Revisionist school of Islamic studies

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

Until the early 1970s,[7] non-Muslim Islamic scholars—while not accepting accounts of divine intervention—did accept Islam's origin story[8] "in most of its details",[9] and accepted the reliability of its traditional literary sources – tafsir (commentaries on the Quran),[10] hadith (accounts of what the Islamic prophet Muhammad approved or disapproved of), and sira (biographies of Muhammad). Revisionists instead use a "source-critical" approach to this literature, as well as studying relevant archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics and contemporary non-Arabic literature.[11] They believe these methodologies provide "hard facts" and an ability to crosscheck, whereas traditional Islamic accounts—written 150 to 250 years after Muhammad—are/were subject to biases of and embellishments by the authors and transmitters.[12]

Non-Islamic testimonies about Muhammad's life describe him as the leader of the Saracens,[13] believed to be descendants of Ishmael, lived in the northern regions; Arabia Petrae and Arabia Deserta.

The school is thought to have originated in the 1970s and includes (or included) scholars such as John Wansbrough and his students Andrew Rippin, Norman Calder, G. R. Hawting, Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, as well as Günter Lüling, Yehuda D. Nevo, Tom Holland, and Christoph Luxenberg.[14] It is "by no means monolithic" and while its proponents share "methodological premises", they have offered "conflicting accounts of the Arab conquests and the rise of Islam".[15] It is sometimes contrasted with "traditionist" historians of Islam who do accept the traditional origin story,[1] though adherence to the two approaches is "usually implicit" rather than "stated openly".[16]

  1. ^ a b 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. ^ Cite error: The named reference Lester-1999 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Holland, In the Shadow of the Sword, 2012: p.38
  6. ^ Holland, Tom (2012). In the Shadow of the Sword. UK: Doubleday. p. 38. ISBN 978-0-385-53135-1. Retrieved 29 August 2019.
  7. ^ Donner, "Quran in Recent Scholarship", 2008: p.30
  8. ^ Holland, In the Shadow of the Sword, 2012: p.45
  9. ^ Donner, "Quran in Recent Scholarship", 2008: p.29
  10. ^ Crone, Patricia (1987). Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam. Oxford University Press. p. 223. ISBN 9780691054803.
  11. ^ Nevo & Koren, "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies", 2000: p.420
  12. ^ Nevo & Koren, "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies", 2000: p.422-6
  13. ^ "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
  14. ^ Reynolds, "Quranic studies and its controversies", 2008: p.8
  15. ^ Nevo & Koren, "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies", 2000: p.420-441
  16. ^ Nevo & Koren, "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies", 2000: p.421