Didascalia Antonii

The Doctrina Jacobi nuper baptizati also Didaskalia has been assumed to incorporate the first hadith about the Prophet's teaching, although - in part, because - it does not name that prophet. It purports to date to the late 10s / 630s. It absolutely predates the Islamic conquest of Carthage, after which the Muslims redirected African commerce to their own Kairowan and Tunis.

I've had something of an intertext with Sean Anthony about this. When I first posted House of War I started by pointing attention to this document. Over that (2012) summer I learnt more about it, summarising my findings in the impressionistic appendix "The Keys To The Garden Are Swords"; mostly to get that aside off my main text. That is about when my book started taking off on Amazon. A few years later Anthony posted "Muḥammad, the Keys to Paradise, and the Doctrina Iacobi: A Late Antique Puzzle". This overlapped (and improved) so far on what I'd done that I seriously considered taking my essay off the 2014/15 editions; eventually I refocused that essay - giving Anthony due credit for his work, which was a lot of work. He hadn't credited me because, why should he; he probably hadn't even read my book, and anyway there was little in it that his essay needed.

So here we are in 2020, with another philological aside. Here Anthony argues his case better. He would shift the Doctrina later than most would: to Mu'awiya's adventures in the Aegean [early] 50s / 670s. Before the Greek Fire and the Zubayrid interregnum, the Med looked to become an Arab lake. Certainly a lot of maqâlid talk about the Garden was being floated about under Mu'awiya, not so easily tracked before him.

House of War is about... the House, whether it was going to be Temple or Ka'ba, Syria or Hijaz. Its argument would work about the same whenever you post the Doctrina, as long as it precedes the Zubayrid Fitna. So Anthony's latest is not forcing me to update my book. I will, however, report to anyone else that his argument is cogent and needs taking seriously.