Status quaestionis

Alan Mikhail has done what Mark Cohen couldn't, which is to turn me back onto the study of early Islam. I've become more pro-Islamic than not over the past two years. Cohen's work, tho' imperfect, was a nuanced view of Islam's treatment of the resident alien that made its case. Not so Mikhail's. In me there's something Irish (or Glaswegian) that, when I ken ye lyin' to me face, I'm up to set about ye. Santa got me Tron Honto's Muhammad and the Empires of Faith yesterday. I am reading it now.

Sean Anthony (the book's actual byline; I've just always enjoyed his old Amazon-reviewer sock) here starts with a summary of the consensus. This consensus is the IQSA consensus: it is Nicolai Sinai and, behind Sinai, Angelika Neuwirth. This holds that the Quran is Muhammadan, and that it can be sequenced through internal evidence. That sequence claims not to be the Theodor Nöldeke sequence. I agree with the second half of this axiom; have done since 2002 before I'd even heard of Sinai and Neuwirth. (I was working from E E Elder, Mingana, and Margoliouth at that time.) A synoptic solution of the suwar is BADLY overdue. The first half of the Neuwirth-Sinai consensus begs the question.

Anthony won't beg this question so aims to prove it, in his first chapter. He first sketches out that many Arabs believed that Muhammad existed and that some "hijra" event happened as of the first decades in that calendar. I scent a subtle critique of Robert Spencer here - a researcher in bad odour in IQSA, and one set to release another edition. I agree with most of that, against Spencer; although I recall that questions remain over - for instance - the Zuhayr / 'Umar graffito. I also agree that the argument for Muhammadan historicity still needs to be made; precisely because Spencer is still out there, and has followers, and isn't necessarily a worse scholar than (say) Nigel Tilman on the other side.

I still don't know that Muhammad can be credited with the bulk of the Qurân. This credit is IQSA consensus but it hasn't been argued. So Anthony doesn't argue properly here. He just runs a lot of footnotes, classic argument-by-authority.

Allow my counter: post-Muhammadan graffiti paralleling the Qurân are not quoting Muhammad; they are citing God. That is: they're citing the qurrâ. These were the Arabic-speaking men charged with preserving and disseminating the Celestial oracles. Some were not above forging their own "revelations". In fact, some might have held themselves out as prophets in their own right or near-enough. Much like the caliphs would do.

I remain, therefore, in my position that we shouldn't read the Qurân outside the context of the first-century AH qurrâ. Further I hold that Anthony would have been better advised to hold off on arguing Muhammad's existence at all, or at least to save that for appendix. His book needs to concentrate on Umayyad / Zubayrid memory. Perhaps a postmodern approach but this first chapter is already hinting in that direction.