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Hagarism

Harel13

Am Yisrael Chai
Staff member
Premium Member
I finished reading earlier today Patricia Crone and Michael Cook's "Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World" (1977 ed.). I admit I only skimmed the last section of the book and the first appendix. One of the previous owners of the book (which I had borrowed from the uni library) had some...colorful things to say about the writing in the margins and I was inclined to agree on occasion...

Anyway, the book presents Crone and Cook's theory that Islam did not start off the way it is traditionally thought to have started, i.e., Muhammad decided to create a religion, amassed some followers, they grew, they fought other Arab tribes, eventually becoming strong enough to conquer the Levant, though by that time Muhammad had already passed away. Crone and Cook state that this tradition evolved from efforts of the first Muslims to hide their "true" history, because that history became intangible and detrimental to their religious goals. What was the supposed true history?

Some Pre-Islamic Arabs were influenced by Jews that came to Arabia. Muhammad was the one most influenced by them and he spread the word: Ishmael and Israel are brethren and must join forces to reclaim their joint birthright: The Land of Israel. Jews and Arabs merged into twelve tribes and reenacted the Israelite conquest of the Land of Israel. Once conquered, the Muslims - then called Hagareans - were left with a dilemma: Having conquered the Land of Israel per the Abrahamic birthright, technically that meant they had to concede and hand over control to the Jews, who would then instate the Jewish messianic Davidic king and rebuild their Temple in Jerusalem. But they were not interested in doing that, because they wanted to carve out their own place in the world. So they split with the Jews, built Al Aqsa on the Temple Mount and began transforming their religion and their historic roots. They borrowed motifs from both the Christians and the Samaritans while preserving some grains of Judaism. They changed Muhammad's biography, including moving his death back by two years (prior to the conquest; originally Muhammad commanded the conquering forces from his HQ in Medina). In short, the conquest of Israel may be deemed as the Jewish-Muslim "parting of ways". The authors base their argument mostly on the relative few non-Muslim sources that describe the Arab conquest of the Levant, which describe things in manners significantly different from Muslim sources.

The book then proceeds to explain how the Islamic forces managed to assimilate culturally and religiously the rest of the Middle East. The entire book is written in a very cumbersome manner. They use very complicated language to explain things that could have been explained with much simpler words, and the second section of the book is even more difficult to follow than the first. A previous owner noted in the margins on occasion: גיבוב של שטויות - a hash of nonsense. Now, while I don't think everything is nonsense, I do agree that much circumlocution was used and that is unfortunate.

My thoughts on the theory: This is not the first time that I have come across a "The winners went back and methodically erased history and everything we know today is wrong" theory. My problem will always be: Nobody can actually tell me who these people were. What were their names? Were they Bob, Joe and Barry? Were they Ahmad, Muhammad and Mustafa? Who were the masterminds of such a successful, methodical, Illuminati-level plan to change history? Did they plan things out that described in these books or did they simply let life lead them wherever it wanted? I demand to see the minutes of the full reports of these master plans being implemented. I hope you catch my drift. Of course, no such minutes or reports exist. No scribe wrote everything everyone said or did. And nobody knows the names of the secret agents who stormed every literary archive and changed dates and names. Ultimately, it makes it convenient to present such theories, because they include many half-proofs and to anyone who disagrees, they will shout "PROVE IT DIDN'T HAPPEN LIKE THAT!" (and of course they can't, because the Egyptian or Perisan or Roman or Seleucid or Jewish or Muslim Illuminati changed everything and made sure that no one would be able to prove anything had ever been different).

Has anyone read the book? Any thoughts?
 
This is not the first time that I have come across a "The winners went back and methodically erased history and everything we know today is wrong" theory. My problem will always be: Nobody can actually tell me who these people were. What were their names? Were they Bob, Joe and Barry? Were they Ahmad, Muhammad and Mustafa? Who were the masterminds of such a successful, methodical, Illuminati-level plan to change history? Did they plan things out that described in these books or did they simply let life lead them wherever it wanted? I demand to see the minutes of the full reports of these master plans being implemented. I hope you catch my drift. Of course, no such minutes or reports exist. No scribe wrote everything everyone said or did. And nobody knows the names of the secret agents who stormed every literary archive and changed dates and names. Ultimately, it makes it convenient to present such theories, because they include many half-proofs and to anyone who disagrees, they will shout "PROVE IT DIDN'T HAPPEN LIKE THAT!" (and of course they can't, because the Egyptian or Perisan or Roman or Seleucid or Jewish or Muslim Illuminati changed everything and made sure that no one would be able to prove anything had ever been different).

It’s worth noting the authors no longer agree with their thesis. So, it’s not really held as tenable any more.

The main impact of the book was to popularise a more revisionist approach to Islamic history that see Islam more as an emergence from the Jewish/Christian world of the Late Antiquity near east.

Previously, most scholars had taken the Islamic narratives to be broadly true, the idea that Islam was born “in the full light of history“.

The problem is there are almost no Islamic sources from the first couple of centuries AH other than the Quran, a few inscriptions etc.
Also that what there is doesn’t always seem to match with what the Islamic narratives say, especially that it emerged in a highly pagan Arab culture (for example the Quran assumes audience familiarity with biblical narratives).

As such we need to look outside the Islamic traditions to build a better picture.

For example

*copy/pasted from an earlier post, link at end*


Early religious inscriptions mentioned God, but not Muhammed and used the term mu'minun rather than Muslim.

(There are early non-Islamic sources that mention Muhammed by name though, but they are not aware that the Arabs are 'Muslim' they use Saracen, Hagarene, etc. for the best part of a century after being conquered by 'Muslims')


Purely in terms of physical evidence, they called themselves believers (mu'minun). For example:

21425915ds.jpg



(It's Greek because Arabic wasn't adopted as the official language until Abd al-Malik's era)

  1. In the days of the servant of God Muʿāwiya (abdalla Maavia), the commander
  2. of the faithful (amēra almoumenēn) the hot baths of the
  3. people there were saved and rebuilt
  4. by ʿAbd Allāh son of Abū Hāshim (Abouasemou), the
  5. governor, on the fifth of the month of December,
  6. on the second day (of the week), in the 6th year of the indiction,
  7. in the year 726 of the colony, according to the Arabs (kata Arabas) the 42nd year,
  8. for the healing of the sick, under the care of Ioannes,
  9. the official of Gadara.
Interestingly, the person who made this inscription had time to carve a cross at the very beginning, but didn't see fit to carve Muhammed's name.

"But outside the Qurʾān, the word Islam, as a name of the religion, appears for the first time on the tombstone of a woman named ʿAbbāsa dated 71AH/ 691 CE.3 There, the Believers are called ahl al-islām. The first definitely datable evidence of the usage of the word muslimūn, in the sense of adherents of Islam, is from 123 Ah / 741 Ce,4 although it was prob- ably used widely even before that.5 Thus, the change from a “community of Believers to [a] community of Muslims”6 was a rather slow one, at least appellation- wise. Islam seems to have been a distinct religion from early on, but it took some decades, if not more, for its characteristics to become shaped."
(Muhājirūn as a Name for the First/ Seventh Century Muslims - Illka Lindstedt)


*copy paste ends*


So while most scholars think Hagarism went too far based on too little evidence the idea that Islam emerged as a movement (probably apocalyptic) within a Jewish/Christian context and only evolved as a separate, reified confessional identity over the following 100 years or so as a result of new realities is still widely held in some circles.
 

Jayhawker Soule

-- untitled --
Premium Member
So while most scholars think Hagarism went too far based on too little evidence the idea that Islam emerged as a movement (probably apocalyptic) within a Jewish/Christian context and only evolved as a separate, reified confessional identity over the following 100 years or so as a result of new realities is still widely held in some circles.
So is astrology. :)
 
No, challenging wild theories give rise to more fruitful fields of enquiry.

Both are true.

A wild theory can be based on overstating the case for something based on a methodologically innovate approach.

Often with revisionism, you have a stale orthodoxy which is shaken up by a new paradigm but one that usually over corrects the problems with the orthodoxy.

Over time the pendulum swings back and you reach a new synthesis of the orthodox and the innovative.

The innovative new approach is important in this process, even if it is largely incorrect.
 

Harel13

Am Yisrael Chai
Staff member
Premium Member
This article explains the book’s impact a bit if you are interested:

Scholars Are Quietly Offering New Theories of the Koran​


Thanks. I may read this, but I am more interested in hearing what other members of RF think about the book. I've read reviews in the past, both of this book and of the general school the authors come from, but that's not what interests me at the moment.
 

Jayhawker Soule

-- untitled --
Premium Member
I read that both a while ago and again recently, but I'm less interested in reviews at the moment. Have you read the book? Any thoughts on the theory in general?
"No" to both. Any thoughts I might have would be unformed primarily by the observation that ...

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. - H. L. Mencken
 
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