Did Muhammad Exist?: An Inquiry into Islam's Obscure Origins (39 page)

2
Ibid., book 65, no. 4784.

3
Powers,
Muhammad Is Not the Father
, 159.

4
Muhammad ibn Jarir at-Tabari,
The History of al-Tabari
, vol. 17, “The First Civil War,” trans. G. R. Hawting (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 29.

5
Ibid., 34.

6
Ibid., 37.

7
Ibid., 78.

8
Ibid., 79.

9
Ibid., 79.

10
Ibid., 81.

11
Ibid., 82.

12
Ibid., 85–86.

13
See Small,
Textual Criticism
, 15–27, for useful summary descriptions of some of the principal early Qur'anic manuscripts.

14
Lester, “What Is the Koran?”

15
Gilchrist,
Jam' Al-Qur'an.

16
François Déroche,
La transmission écrite du Coran dans les débuts de l'islam: Le codex Parisino-petropolitanus
(Leiden: Brill, 2009), is a fascinating study of an early Qur'anic manuscript, Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF) Arabe 328, which he combines with other manuscripts that he establishes came from the same original, consisting of sections of suras 2 through 72. Déroche contends that this manuscript, which does not contain most diacritical marks, dates from between 670 and 720. The scholar Andrew Rippin, in reviewing Déroche's book, notes: “To Déroche, the evidence of the manuscript suggests that the account of the ‘Uthmanic collection and production of a master set of manuscripts to be distributed across the new empire simply cannot be historically accurate. The purported goal of ‘Uthman could not have been accomplished, given the realities of the orthography available at the time; the variants found in this copy of the text suggest that a unified text was also not achieved that early.” See Andrew Rippin's book review, “La Transmission écrite du Coran dans les débuts de l'islam: Le Codex Parisino-petropolitanus (Book review),”
Journal of the American Oriental Society
129:4 (2009), 706(3). See also Small,
Textual Criticism
, 21.

17
Arthur Jeffery, “A Variant Text of the Fatiha,” in Ibn Warraq,
The Origins of the Koran
, 145–46.

18
Jeffery, “Variant Text,” 146–47.

19
Ibn Warraq,
Virgins?
, 221.

20
Ibid., 222.

21
Ibid., 223.

22
Ibid., 219.

23
Ibid., 220.

24
Ibid., 223.

25
Monk of Beth Hale,
Disputation
, fol. 4b (quoted in Hoyland,
Seeing Islam
, 471). There were two monasteries of Beth Hale, one in northern Iraq and the other in Arabia; it is not known in which one this monk lived.

26
Prémare, “‘Abd al-Malik b. Marwan,” 207.

27
Mingana, “The Transmission of the Koran,” 102–3.

28
Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani,
Tahdhib al-Tahdhib
, vol. 4 (Beyrouth: Dar al-Fikr, 1984–85), 195–97n386 (quoted in Prémare, “‘Abd al-Malik b. Marwan,” 206).

29
Ali Ibn Asakir,
Tarikh madinat Dimashq
, ed. Muhibb al-Din Umar al-Amrawi, vol. 12 (Beyrouth: Dar al-Fikr, 1995–2000), 116; Ibn Hajar,
Tahdhib al-Tahdhib
, 5:303–5n600 (quoted in Prémare, “‘Abd al-Malik b. Marwan,” 209).

30
Powers,
Muhammad Is Not the Father
, 160.

31
Ahmad Al-Baladhuri,
Ansab al-ashraf
, ed. Muhammad al-Yalawi, vol. 7 (Beyrouth: Biblioteca Islamica, 2002), 2, 300–301; Ibn Asakir,
Tarikh madinat Dimashq
, 12:159–60 (quoted in Prémare, “‘Abd al-Malik b. Marwan,” 208).

32
Ibn Asakir,
Tarikh madinat Dimashq
, 12:160 (quoted in Prémare, “‘Abd al-Malik b. Marwan,” 209).

33
Crone and Hinds,
God's Caliph
, 28.

34
Ali Al-Samhudi,
Wafa al-Wafa bi-akhbar dar al-Mustafa
, ed. Muhammad Muhyi I-Din Abd al-Hamid, vol. 2 (Cairo, 1955; reprinted Beyrouth: Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyya, 1984), 667–69 (quoted in Prémare, “‘Abd al-Malik b. Mar-wan,” 205).

35
Umar Ibn Shabba,
Tarikh al-Madina al-munawwara
, ed. Fahim Muhammad Shaltut, vol. 1 (Mecca, 1979), 7 (quoted in Prémare, “‘Abd al-Malik b. Marwan,” 204).

36
Abu Bakr Ibn Abi Da'ud al-Sijistani,
Kitab al-masahif
, ed. Arthur Jeffery (Cairo: al-Matbaa al-Rahmaniyya, 1936), 35:18–19, 49–50 (quoted in Powers,
Muhammad Is Not the Father
, 161).

37
Prémare, “‘Abd al-Malik b. Marwan,” 204.

38
Hoyland,
Seeing Islam
, 490–91.

39
Leo-Umar,
Letter
(Armenian), 292, 297–98, from Arthur Jeffery, “Ghevond's Text of the Correspondence between Umar II and Leo III,”
Harvard Theological Review
37 (1944): 269–322 (quoted in Hoyland,
Seeing Islam
, 500–501).

40
Mingana, “The Transmission of the Koran,” 109.

41
The Apology of al-Kindy Written at the Court of al-Mamun, circa
A.D
. 830
(quoted in Mingana, “The Transmission of the Koran,” 109).

42
Ibid.

Chapter 10: Making Sense of It All

1
See Crone and Cook,
Hagarism;
Donner,
Muhammad and the Believers.

2
See Philip K. Hitti,
The Arabs: A Short History
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1943; revised edition Washington, DC: Regnery, 1970), 57–58. Hitti reflects commonly held views that the Byzantines and Persians had exhausted themselves fighting each other and that the people in the Byzantine domains that the Arabs conquered welcomed the invaders, because the tribute they charged was lower. See also Nevo and Koren,
Crossroads to Islam
, 93–94.

3
It appears the Arabs did encounter considerable resistance from the captive peoples. Recall the testimony
of the Patriarch Sophronius to the brutality of the conquerors and the misery of the conquered, recounted in
chapter 1
of this book. Also, the pioneering historian Bat Ye'or notes a hadith in which the caliph Umar asked one of his subordinates, “Do you think that these vast countries, Syria, Mesopotamia, Kufa, Basra, Misr [Egypt] do not have to be covered with troops who must be well paid?” This statement could be a surviving testimony to an occupation that was not as placid as it is often made out to have been. See Abu Yusuf Ya'qub,
Le Livre de l'impôt foncier (Kitâb el-Kharâdj)
, trans. Edmond Fagnan (Paris: Paul Guethner, 1921) (quoted in Bat Ye'or,
The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude
[Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996], 274).

4
Popp, “The Early History of Islam,” 18–19.

5
For more on this, see the pioneering study by Crone and Cook,
Hagarism.

6
See Donner,
Muhammad and the Believers.

There is a great deal more that can be said, and has been said, about the origins of Islam and the Qur'an, and the historicity of Muhammad. In writing this book I have relied chiefly on these sources, and they in turn can lead the interested reader to numerous fruitful new avenues of inquiry.

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Edinburgh: University Press, 1958.

Berg, Herbert.
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Berkey, Jonathan P.
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New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Burton, John.
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Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.

Crone, Patricia.
Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987.

Crone, Patricia, and Michael Cook.
Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World.
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Crone, Patricia, and Martin Hinds.
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Donner, Fred M.
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Second edition. London: Routledge, 1999.

———
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Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Hoyland, Robert G.
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———,ed.
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———.
Virgins? What Virgins? And Other Essays.
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———, ed.
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Margoliouth, David S.
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Nevo, Yehuda D., and Judith Koren.
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Powers, David S.
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Reynolds, Gabriel Said.
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———, ed.
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Sawma, Gabriel.
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Small, Keith E.
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