that the Messiah would be coming shortly, which of course didn’t happen, and that embarrassment needed to be dealt with by cutting a few years off his life. Maybe, but having him die after Jerusalem was conquered doesn’t seem like it would have been too much of a burden. No, I have to wonder if there is something else going on. Maybe there were lots of stories of him being chummy with Jews and Christians in Jerusalem which later Muslims didn’t like. If he were to have died before he got there, then those couldn’t have happened.
On page 85, there is the following: “And they will be sewing and reaping, they will plant fruit in the land.” This is from some unknown person we have named Pseudo-Ephrem the Syrian. But I’m pretty sure he didn’t use the word “sewing.” A good copy editor should have caught this howler, but I’m afraid publishers don’t always use them these days.
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