Revisionist school of Islamic studies

Short description: Movement in Islamic studies

The revisionist school of Islamic studies (also critical school of Islamic studies and critical historians of Islam)[1] is a movement in Islamic studies[2][3][4] that questions traditional Muslim narratives of Islam's origins.[5][6]

In the early 1970s some non-Muslim Islamic scholars[7] (now often called "revisionists") began to question the traditional/conventional account of the rise of Islam. This origin story was subscribed to not only by the Islamic world but by most non-Muslim Islamic scholars,[8][6] who accepted it "in most of its details",[9] (excluding elements involving divine intervention)[10] and accepted the reliability of it's traditional literary sources.

However, these "revisionist" scholars (such as John Wansbrough and his students Andrew Rippin, Norman Calder, G. R. Hawting, Patricia Crone and Michael Cook; as well as Fred Donner, Günter Lüling, Yehuda D. Nevo and Christoph Luxenberg;[11] popular historian Tom Holland,[12][13] and ex-Muslim Ibn Warraq; who all drew on the earlier work of Ignác Goldziher and Joseph Schacht), questioned the reliability of the basis of the traditional account, i.e. Muslim "literary sources",[14] written 150 to 250 years after Muhammad and (the new scholars argued) subject to biases of and embellishments by the authors and transmitters.[15] Instead they proposed employing a "source-critical" approach to these literary sources -- which included traditional commentaries on the Quran (tafsir),[16] oral accounts passed down of what the Islamic prophet Muhammad said, did, approved of or didn't (hadith), and traditional biography of the prophet (sira) -- and including as relevant evidence archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics and contemporary non-Arabic literature,[14] that they argued provided "hard facts" and an ability to crosscheck.[15]

Revisionist theories are "by no means monolithic", but they do share some "methodological premises":[17] and theories:[18][19] namely that Muhammad did not come from Mecca and the belief that he did is an invented tradition from decades after his death; that the relationship between Muhammad and Jews and Christians may have originally been much less adversarial than traditionally described; that what we know of as Islam (its basic principles)[lower-alpha 1] was formed not during the ten years of Muhammad's mission (622-632 CE) before the 7th century Arab invasion of Byzantine and Persian empires; but over a longer period including Muhammad's mission, Rashidun caliphs and the Umayyad Caliphs; that the religious, political, cultural break between the civilizations of Persia and Byzantium, and the new 7th century Arab empire, was not as abrupt as the traditional history describes.[lower-alpha 2] Issues not agreed on include the historicity of Muhammad and questions on the Quran such as when did it first appear, how was it written, how was it transmitted from from one generation to another in its early years?[lower-alpha 3]

## Contents

* 1 Main theses
* 1.1 Questions about using traditional religious narratives as historical sources
* 1.1.1 Religious purpose
* 1.1.2 Late dates
* 1.1.3 Contradictions, confusions, inconsistencies
* 1.1.4 Falsified historical accounts
* 1.1.5 Textual integrity of the Quran
* 1.2 Nature of early Islam
* 1.2.1 Consolidation of religious authority
* 1.2.2 Expansion of Islam
* 1.2.3 Reshaped identity of early Islam
* 1.2.4 Influence of conquered peoples
* 2 Origins and methodology
* 2.1 Postwar scholarship
* 2.2 Studies of hadith
* 2.3 Extension of hadith-arguments
* 3 Major representatives
* 4 Publications
* 4.1 Scholarly
* 4.1.1 Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World (1977)
* 4.1.2 Patricia Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (1987)
* 4.1.3 Hans Jansen, De Historische Mohammed (2005/2007)
* 4.2 Non-scholarly
* 5 Heyday of the revisionist school
* 6 Criticism of revisionism
* 7 See also
* 8 Notes
* 9 References
* 9.1 Bibliography
* 10 Further reading

## Main theses

Numismatic evidences; Sasanid-style coins of early Islamic period (Pahlavi scripts, crescent-star, fire altar, depictions of Khosrow II, bismillāh in margin). Unlike known historical figures such as Ibn Zubayr and Mu'awiya I, there are no coins minted in the names of caliphs titled Rashidun that could be evidence of official dominancy.[22]

Revisionists suggest that the events in early Islamic times have to be newly researched and reconstructed with the help of the historical-critical/source critical method (the process of evaluating the validity, reliability, relevance, etc., of a source, to the subject under investigation).

### Questions about using traditional religious narratives as historical sources

Revisionists consider the Quran, hadith and other religious sources unreliable for a number of reasons:

#### Religious purpose

Their purpose is to strengthen religious faith, not to investigate and find out what actually happened.[23] Traditions of early Islamic military campaigns, for example, do not describe things like planning, tactics and weaponry, troop strength, layout, or movement, but rather tell stories of "past glories and heroic exploits" to encourage the troops.[23] The literature sometimes include supernatural elements, such as sira author Ibn Ishaq telling of hosts of angels coming to the aid of Muhammad at the Battle of Badr.[24]

#### Late dates

In the words of revisionist G.R. Hawting,

> We have no biography of Muhammad, no commentary on the Quran, no law book, no collection of Hadiths, no history of early Islam, etc. which can be said to predate, in the form in which we have it, [lower-alpha 4] the beginning of the third Islamic century."[25]

Oral and written transmission over generations subjects literature to distortion both intentional and unintentional.[26] Most Islamic literature was said to be passed down orally for generations before being committed to writing. Oral history may distort the original account unintentionally (as in the children's game "Chinese whispers"), or intentionally tell readers what they thought happened or wanted to believe happened, instead of what the transmitter actually heard or saw, (for example, substituting "Muhammad" for "The Prophet"—since the copyist "knows" The Prophet is Muhammad),[27]

#### Contradictions, confusions, inconsistencies

Non-Islamic testimonies about Muhammad's life describe him as the leader of the Saracens,[28] believed to be descendants of Ishmael, lived in the northern regions; Arabia Petrae and Arabia Deserta.

The literature contains "contradictions, confusions, inconsistencies",[29] (some examples being: Meccans first traded with foreigners who came to Mecca but stopped in the pre-Islam past; contradicted by another story of Arabs stopping trade after Islam triumphed to have more time to pray. The Meccans went to Syria every summer and winter; contradicted by Meccans going to Syria in one season and to Yemen the next).[30] Examining Sira, revisionist scholar Patricia Crone found a pattern, where the farther a commentary was removed in time from the life of Muhammad and the events in the Quran, the more information it provided, despite the fact it depended on the earlier sources for its content. Crone attributed this phenomenon to storytellers' embellishment.

> If one storyteller should happen to mention a raid, the next storyteller would know the date of this raid, while the third would know everything that an audience might wish to hear about.[31][32]

An example was the oldest prophetic biography, that of Ibn Ishaq (died 767), which was much smaller than the commentary of Al-Waqidi (d.823), despite the fact that Waqidi's later works covered a shorter periods of time (only Muhammad's period in Medina).[31]

> Waqidi will always give precise dates, locations, names, where Ibn Ishaq has none, accounts of what triggered the expedition, miscellaneous information to lend color to the event

#### Falsified historical accounts

Orthodox Muslims, including compilers of the accounts (in particular hadith), agree the original sources contained many falsified historical accounts, but maintain that the science of hadith has determined their accuracy. Revisionists dispute this.[33] One concern is that rather than decreasing in number over time as they were lost or forgotten, the number of hadith increased, a red flag that fabrications must have been added. Patricia Crone argues that it's not possible to find a "core" of authentic hadith because we do not know when the fabrication of them started.

> Bukhari [810–870 CE] is said to have examined a total of 600,000 traditions attributed to the Prophet; he preserved some 7000 (including repetitions), or in other words dismissed some 593,000 as inauthentic. If Ibn Hanbal [780–855 CE] examined a similar number of traditions, he must have rejected about 5700, his collection containing some 30,000 (again including repetitions). Of Ibn Hanbal's traditions, 1,710 (including repetitions) are transmitted by the companion Abd Allah ibn Abbas [619–687 CE]. Yet less than fifty years earlier one scholar had estimated that Ibn Abbas had only heard nine traditions from the Prophet, while another thought that the correct figure might be ten. If Ibn Abbas had heard ten traditions from the Prophet in the years around 800, but over a thousand by about 850 CE, how many had he heard in 700 or 632? Even if we accept that ten of Ibn Abbas' traditions are authentic, how do we identify them in the pool of 1,710?[33][34]

In their study of the traditional Islamic accounts of early conquest (known as khabar rather than hadith), historians Albrecht Noth and Lawrence Conrad found the conquests of several key cities -- Damascus and Caesarea in Syria, Babilyn/al-Fusat and Alexandria in Egypt, Tustar in Khuzistan and Cordoba in Spain -- "are all described" as having been conquered by Muslims "in precisely" the same way. There is a

> "traitor who, ... points out a weak spot in the city's fortification to the Muslim besiegers; a celebration in the city which diverts the attention of the besieged; then a few assault troops who scale the walls, ... a shout of 'Allahu akbar!' ... from the assault troops as a sign that they have entered the town; the opening of one of the gates from inside, and the onslaught of the entire army."[35]

Revisionists found this unlikely, and in one instance of where an Islamic account could be compared with that of a non-Muslim (the conquest of the island of Arwad, 3 km off the Syrian coast, in 29 A.H/650 CE, chronicled by Theophilus of Edessa), the two differed to an "extraordinary extent" and were "irreconcilable".[35][36]

#### Textual integrity of the Quran

* The Quranic text in use today shows many differences to the earliest existing manuscripts. A core part of the Quran may derive from Muhammad's annunciations, yet some parts of the Quran were definitively added later or were reworked later. In addition, many small deviations came into the text, as with other ancient texts that were manually copied and copied again.[37]
* The existence and significance of Muhammad as a historical person depends especially on the question whether any or, if so, how many, parts of the Quran can be attributed to his time or whether all or most parts of the Quran came into being only after Muhammad's time. The researchers' opinions differ over that question.[38] Fred Donner suggests an early date for the Quran.[39] (That thesis has been abandoned by many in the 21st century because of studies and dating of early manuscripts.[40] Tom Holland states that "the evidence seems to suggest" that the contemporary standard Quran "was uttered by Muhammad in the period that Muslim tradition has insisted that he lived".)[41]
* The Quran is not written in a "pure" Arabic, as the Syriac language seems to have had a certain influence on the language of the Quran that was forgotten later. That could provide a possible explanation of why something like one fifth of the Quranic text is difficult to understand,[42][43] (according to Gerd R. Puin).[4]

### Nature of early Islam

A "Pseudo-Byzantine" coin with depictions of the Byzantine Emperor Constans II holding the cross-tipped staff and globus cruciger. There was no specific Islamic-religious identity and political stance with sharp boundaries in the early Islamic period.[44]

From the study of alternative primary sources from the surrounding milieus, revisionists argue that Islam started as a monotheistic movement that included Arabs and Jews alike. The movement arose not in Mecca and Medina, but hundreds of km to the north, at the northern fringe of the Arabian peninsula, close to the Byzantine and Persian Empires. The change of the qibla, the direction of prayer, from Jerusalem to Mecca may be an echo of this earlier movement. A group of researchers rejected the historical existence of Muhammad and stated that his biography dealt not with an historical figure, but with a legendary one[lower-alpha 5][45] (comparable to the debates about the historicity of Jesus or of Moses).[46] According to Volker Popp, "Ali" and "Muhammad" were not names, but titles of these figures.[lower-alpha 6]

The revisionists view the initial "Islamic expansion" as a secular Arab expansion; only after the ascension of the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750 CE) was an exclusive Arabian Islamic identity shaped, shifting the origin narrative to the Arabian peninsula. In broader outline the revisionists argue that:

* Islam did not rise among polytheistic pagans in Mecca but in a milieu in which Jewish and Christian texts were well known. The "infidels" were not pagan polytheists but monotheists who were polemically considered to deviate slightly from monotheism.[49][50]
* The connection between Muslims and Jews was very close in the early times of Islam. Jews too were called "believers" and were part of the ummah. Anti-Jewish texts such as the account of the slaughter in 5 AH of the Jewish Banu Qurayza tribe came into being long after Muhammad when Islam had separated from Judaism.[51]

#### Consolidation of religious authority

* In the beginning, secular and spiritual power were united in the person of the caliph. There were no special religious scholars. Religious scholars came into being only later and wrested the spiritual power from the caliphs.[52]

#### Expansion of Islam

* The Islamic expansion was probably not an Islamic religiously-motivated expansion but a secular Arab expansion. The expansion did not initially result in oppression of the non-Muslim population.[53]

#### Reshaped identity of early Islam

* After Muhammad, at least two phases were of major importance for the formation of Islam in its later shape:
* The Umayyad Caliphate (661–750 CE), especially under Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (647–705, r. 685–705), shaped the Islamic narrative, creating an exclusive Arabian Islamic identity.[54] Under the fifth Umayyad caliph, Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem was built. There the word "Islam" appears for the first time. Until this moment the Muslims called themselves simply "believers", and the Arab empire minted coins showing Christian symbols. Abd al-Malik also plays a major role in the reworking of the Quranic text.[55]
* During the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258) practically all Islamic traditional texts about Islam's beginnings were written. The Abbasids, having overthrown the Umayyads, had great interest in legitimizing their rule. This motivation can be seen in the traditional texts.[56]

#### Influence of conquered peoples

Gold dinar minted by the Umayyads in 695, which likely depicts Abd al-Malik.[lower-alpha 7] The historian Robert Hoyland, however, argues that this may be a near-contemporary depiction of the prophet Muhammad.[58]

* Patricia Crone argues that Sharia was founded not on traditions of Muhammad, rasul allah, the messenger of God, but on the law "of the Near East as it had developed under Alexander. The Muslims sifted and systematized this law in the name of God, imprinting it with their own image in the process."[59] This provincial law that "the Umayyad caliphate in general and Muawiya in particular" employed, became what we now call sharia after a "long period of adjustments by the ulama."[60]
* Robert G. Hoyland also argues that if the basis for sharia was the doings and sayings of Muhammad, as mainstream Islam maintains, they must have been carefully noted and carefully transmitted to later ulama by the early salaf generation. However, that doctrine is belied by quotes of salaf Islamic scholars who specifically deny common use of hadith of Muhammad:
* "I spent a year sitting with Abdullah ibn Umar [d. 693 CE, son of the second Caliph] and I did not hear him transmit anything from the prophet";[61][62]
* "I never heard Jabir ibn Zayd (d. c. 720) say 'the prophet said ...' and yet the young men round here are saying it twenty times an hour".[63][62]
* According to Tom Holland, the conquering Arab warriors were overwhelmingly illiterate, and the early Ulama (the class of guardians, transmitters, and interpreters of religious knowledge in Islam) consisted overwhelmingly of conquered peoples (Zoroastrians and Jews), who had a strong scholarly tradition before converting to Islam.[64]

## Origins and methodology

The influence of the different tendencies in the study of Islam in the West has waxed and waned. Ibn Warraq believes "the rise of this revisionist school" may be dated from the Fifth Colloquium of the Near Eastern History Group of Oxford University in July 1975,[21] and Robert Hoyland believes that revisionists were ascendant in the 1970s and 1980s.[1]

Until the early 1970s,[7] non-Muslim Islamic scholars, while not accepting accounts of divine intervention, accepted its origin story[10] "in most of its details",[9] and the reliability of tafsir (commentaries on the Quran),[16] hadith (accounts of what the Islamic prophet Muhammad approved or disapproved of), and sira (biography of the prophet). Revisionists instead use a "source-critical" approach to literature and study relevant archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics, and contemporary non-Arabic literature.[14] They believe that those methodologies provide "hard facts" and an ability to crosscheck, whereas traditional Islamic accounts, written 150 to 200 years after Muhammad, are/were subject to biases of and embellishments by the authors and transmitters.[15]

### Postwar scholarship

From World War II to sometime around the mid-1970s, there was what the scholar Charles Adams describes as "a distinctive movement in the West, represented in both religious circles and the universities, whose purpose" was to show both a "greater appreciation of Islamic religiousness" and to foster "a new attitude toward it"[lower-alpha 8] and in doing so make "restitution for the sins of unsympathetic, hostile, or interested approaches that have plagued the [pre-World War II] tradition of Western Orientalism."[66] Herbert Berg gives Wilfred Cantwell Smith and W. Montgomery Watt as examples of proponents of this "irenic" approach to Islamic history,[67] and notes that the approach necessarily clashed with the questions and potential answers of revisionists since these clashed with Islamic doctrine.

### Studies of hadith

The revisionist school has been said to be based on the study of hadith literature by Islamic scholars Ignác Goldziher (1850–1921) and Joseph Schacht (1902–1969), who argued that the traditional Islamic accounts about Islam's early times, written 150 to 250 years after Muhammad, cannot be relied on as historical sources.[68] Goldziher argued, in the words of R.S. Humphreys, "that a vast number of hadith accepted even in the most rigorously critical Muslim collections were outright forgeries from the late 8th and 9th centuries—and as a consequence, that the meticulous isnads which supported them were utterly fictitious."[69]

Schacht argued Islamic law was not passed down without deviation from Muhammad but "developed... out of popular and administrative practice under the Umayyads, and this practice often diverged from the intentions and even the explicit wording of the Koran... norms derived from the Koran were introduced into Muhammadan law almost invariably at a secondary stage."[70][71]

### Extension of hadith-arguments

The revisionists extended that argument beyond hadith to other facets of Islamic literature: sira, Muhammad's biography; the history of the Quran's formation; and the historical developments under the first Islamic dynasty, the Umayyad Caliphate. Revisionists believe that the true historical events in the earliest times of Islam must be newly researched and reconstructed by applying the historical-critical method,[4] or alternately, in the words of Cook and Crone, historians must "step outside the Islamic tradition altogether and start again."[72] That requires using the

1. "source-critical approach to both the Koran and the Muslim literary accounts of the rise of Islam, the Conquest and the Umayyad period";[73]
2. comparing traditional accounts with
1. accounts from the seventh and eighth century CE that are external to the Muslim tradition;[73]
2. archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics[14] from the seventh and eighth century CE—sources which should be preferred when there is a conflict with Muslim literary sources.[73]

Revisionists believe that the results of those methods indicates that among other things, the break between the religion, governance, and culture of the pre-Islamic Persian and Byzantine civilization and those of the 7th-century Arab conquerors was not as abrupt as the traditional history describes, an idea advanced in the statement of the Fifth Colloquium of the Near Eastern History Group of Oxford University. Colloquium organizers argued that if "we begin by assuming that there must have been some continuity, we need either go beyond the Islamic sources or... reinterpret them."[21]

## Major representatives

Among the "foremost" proponents of revisionism are John Wansbrough (1928–2002), Patricia Crone (1945–2015), Michael Cook, Yehuda D. Nevo (1932–1992), and Fred M. Donner.[68] The new movement originated at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London with the publications of two works by Wansbrough: Quranic Studies (1977) and The Sectarian Milieu (1978). Andrew Rippin (1950–2016), Norman Calder, G. R. Hawting, Patricia Crone and Michael Cook were students of Wansbrough. In 1977 Crone and Cook published Hagarism, which postulated, among other things, that Islam was established after, not before, the Arab conquests and that Mecca was not the original Islamic sanctuary.[4] Later, both distanced themselves from the theses of Hagarism as too far-reaching but continued to "challenge both Muslim and Western orthodox views of Islamic history."[4] Martin Hinds (1941–1988),[74] also studied at SOAS and Robert G. Hoyland was a student of Patricia Crone.[75]

In Germany at the Saarland University, Günter Lüling (1928–2014) and Gerd-Rüdiger Puin focused on the historical-critical research of the development of the Quran starting in the 1970s, and in the 2000s, Karl-Heinz Ohlig, Volker Popp, Christoph Luxenberg and Markus Groß argued that Muhammad was a legendary, not historical, figure. Hans Jansen from the Netherlands published a work in 2005/7 arguing in detail why he assumed that known accounts of Muhammad's life were legendary. Yehuda D. Nevo also questioned the historicity of Muhammad.[lower-alpha 9] Sven Kalisch, a convert to Islam, taught Islamic theology before he left the faith in 2008[45] and questioned the historicity of Mohammad (as well as those of Jesus and Moses).[46][lower-alpha 10]

James A. Bellamy has done textual criticism of the Quran and his proposed "emendations," or corrections, of the traditional text of the Quran. Fred Donner, in his several books on early Islamic history, argued that it was only during the reign Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (685–705) that the early ecumenical monotheism of the Arab conquerors began to separate from Christians and Jews.

The popular historian Tom Holland's work In the Shadow of the Sword (2012)[76][13] popularized the new research results and depicted a possible synthesis of the various revisionist approaches.

## Publications

### Scholarly

#### Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World (1977)

In Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World, Patricia Crone and Michael Cook set aside traditional Islamic history to draw on archaeological evidence and contemporary documents in Arabic, Armenian, Coptic, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin and Syriac. They depict a 7th-century Arab conquest of Byzantine and Persian lands that is not yet "Islamic."[77] According to various sources the conquered people (Greek Magaritai, Syriac Mahgre or Mahgraye) call their conquerors "Hagarenes," rather than Muslims. Instead of being inspired to conquest by a new prophet, holy book, and religion, the Arabs are described as being in alliance with the Jews by following a Jewish messianism to reclaim the Promised Land from the Byzantine Empire. The Qur'an came later, according to the authors, as a product of 8th-century edits of various materials drawn from a variety of Judeo-Christian and Middle-Eastern sources, and Muhammad was the herald of Umar, "the redeemer," a Judaic messiah.[78]

#### Patricia Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (1987)

In Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam, Patricia Crone argues that Mecca could not have been a hub of overland trade from Southern Arabia to Syria during the time of Muhammad,[79] for several reasons. It was not on the overland trade route from Southern Arabia to Syria,[79] and even if it had been, that land route was not very important compared to the maritime trade route[79] and had ceased to be used by the end of the 2nd century CE.[80] Meccan trade, except for Yemeni perfume, was mainly in cheap leather goods and clothing and occasionally in basic foodstuffs,[81] which were not exported north to Syria, which already had plenty of them, but to nearby regions.[82] Furthermore, the literature of Arab trading partners who kept track of Arab affairs (Greek, Latin, Syriac, Aramaic, and Coptic) makes no mention "of Quraysh (the tribe of Muhammad) and their trading center Mecca."[83] All of that suggests traditional "histories" passed down about Muhammad's life as a Meccan merchant traveling far and wide and suffering at the hands of powerful Meccan tribes are "pure fabrications"[84] and that it is far more likely Muhammad's career took place not in Mecca and Medina or in Southwestern Arabia at all but in Northwestern Arabia.

#### Hans Jansen, De Historische Mohammed (2005/2007)

The arguments against the plausibility of the classical Islamic traditions about Islam's beginnings were summarized by Hans Jansen in his work De Historische Mohammed. Jansen points out that the cryptic nature of the Quran, which usually alludes to events, rather than describing them, and seldom describes the situation for which a revelation was made causes the historically questionable traditions to be very important to interpret and understand the Quran. Many Islamic traditions came into being long after Muhammad on the basis of mere guesses for what situation a Quranic verse had been revealed. Because of those historically-questionable traditions, the interpretation of the Quran has been restricted ever since.

### Non-scholarly

Ibn Warraq, an author known for his criticism of Islam, compiled several revisionist essays in his book The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. Fred Donner, reviewing the book, noted that by favoring Wansbrough's school of revisionism, the author presents a "one-sided selection," which fails to consider the challenges to that line of revisionism. The result is "a book that is likely to mislead many an unwary general reader."[85]

Robert B. Spencer, a notable critic of Islam, wrote a popular work on Islamic revisionist studies titled Did Muhammad Exist?.

## Heyday of the revisionist school

Hoyland, who seeks to compromise between revisionism and traditionalism, believes the "heyday" of revisionism occurred sometime before the 1980s, when the "public profile of Islam" increased "massively," and, Hoyland argues, the "left-leaning" tendency of Western academics "shy" of criticizing Islam and "favored the traditionalist approach," while "pushing skeptics/revisionists to become more extreme."[1]

The designation revisionism was coined first by the opponents of the new academic movement and is still used by them partially with a less than positive connotation.[86][87] Then, the media took up that designation to call the new movement with a concise catchword.[88] Today, the adherents of the new movement also use Revisionism to designate themselves, but it mostly written in quotation marks and with a slightly self-mocking undertone.[89]

## Criticism of revisionism

The consequent historical-critical analysis of early Islam met severe resistance in the beginning since theses with far-reaching meaning were published. Especially Patricia Crone's and Michael Cook's book Hagarism (1977) stirred up a lot of harsh criticism. Important representatives of Revisionism like Crone and Cook meanwhile distanced themselves from such radical theses.[90]

Criticism is expressed by researchers like Tilman Nagel, who aims at the speculative nature of some theses and shows that some revisionists lack some scholarly standards. On the other hand, Nagel accepts the basic impulse of the new movement to put more emphasis on the application of the historical-critical method.[91] A certain tendency to take revisionists seriously becomes obvious such as by the fact that opponents address their criticism not any longer to "revisionism" alone but to "extreme revisionism" or "ultra-revisionism."[92]

Gregor Schoeler discusses the revisionist school and depicts the early controversies. Schoeler considers revisionism to be too radical, but he welcomes the general impulse: "To have made us thinking about this all and much more remarkable things for the first time—or again, is without any doubt a merit of the new generation of the 'skeptics'."[93]

François de Blois, who is Teaching Fellow at the Department of the Study of Religions at SOAS, London, rejects the application of the historical-critical method to Islamic texts. He argues that method was developed with Christian texts in mind and thus, although it has been accepted as sound to be applied universally to any text, religious or not, there is no reason to apply the method to Islamic texts.[94]

## See also

* Historicity of Muhammad
* Historiography of early Islam
* History of the Quran
* Narratives of Islamic Origins
* Nabataeans

## Notes

1. ↑ for example: many believe scripture says Islam was "completed" just before the death of Muhammad. "... [The] Prophet completed his Final Sermon, and upon it, ... the revelation came down: '…This day have I perfected your religion for you, completed My Grace upon you, and have chosen Islam for you as your religion…' (Quran 5:3)"[20]
2. ↑ (an idea advanced in the statement of the Fifth colloquium of the Near Eastern History Group of Oxford University). Colloquium organizers argued that if "we begin by assuming that there must have been some continuity, we need either go beyond the Islamic sources or ... reinterpret them".[21]
3. ↑ some revisionist believe the answer is yes (including Patricia Crone, Michael Cook, Fred Donner, Tom Holland, Günter Lüling); and some no (John Wansbrough, Hans Jansen, Karl-Heinz Ohlig, Yehuda D. Nevo). Even more disagree over the origins of the holy book of Islam, the Quran, on issues such as (in the words of Fred Donner): "When did it first appear? How was it first written? In what kind of language was -- is -- it written? What form did it first take? Who constituted its first audience? How was it transmitted from one generation to another, especially in its early years? When, how and by whom was it codified?" [9]
4. ↑ "it is true that there are a few traditional texts conventionally attributed to figures who died before 800 C.E. (notably Ibn Ishaq and Malik b. Anas)" but "we only have those works in recensions made by Muslim scholars of later generations, and none of the works available to us were put into the form in which we know them earlier than the ninth century C.E. (the third century of Islam).[25]
5. ↑ In Nevo & Koren (2003): Crossroads to Islam: The Origins of the Arab Religion and the Arab State
6. ↑ The titles given to Jesus by Assyrian Christians living in the Sasanian Empire are equivalent to Muhammad's New Testament benedictus, ευλογημένος. In a numismatic study, Popp identified coins dating to 16 AH inscribed with mhmd (Arabic written without vowels, but lacking the rasulullah, which became common later). Popp added Arab-Sasanian and Syrian coins inscribed with MHMT in the Pahlavi script, and also partly with mhmd in the Arabic script, combined with Christian symbolism in some cases.[47][48]
7. ↑ The general view among historians and numismatists is that the human figure depicted in the coins minted by Abd al-Malik between 693 and 697, which have come to be known as the "standing caliph" issue, represent Abd al-Malik.[57]
8. ↑ Adams wrote in 1976 and did not mention revisionism [65]
9. ↑ in his 2003 work Crossroads to Islam: The Origins of the Arab Religion and the Arab State
10. ↑ Kalisch rejected the idea of teaching Islamic theology without taking into consideration the new results of historical-critical research and as of 2008 was teaching the history of ideas in the Near East in Late Antiquity in Münster, Germany.[45][46]

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Hoyland, In God's Path, 2015: p.232
2. ↑ François de Blois, Islam in its Arabian Context, S. 615, in: The Qur'an in Context, edited by Angelika Neuwirth etc., 2010
3. ↑ Alexander Stille: Scholars Are Quietly Offering New Theories of the Koran, New York Times 02 March 2002
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Lester, Toby (January 1999). "What Is the Koran?". The Atlantic (January 1999). https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/01/what-is-the-koran/304024/. Retrieved 16 January 2020.
5. ↑ Holland, In the Shadow of the Sword, 2012: p.38
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Holland, Tom (2012). In the Shadow of the Sword. UK: Doubleday. p. 38. ISBN 978-0-385-53135-1. https://books.google.com/books?id=1f_BR2DulRIC&q=in+the+shadow+of+the+sword+holland. Retrieved 29 August 2019.
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Donner, "Quran in Recent Scholarship", 2008: p.30
8. ↑ for example, Armstrong, Karen (2000). "The Prophet, 570-632". Islam, a Short History. Modern Library.
9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Donner, "Quran in Recent Scholarship", 2008: p.29
10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Holland, In the Shadow of the Sword, 2012: p.45
11. ↑ Reynolds, "Quranic studies and its controversies", 2008: p.8
12. ↑ In the Shadow of the Sword (2012), cited in Bowersock, Glen (4 May 2012). "In the Shadow of the Sword by Tom Holland – review". The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/may/04/in-shadow-of-sword-tom-holland. Retrieved 26 November 2019.
13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Brown, Jonathan (26 July 2015). "Tom Holland, the Five Daily Prayers and the Hypocrisy of Revisionism". http://drjonathanbrown.com/2015/tom-holland-the-five-daily-prayers-and-they-hypocrisy-of-revisionism/. Retrieved 16 January 2020. Cite error: Invalid `<ref>` tag; name "brown-2015" defined multiple times with different content
14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 Neva & Koren, "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies", 2000: p.420
15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 Nevo & Koren, "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies", 2000: p.422-6 Cite error: Invalid `<ref>` tag; name "YDNJKMQtIS2000:422-6" defined multiple times with different content
16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Crone, Patricia (1987). Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam. Oxford University Press. p. 223.
17. ↑ Neva & Koren, "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies", 2000: p.420-441
18. ↑ Ismail, Salwa (2004). "The Politics of Historical Revisionism: New Re-Readings of the Early Islamic Period"". An Islamic Reformation?. Lexington Books. pp. 101-124; especially p. 114 and footnotes 43, 44. ISBN 9780739105542. https://books.google.com/books?id=0aOWoDexPZYC&dq=Salwa+Ismail:+The+Politics+of+Historical+Revisionism:+New+Re-Readings+of+the+Early+Islamic+Period,&pg=PA101. Retrieved 26 March 2020.
19. ↑ Karl-Heinz Ohlig: Islam und Islamismus, in: imprimatur No. 48, 2015, pp. 48-53
20. ↑ "PROPHET MUHAMMAD'S LAST SERMON: A FINAL ADMONITION". https://www.islamreligion.com/articles/523/prophet-muhammad-last-sermon/. Retrieved 22 March 2020.
21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 21.2 statement of the July 1975 Fifth colloquium of the Near Eastern History Group of Oxford University, cited in Ibn Warraq, ed (2000). "1. Studies on Muhammad and the Rise of Islam". The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. Prometheus. pp. 55. Cite error: Invalid `<ref>` tag; name "5th-coll-NEHGOU" defined multiple times with different content
22. ↑ As the Arabs of the Ḥejāz had used the drahms of the Sasanian-style, the only silver coinage in the world at that time, it was natural for them to leave many of the Sasanian mints in operation by striking coins like those of the emperors in every detail except for the addition of brief Arabic inscriptions like besmellāh in the margins.https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/coins-and-coinage-
23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 Hoyland, In God's Path, 2015: p.42
24. ↑ Holland, In the Shadow of the Sword, 2012: p.39
25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 Hawting, "John Wansbrough, Islam, and Monotheism", 2000: p.516
26. ↑ Holland, Tom (January 28–29, 2017). Tom Holland on The Origins of Islam (video). Rancho Mirage Writers Festival: youtube. eDQh2nk8ih4&t=1s. Retrieved 14 January 2020.
27. ↑ Neva & Koren, "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies", 2000: p.423
28. ↑ "Chapter 1. “A Prophet Has Appeared, Coming with the Saracens”: Muhammad’s Leadership during the Conquest of Palestine According to Seventh- and Eighth-Century Sources". The Death of a Prophet: The End of Muhammad's Life and the Beginnings of Islam, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012, pp. 18-72. https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812205138.18
29. ↑ Crone, Slaves on Horses, 1980: p.7
30. ↑ Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam, 1987: p.111
31. ↑ 31.0 31.1 Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam, 1987: p.223
32. ↑ Pickard, John (2013). Behind the Myths: The Foundations of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. AuthorHouse.. p. 352. ISBN 9781481783637. https://books.google.com/books?id=KSBb4jBrHFIC&dq=If+one+storyteller+should+happen+to+mention+a+raid,+the+next+storyteller+would+know+the+date+of+this+raid,+while+the+third+would+know+everything+that+an+audience+might+wish+to+hear+about.&pg=PA352. Retrieved 18 October 2019.
33. ↑ 33.0 33.1 Crone, P., Roman, Provincial, and Islamic Law, p.33
34. ↑ Ibn Rawandi, "Origins of Islam", 2000: p.119-120
35. ↑ 35.0 35.1 Conrad, Lawrence I., "The conquest of Arwad: A Source-Critical Study in the Historiography of the Early Medieval Near East" in The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, 308-309
36. ↑ Ibn Warraq, "Studies on Muhammad and the Rise of Islam", 2000: p.67
37. ↑ John Wansbrough: Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation (1977) pp. 43 ff.; Gerd-Rüdiger Puin: Observations on Early Qur'an Manuscripts in San’a’, in: Stefan Wild (Hrsg.): The Qur’an as Text. Brill, Leiden 1996; pp. 107-111
38. ↑ Yehuda D. Nevo: Crossroads to Islam: The Origins of the Arab Religion and the Arab State (2003); Karl-Heinz Ohlig (Hrsg.): Der frühe Islam. Eine historisch-kritische Rekonstruktion anhand zeitgenössischer Quellen (2007)
39. ↑ Fred Donner: Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing (1998), p. 60
40. ↑ Sinai, Nicolai (2014). "When did the consonantal skeleton of the Quran reach closure? Part I". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 77 (2): 273–292. doi:10.1017/S0041977X1400010X. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24692711. Retrieved 25 March 2021.
41. ↑ "Tom Holland on The Origins of Islam." Video of talk given at Rancho Mirage Writers Festival, January 28–29, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDQh2nk8ih4&t=23s
42. ↑ Karl-Heinz Ohlig (Hrsg.): Der frühe Islam. Eine historisch-kritische Rekonstruktion anhand zeitgenössischer Quellen (2007) pp. 377 ff.
43. ↑ Christoph Luxenberg: The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran – A Contribution to the Decoding of the Koran (2007).
44. ↑ Under the Umayyad caliph ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān, the Dome of the Rock was built in Jerusalem (691–692). There the word Islām appears for the first time. Until this moment the Muslims called themselves simply "believers", and coins were minted in the Arabic empire showing Christian symbols. Ibn Marwān also plays a major role in the reworking of the Quranic text. See: Patricia Crone / Michael Cook: Hagarism (1977) p. 29; Yehuda D. Nevo: Crossroads to Islam: The Origins of the Arab Religion and the Arab State (2003) pp. 410-413; Karl-Heinz Ohlig (Hrsg.): Der frühe Islam. Eine historisch-kritische Rekonstruktion anhand zeitgenössischer Quellen (2007) pp. 336 ff.
45. ↑ 45.0 45.1 45.2 Neues Aufgabengebiet für Sven Kalisch| WWU Munster| 13 July 2010
46. ↑ 46.0 46.1 46.2 "Professor Hired for Outreach to Muslims Delivers a Jolt". The Wall Street Journal. November 15, 2008. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122669909279629451. Retrieved 2011-07-16.
47. ↑ Popp, Volker. “Bildliche Darstellungen aus der Frühzeit des Islam. Das Kopfreliquiar Johannes des Täufers auf den omaijadischen Münzen von Damaskus.” Imprimatur.
48. ↑ Ohlig, Karl-Heinz; Puin, Gerd-Rüdiger (2006). Die dunklen Anfänge: neue Forschungen zur Entstehung und frühen Geschichte des Islam. H. Schiler. pp. 16–123. ISBN 3899301285.
49. ↑ G. R. Hawting: The Idea of Idolatry and the Rise of Islam: From Polemic to History (1999)
50. ↑ Fred Donner: Muhammad and the Believers. At the Origins of Islam (2010) p. 59
51. ↑ Fred Donner: Muhammad and the Believers. At the Origins of Islam (2010) pp. 68 ff.; cf. also Hans Jansen: Mohammed (2005/7) pp. 311-317 (German edition 2008)
52. ↑ Patricia Crone / Martin Hinds: God's Caliph: Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam (1986)
53. ↑ Robert G. Hoyland: In God's Path. The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire (2015)
54. ↑ Fred M. Donner, Muhammad and the Believers. At the Origins of Islam (Harvard University Press; 2010) ISBN 978-0-674-05097-6, pp 217-8 - "Another feature of the transformation of the Believers' movement into Islam was the articulation, for the first time, of a consciously 'Arab' political identity [...] . As a political identity, membership in this group gave one special political privileges, in particular, the right to be considered part of the ruling caste of the new Umayyad/Muslim empire."
55. ↑ Patricia Crone / Michael Cook: Hagarism (1977) p. 29; Yehuda D. Nevo: Crossroads to Islam: The Origins of the Arab Religion and the Arab State (2003) pp. 410-413; Karl-Heinz Ohlig (Hrsg.): Der frühe Islam. Eine historisch-kritische Rekonstruktion anhand zeitgenössischer Quellen (2007) pp. 336 ff.
56. ↑ Patricia Crone: Slaves on Horses. The Evolution of the Islamic Polity (1980) pp. 7, 12, 15; auch Hans Jansen: Mohammed (2005/7)
57. ↑ Hoyland 2007, p. 594. sfn error: no target: CITEREFHoyland2007 (help)
58. ↑ Hoyland 2007, pp. 593–596. sfn error: no target: CITEREFHoyland2007 (help)
59. ↑ Crone, Patricia (1987). Roman, Provincial and Islamic Law: The Origins of the Islamic Patronate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 99. cited in "2: Origins of Islam: A Critical Look at the Sources". The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. Prometheus. 2000. p. 99. ISBN 978-1-57392-787-1. https://books.google.com/books?id=FT0NAQAAMAAJ.
60. ↑ Ibn al-Rawandi, "Origins of Islam: A Critical Look at the Sources", 2000: p.98
61. ↑ Ibn Sa'd (d.845), Tabaqat, ed. E. Sachau (Leiden, 1904-1940), 4.1.106, citing al-Sha'bi ('Abdullah)
62. ↑ 62.0 62.1 Hoyland, In God's Path, 2015: p.137
63. ↑ Fasawi (d.890), Kitab al-Ma'rifa wa-l-ta'rikh, ed.A.D. al'Umari (Beirut, 1981), 2.15 (Jabir ibn Zayd)
64. ↑ Holland, In the Shadow of the Sword, 2012: p.409
65. ↑ Adams, Charles (1976). "The Islamic Religious Tradition". The Study of the Middle East: Research and Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences. John Wiley and Sons. p. 38.
66. ↑ Adams, Charles (1976). "The Islamic Religious Tradition". The Study of the Middle East: Research and Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences. John Wiley and Sons. p. 50. cited in Berg, Herbert (2000). "15. Implications of, and Opposition to, the Methods and Theories of John Wansbrough". in Ibn Warraq. The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. Prometheus. p. 502. ISBN 9781573927871. https://archive.org/details/questforhistoric00ibnw.
67. ↑ Berg, Herbert (2000). "15. Implications of, and Opposition to, the Methods and Theories of John Wansbrough". in Ibn Warraq. The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. Prometheus. p. 502. ISBN 9781573927871. https://archive.org/details/questforhistoric00ibnw.
68. ↑ 68.0 68.1 Feroz-ud-Din Shah Khagga, M.; Warraich, M. Mahmood (April 2015). "Revisionism: A Modern Orientalistic Wave in the Qurʾānic Criticism". Al-Qalam: 2. https://www.academia.edu/17572188. Retrieved 26 November 2019.
69. ↑ Humphreys, R.S. Islamic History, A Framework for Inquiry, Princeton, 1991, p.83
70. ↑ Schacht, Joseph (1950). The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence. Oxford: Clarendon.
71. ↑ Ibn Rawandi, "Origins of Islam", 2000: p.97
72. ↑ Hagarism; The Making Of The Islamic World Crone, Cook, p.3
73. ↑ 73.0 73.1 73.2 Nevo & Koren, "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies", 2000: p.426
74. ↑ Takim, Liyakat N. (2006). Heirs of the Prophet, The: Charisma and Religious Authority in Shi'ite Islam. NY: SUNY. p. 187. ISBN 9780791481912. https://books.google.com/books?id=4nWa8y-HiB0C&q=Martin+Hinds+revisionist&pg=PA187. Retrieved 16 January 2020.
75. ↑ Khan, Muhammad (29 September 2017). "Revisionist account of early Islamic history and culture". Muslim News. http://muslimnews.co.uk/newspaper/regular-columns/revisionist-account-early-islamic-history-culture/. Retrieved 16 January 2020.
76. ↑ Bowersock, Glen (4 May 2012). "In the Shadow of the Sword by Tom Holland – review". The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/may/04/in-shadow-of-sword-tom-holland. Retrieved 26 November 2019.
77. ↑ Waines, David (2003). "Excursus on Islamic origins". An Introduction to Islam (2 ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 307. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511801037.012. ISBN 978-0-521-53906-7. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/an-introduction-to-islam/excursus-on-islamic-origins/BDF40C5FE48B8437EEA406E4D5E6CCCB.
78. ↑ Humphreys, R. Stephen (1992). "Early historical tradition and the first Islamic polity". Islamic History: A Framework for Inquiry. Princeton University Press. pp. 84–85. doi:10.1515/9780691214238-005. ISBN 978-0-691-21423-8.
79. ↑ 79.0 79.1 79.2 Nevo & Koren, "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies", 2000: p.431
80. ↑ Crone, Patricia (1987). "2". Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam. Princeton University Press.
81. ↑ Crone, Patricia (1987). "4". Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam. Princeton University Press.
82. ↑ Crone, Patricia (1987). "5". Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam. Princeton University Press.
83. ↑ Patricia Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (Princeton, U.S.A: Princeton University Press, 1987), p.134
84. ↑ Nevo & Koren, "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies", 2000: p.432
85. ↑ Fred Donner: Review of: The Quest for the Historical Muhammad, by Ibn Warraq, Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, 35(1), pp. 75–76.
86. ↑ Cf. e.g. François de Blois, Islam in its Arabian Context, S. 615, in: The Qur'an in Context, ed. by Angelika Neuwirth etc., 2010.
87. ↑ Judith Herrin, Patricia Crone: memoir of a superb Islamic Scholar, openDemocracy 12 July 2015
88. ↑ Cf. e.g. Toby Lester: Lester, Toby (January 1999). "What Is the Koran?". The Atlantic (January 1999). https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/01/what-is-the-koran/304024/. Retrieved 16 January 2020.
89. ↑ Cf. e.g. Patricia Crone: Among the Believers, Tablet Magazine 10 August 2010
90. ↑ Cf. e.g. Toby Lester: What is the Koran?, in: The Atlantic, issue January 1999
91. ↑ Cf. e.g. Tilman Nagel: Befreit den Propheten aus seiner religiösen Umklammerung! in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 21 September 2009
92. ↑ Cf. e.g. Marion Holmes Katz: Body of Text: The Emergence of the Sunni Law of Ritual Purity (2012), p. 27
93. ↑ Gregor Schoeler, Charakter und Authentie der muslimischen Überlieferung über das Leben Mohammeds, de Gruyter 1996. pp. 18 f., 23 f. 142 f.; original citation p. 24: "dies alles und noch manches Beachtenswerte mehr uns zum ersten Mal -- oder erneut -- zu bedenken gegeben zu haben, ist zweifellos ein Verdienst der neuen Generation der 'Skeptiker'."
94. ↑ Cf. e.g. François de Blois, Islam in its Arabian Context, p. 615, in: The Qur'an in Context, ed. by Angelika Neuwirth etc., 2010

### Bibliography

* Cook, Michael (2000). The Koran : A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0192853449. https://archive.org/details/koranveryshorti00cook. "The Koran : A Very Short Introduction."
* Crone, Patricia (1987). Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam. Princeton University Press. http://www.almuslih.org/Library/Crone, P - Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam.pdf. Retrieved 2020-02-04.
* Crone, Patricia (1980). Slaves on Horses. Cambridge University Press. https://delong.typepad.com/files/slaves_on_horses.pdf. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
* Crone, Patricia; Hinds, Martin (1986). God's Caliph: Religious Authority In the First Centuries of Islam. Cambridge University Press. https://ahadithstudies.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/crone-gods-caliph.pdf. Retrieved 24 November 2019.
* Fred Donner: Muhammad and the Believers. At the Origins of Islam, Harvard University Press, 2010 ISBN 978-0-674-05097-6
* Holland, Tom (2012). In the Shadow of the Sword. UK: Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-53135-1. https://books.google.com/books?id=1f_BR2DulRIC&q=in+the+shadow+of+the+sword+holland. Retrieved 29 August 2019.
* Holland, Tom (January 28–29, 2017). Tom Holland on The Origins of Islam (video). Rancho Mirage Writers Festival: youtube. eDQh2nk8ih4&t=1s. Retrieved 14 January 2020.
* Holland, Tom (8 August 2015). Islam : The Untold Story (video). Channel 4. Documentary. j9S_xbjIRgE&t=. Retrieved 18 January 2020.
* Hoyland, Robert G. (2015). In God's Path: the Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire. Oxford University Press.
* Donner, Fred M. (2008). "The Quran in Recent Scholarship". in Reynolds, Gabriel Said. The Quran in its Historical Context. Routledge. pp. 29-50. https://archive.org/details/quranitshistoric00reyn.
* Reynolds, Gabriel Said (2008). "Introduction, Quranic studies and its controversies". in Reynolds, Gabriel Said. The Quran in its Historical Context. Routledge. pp. 1-26. https://archive.org/details/quranitshistoric00reyn.
* Nevo, Yehuda D.; Koren, Judith (2000). "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies". The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. New York: Prometheus Books. pp. 420–443.
* Ibn Warraq, ed (2000). "2. Origins of Islam: A Critical Look at the Sources". The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. Prometheus. pp. 89-124. ISBN 9781573927871. https://archive.org/details/questforhistoric00ibnw.
* Schacht, Joseph (1950). The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence. Oxford: Clarendon.
* Sirry, Mun'im (2021). Controversies Over Islamic Origins: An Introduction to Traditionalism and Revisionism. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
* Lester, Toby (January 1999). "What is the Koran?". The Atlantic (January 1999). https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/01/what-is-the-koran/304024/. Retrieved 20 November 2019.
* Ibn Warraq, ed (2000). "1. Studies on Muhammad and the Rise of Islam". The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. Prometheus. pp. 55. ISBN 9781573927871. https://archive.org/details/questforhistoric00ibnw.
* Wansbrough, J. (1978). Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

## Further reading

* Carlos Segovia: J. Wansbrough and the Problem of Islamic Origins in Recent Scholarship: A Farewell to the Traditional Account, book chapter in: The Coming of the Comforter: When, Where, and to Whom? Studies on the Rise of Islam and Various Other Topics in Memory of John Wansbrough, ed. by Carlos A. Segovia and Basil Lourié, Gorgias Press, 2012, pp. xv–xxiv.

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