Episode 202: Fred Donner on the History of Early Islām

Coin, struck in the year 651-652 =AH 31 under the caliph `Uthman. Adaptation of a Sasanian coin depicting Yazdegerd III, with the addition of 'bismillah', visible to the lower right of the 'heads' side

In this interview, Professor Fred Donner gives us a superb introduction to the earliest decades of the movement which would become known as Islām.

We begin our discussion with the sīra literature, what it is (a body of written accounts of the life and times of the prophet Muḥammad, starting from a century or so after his death and continuing thereafter) and how reliable it is as historical documentation (not very – that ever-elusive grain of truth has got to be in there, but it’s finding exactly where it is that’s the problem). We then ask similar questions of the Qur’ān, and get a more positive answer; for Donner, the Qur’ān is a genuinely-early document, although there are open questions as to how long a period of development it underwent, what exactly happened when ‘Uthman decided to standardize the ‘text’, and a host of other matters. Nevertheless, this is one place to look for solid evidence of what the early Believers were believing. The other place to look is a fascinating text known as the ‘Constitution of Medinah’ or ‘Umma Document’, a treaty, preserved in multiple, slightly-different forms among the sīra and other works, between Muḥammad, his followers, and the various groups present at Yathrib, better known as Medina. This work really is a window onto the earliest political manifestation of the Believers’ movement. We then turn to the first few decades of the ‘Islamic’ or ‘Arab conquests’ (neither term seems to be quite right), discussing the weird silence in our sources about what went on, precisely, and how we can interpret around these sources.

Interview Bio:

Fred M. Donner is Peter B. Ritzma Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern History at the University of Chicago. He has written, taught, and researched widely on the early history of Islām, the Umayyad state, and associated historical developments.

Works Cited in this Episode:

Primary:

‘The Syriac fragment mentioning Mūḥmd [viz. Muḥammad]: description of the fragment with translation at Robert G. Hoyland. Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam. Darwin Press, Princeton, NJ, 1997, pp. 116-7. Cf. Fred M. Donner. The Early Islamic Conquests. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1981, p. 144.

The letter from a priest asking what he should do with this Christian lady who married a muhaggar is treated in the Canons of Jacob, Bishop of Edessa, in writing to the priest Addai: it can be found at Hoyland 1997 (cited above), pp. 604-5.

For the ‘Constitution of Medinah’, please see the Recommended Reading below.

Secondary:

Robert Hoyland on Arab conquests as a process of ‘ethnogenesis’: Idem. In God’s Path. The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire. Oxford, 2015.

Peter Pentz. The Invisible Conquest: The Ontogenesis of Sixth and Seventh Century Syria. National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, 1992.

Ernest Renan. Mahomet et les origines de l’Islamisme. Revue des deux mondes, 12:1023–60, 1851, p. 1025.

Uri Rubin on how the important dates in the sīra all seem to line up in a historically-implausible fashion: Uri Rubin. The Eye of the Beholder. The Life of Muhammad as viewed by the Early Muslims. Darwin, Princeton, NJ, 1995; see pp. 189-201, esp. p. 190.

Jack Tannous. The Making of the Medieval Middle East: Religion, Society, and Simple Believers. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2018.

Themes

East Rome, Islam, Jews, Monophysitism