Robert Houghton
2006-10-11 13:51:46 UTC
The title of this article is the title of an essay by the brilliant Patricia
Crone published on the opendemocracy website
(opendemocracy.net/faith-europe_islam/mohammed_3866.jsp). Here is an
extract;
"It is difficult not to suspect that the tradition places the prophet's
career in Mecca [which was unknown prior to the rise of Islam] for the same
reason that it insists that he was illiterate: the only way he could have
acquired his knowledge of all the things that God had previously told the
Jews and the Christians was by revelation from God himself. Mecca was virgin
territory; it had neither Jewish nor Christian communities.
"The suspicion that the location is doctrinally inspired is reinforced by
the fact that the Qur'an describes the polytheist opponents as
agriculturalists who cultivated wheat, grapes, olives, and date palms.
Wheat, grapes and olives are the three staples of the Mediterranean; date
palms take us southwards, but Mecca was not suitable for any kind of
agriculture, and one could not possibly have produced olives there.
"In addition, the Qur'an twice describes its opponents as living in the site
of a vanished nation, that is to say a town destroyed by God for its sins.
There were many such ruined sites in northwest Arabia. The prophet
frequently tells his opponents to consider their significance and on one
occasion remarks, with reference to the remains of Lot's people, that "you
pass by them in the morning and in the evening". This takes us to somewhere
in the Dead Sea region. Respect for the traditional account has prevailed to
such an extent among modern historians that the first two points have passed
unnoticed until quite recently, while the third has been ignored. The
exegetes said that the Quraysh passed by Lot's remains on their annual
journeys to Syria, but the only way in which one can pass by a place in the
morning and the evening is evidently by living somewhere in the vicinity."
Devastating clarity, isn't it?
Crone published on the opendemocracy website
(opendemocracy.net/faith-europe_islam/mohammed_3866.jsp). Here is an
extract;
"It is difficult not to suspect that the tradition places the prophet's
career in Mecca [which was unknown prior to the rise of Islam] for the same
reason that it insists that he was illiterate: the only way he could have
acquired his knowledge of all the things that God had previously told the
Jews and the Christians was by revelation from God himself. Mecca was virgin
territory; it had neither Jewish nor Christian communities.
"The suspicion that the location is doctrinally inspired is reinforced by
the fact that the Qur'an describes the polytheist opponents as
agriculturalists who cultivated wheat, grapes, olives, and date palms.
Wheat, grapes and olives are the three staples of the Mediterranean; date
palms take us southwards, but Mecca was not suitable for any kind of
agriculture, and one could not possibly have produced olives there.
"In addition, the Qur'an twice describes its opponents as living in the site
of a vanished nation, that is to say a town destroyed by God for its sins.
There were many such ruined sites in northwest Arabia. The prophet
frequently tells his opponents to consider their significance and on one
occasion remarks, with reference to the remains of Lot's people, that "you
pass by them in the morning and in the evening". This takes us to somewhere
in the Dead Sea region. Respect for the traditional account has prevailed to
such an extent among modern historians that the first two points have passed
unnoticed until quite recently, while the third has been ignored. The
exegetes said that the Quraysh passed by Lot's remains on their annual
journeys to Syria, but the only way in which one can pass by a place in the
morning and the evening is evidently by living somewhere in the vicinity."
Devastating clarity, isn't it?