Hagarism

'''''Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World''''' (1977) is a controversial book on the early history of Islam written by the historians Patricia Crone and Michael Cook (historian)Michael Cook.

Drawing on archaeological evidence and contemporary documents in Arabic, Armenian, Coptic, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin and Syriac, ''Hagarism'' depicts an early Islam very different from the traditionallyaccepted version derived from Muslim historical accounts..
Daniel Pipes. http://www.meforum.org/article/480 Lessons from the Prophet Muhammad's Diplomacy . ''The Middle East Quarterly''. September 1999. Volume VI: Number 3. ''Hagarism, a 1977 study by Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, the authors completely exclude the Arabic literary sources and reconstruct the early history of Islam only from the information to be found in Arabic papyri, coins, and inscriptions as well as nonArabic literary sources in a wide array of languages (Aramaic, Armenian, Coptic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and Syriac).''

Oleg Grabar. Speculum, Vol. 53, No. 4. (Oct., 1978), pp. 795799. ''What we know as Islam, the authors claim, was a Jewish messianic movement known, primarily in Syriac (but also reflected in Armenian and Hebrew) sources, as Hagarism, which moved into the Fertile Crescent, was heavily influenced by the Samaritans and by Babylonian Judaism, and at a certain point (presumably at the time of Abd alMalik, ca. 690) shed its Judaicizing identity to become Arab Islam. This first change required the recasting of whatever memories or records existed of the movement’s birth into a more or less coherent form, a process which occupied much of the following century.

''http://www.thedailystar.net/2006/04/28/d60428020635.htmtitle=Hagarism: The Story of a Book Written by Infidels for Infidels Liaquat Ali Khan}}''The book titled "Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World," questions just about everything Muslims believe as historical truths. It challenges the common belief that the Quran was revealed to Prophet Muhammad over a period of 22 years (610-632) in Mecca and Medina. Instead, the book contends that the Quran was composed, possibly in Syria or Iraq, more than fifty years after the Prophet's death, projected back in time, and attributed to the Prophet. ''

According to ''Hagarism'', the Arab conquests and the formation of the caliphate were a peninsular Arab movement inspired by Jewish messianism, which, in alliance with Jews, attempted to reclaim the Promised Land from the Byzantine Empire. The Qur'an would then be the product of 8thcentury edits of various materials drawn from a variety of JudeoChristian and MiddleEastern sources, and Muhammad the herald of Umar "the redeemer", a JewJudaic messiah. The Origins of The Koran: Classic Essays on Islam’s Holy Book, 1998 Ibn Warraq ''A group of scholars influenced by Wansbrough took an even more radical approach; they rejected wholesale the entire Islamic version of early Islamic history. Michael Cook, Patricia Crone, and Martin Hinds writing between 1977 and 1987 regard the whole established version of Islamic history down at least to the time of Abd alMalik (685-705) as a later fabrication, and reconstruct the Arab Conquests and the formation of the Caliphate as a movement of peninsular Arabs who had been inspired by Jewish messianism to try to reclaim the Promised Land. In this interpretation, Islam emerged as an autonomous religion and culture only within the process of a long struggle for identity among the disparate peoples yoked together by the Conquests: Jacobite Syrians, Nestorian Aramaeans in Iraq, Copts, Jews, and (finally) peninsular Arabs.''

Synopsis

''Hagarism'' begins with the premise that Western worldWestern historical scholarship on the beginnings of Islam should only be based on historical, archaeological and philological data rather than Islamic traditions which it finds to be dogmaticallybased, historically irreconcilable and anachronistic accounts of the community's past, and of no historic value. Thus, relying exclusively on historical, archaeological and philological evidence, the authors attempt to reconstruct and present what they argue is a more historically accurate account of Islam's origins. In summary:

Virtually all accounts of the early development of Islam take it as axiomatic that it is possible to elicit at least the outlines of the process from the Islamic sources. It is however wellknown that these sources are not demonstrably early. There is no hard evidence for the existence of the Koran in any form before the last decade of the seventh century, and the tradition which places this rather opaque revelation in its historical context is not attested before the middle of the eighth. The historicity of the Islamic tradition is thus to some degree problematic: while there are no cogent internal grounds for rejecting it, there are equally no cogent external grounds for accepting it. In the circumstances it is not unreasonable to proceed in the usual fashion by presenting a sensibly edited version of the tradition as historical fact. But equally, it makes some sense to regard the tradition as without determinate historical content, and to insist that what purport to be accounts of religious events in the seventh century are utilizable only for the study of religious ideas in the eighth. The Islamic sources provide plenty of scope for the implementation of these different approaches, but offer little that can be used in any decisive way to arbitrate between them. The only way out of the dilemma is thus to step outside the Islamic tradition altogether and start again. P. Crone and M. Cook, ''Hagarism: The Making Of The Islamic World'', 1977, Cambridge University Press, p. 3

According to the authors, Hagarism was a heretical branch of Judaism followed by the Hagarenes or Arabs in the early part of the 7th century. To the authors, the surviving records of the period describe the followers of Muhammad as Hagarenes, because of the way Muhammad invoked the Jewish god in order to introduce an alien monotheismmonotheistic faith to the Arabs. He is reported as doing this by claiming biological descent from Abraham through his slave wife Hagar (biblical)Hagar for the Arabs in the same way as the Jews who claimed descent from Abraham through Sarah and thus as their ancestral faith. During this early period the Jews and the Hagarenes united, into a faith the authors loosely describe as JudeoHagarism, in order to recover the holy land from the Christian Byzantines. In their analysis, the early manuscripts from eye witnesses suggest that Muhammad was the leader of a military expedition to conquer Jerusalem, and that the original Hijra (Islam)hijra actually referred to a journey from northern Arabia to that city.

As time went on, the Hagarenes concluded that the adoption of Judaism and MessianismChristian Messianism did not provide them with the unique religious identity that they aspired for. They also feared that leaning on Judaism too much, might result in outright conversion and assimilation. Thus the hagarenes contrived to create a religion of their own and decided to splinter off from their Judaic practices and beliefs. Driven by a quest for theological legitimacy they devised a version of Abrahamic monotheism, that evolved from a blend of Judaism, Samaritanism and Christianity, which became what is now Islam. The authors propose that Islam was thus born and fashioned from Judaic mythology and symbology, that is; the creation of a sacred scripture similar to the Jewish Torah (the Qur’an), and a Moses like prophet; along with a sacred city of Mecca modeled on the Jewish holy city of Jerusalem adjacent to a holy mountain.

While the full assertions of the book were controversial, the attempts to deconstruct early Islamic history have made this a groundbreaking and important work on early Islamic history.

Sources

The authors document their thesis that Muhammad was preaching a heretical form of Judaism around 634 and was proclaiming the advent of a Jewish Messiah by drawing upon early nonMuslim sources such as the Doctrina Iacobi (AD 634) and others listed in the table below.


634 Doctrina Iacobi

650 Fredegar

676 The Synod of 676

692 Syriac Apocalypse of PseudoEphraem

717 The Vision of Enoch the Just

636 Fragment on the Arab Conquests

655 Pope Martin I

680 George of Resh'aina

697 AntiJewish Polemicists

717 A Monk of Beth Hale and an Arab Notable

639 Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem

659 Isho'yahb III of Adiabene

680 The Secrets of Rabbi Simon ben Yohai

700 Anastasius of Sinai

720 Greek Interpolation of the Syriac Apocalypse of PseudoMethodius

640 Thomas the Presbyter

660 Sebeos, Bishop of the Bagratunis

680 Bundahishn

700 Hnanisho' the Exegete

720 Willibald

640 Homily on the Child Saints of Babylon

660 A Chronicler of Khuzistan

681 Trophies of Damascus

705 Ad Annum 705

730 Patriarch Germanos I of ConstantinoplePatriarch Germanus

640 John of Nikiu

662 Maximus the Confessor

687 Athanasius of Balad, Patriarch of Antioch

708 Jacob of Edessa

730 John of Damascus

644 Coptic Apocalypse of PseudoShenute

665 Pope Benjamin of AlexandriaBenjamin I
687 John bar Penkaye

715 Coptic Apocalpyse of PseudoAthanasius

770 A Maronite Chronicler

648 Life of Gabriel of Qartmin

670 Arculf, a Pilgrim

690 Syriac Apocalypse of PseudoMethodius

717 Greek Daniel,First Vision

780 Isho'bokht, Metropolitan of Fars

785 Stephen of Alexandria

785 Theophilus of Edessa
801 T'ung tien


Impact
Hagarism is widely cited by many modern historians of early Islam, including Bernard Lewis, Bernard Lewis, ''The Jews of Islam'', Princeton University Press, p.203,p. 231 Robert G. Hoyland, Robert G. Hoyland, ''Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam'' (Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam), Darwin Press, 1998 Reza Aslan, Reza Aslan, ''No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam'', Random House, 2005 G. R. Hawting, G. R. Hawting, ''The First Dynasty of Islam'', Southern Illinois Univ Press, pp.19, 44, 71, 121, 132, 133, 140 G. R. Hawting, ''The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to History From Polemic to History'' Herbert Berg, Herbert Berg, ''Method and Theory in the Study of Islamic Origins'', Brill, Leiden and Boston, 2003, pp. 114, 126, 133, 288, 297, 374, 391 Francis Edwards Peters, F. E. Peters, ''Muhammad and the Origins of Islam'', State University of New York Press S. N. Eisenstadt, S. N. Eisenstadt, ''Jewish Civilization: The Jewish Historical Experience in a Comparative Perspective'', State University of New York Press, 1992 Ziauddin Sardar, Ziauddin Sardar, ''Orientalism'', Open University Press, 1999 Malise Ruthven, Malise Ruthven, ''Islam in the World'', Oxford University Press, 2000 Richard Landes, Richard Landes, ''The Apocalyptic Year 1000: Religious Expectation and Social Change, 950–1050'' and John Wansbrough, J. Wansbrough, ''Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies'', University of London, '''41''':1:155156 (1978) http://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_q=Hagarism&num=100&btnG=Search+Scholar&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_occt=any&as_sauthors=&as_publication=&as_ylo=&as_yhi=&as_allsubj=all&hl=en&lr= as well as critics (like Ibn Warraq Ibn Warraq, ''The Quest for the Historical Muhammad'', Prometheus Books, 2000 ). It is on the suggested reading list of the School of Oriental and African Studies of London http://www.soas.ac.uk/Centres/IslamicLaw/ReadingList.html and other various major universities' Middle East studies reading lists http://humanities.uchicago.edu/depts/nelc/programs/civreadinglist.htm http://www.unc.edu/~elg/Islamic_studies_syllabus.html .