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Fred Donner on the History of the History of Early Islām
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‘People who want to talk about the history of Islām as historians have to act as historians, which means you have to challenge, question your sources and see if they’re reliable.’
Fred Donner remains our guide on a quick but fascinating tour through developments in scholarship on Islamic origins, beginning with the early orientalists, assessing the ‘1970’s revolution’ in early Islamic studies, and landing where we are now, with progress made but a lot more work to be done.
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:
Patricia Crone and Michæl A. Cook. Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World. The University Press, Cambridge, 1977.
Ignác Goldziher. Muhammedanische Studien. Max Niemeyer, Halle, 1889.
Joseph Schacht. A Revaluation of Islamic Tradition. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, pages 143–54, 1949.
John Wansbrough. Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation. The University Press, Oxford, 1977.
Idem. The Sectarian Milieu: Content and Composition of Islamic Salvation History. The University Press, Oxford, 1978.
Karl Young
March 16, 2025
Great discussion, and maybe this is a pretty off the wall question, but as Fred Donner suggests (and I feel like he’s right) that a questioning approach to one’s tradition results in a strengthening of that tradition, why wouldn’t most modern, tolerant, cosmopolitan types end up viewing many of these historical traditions as sort of fuzzy pointers at some kind of perennialist set of ideas (and as a result accrue some of the benefits that people of a tradition enjoy but perhaps without the downsides of, e.g., having to declare a prophet or naming it anything in particular)
Earl Fontainelle
March 18, 2025
Well, Karl, I feel like that actually is the position of a lot of modern, tolerant cosmopolitan types. I don’t think you will find (m)any Muslims willing to just chuck the name Muḥammad in the bin, so we remain in named prophet territory, but, that being said, I would even go so far as to say that this ‘modern, cosmopolitan’, perennialist position is found a lot in pre-modern Islām.
On the one hand, it is worth emphasising that the perennialism found in the Qur’ān is pretty specifically prophetic and, as it were, Abrahamic style. In other words, it’s not going to include absolutely every tradition out there.
On the other hand, Muslim candidates for legitimate prophethood throughout the ages have included: Plato (of course), Pythagoras (natch), Hermes Trismegistos (often identified with the Qur’ānic Idris), Gautama Buddha, and many others. Just when you think Islām has this sort of basic minimum criterion of identifiable monotheism, you find the Mughal emperor Akbar declaring the fundamental unity of the Qur’ān and Vedanta.
In a territory like this, it’s no wonder that, specific lists of authorities aside, a vague notion that all the wisdom traditions are from Allah and all the teachers are cool has often been a standard Islamic take, as among these many modern folks you allude to.