Mohammed, the Qu’ran and Islam

9 Aug

Islam is one of the world’s major religions, the second largest in the world and by some counts the fastest growing. It is also a religion in turmoil, many of its traditional heartlands in the Middle East are war ravaged and violent sects and movements among it are causing terror internationally and ruining its reputation. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims are fleeing the lands of their birth because of war, poverty and oppression and many more are quietly or openly abandoning the faith. In this time of unprecedented change it is necessary also for serious people to re-examine the foundations of the faith, that they might understand the ground on which they build their lives and eternal future.

The story of Islam as we have received it tells us of a business-man turned Prophet, receiving the Word of God from the Angel Gabriel (Jibreel) in a cave outside the desert town of Mecca between the years 610 and 622CE and subsequently in Medina until his death in 632CE. That man, Mohammed, and his message, the Qu’ran, became the foundation of a new religion and the inspiration for the armies of Arabia that created an empire stretching from the Pyrenees in the West to Tashkent in central Asia in the succeeding century. But how reliable is that story? Does the historical, archaeological and textual evidence from the Qu’ran itself, support it?

The world of the seventh century middle-east was one of great turbulence, the ancient empires of Rome and Persia met and warred against each other incessantly during this period; fighting themselves to exhaustion. Both empires paid client Arab tribes to control certain areas outside of their main borders and fight for them as required. The Arabs themselves were a fractured, tribal people, feuding amongst themselves; a largely illiterate society whose language was still in the process of being given a written form. Story-telling, poetry and the passing of lore by recitation was still the norm, Arabic literature from this period is almost non-existent. In terms of religion they mostly clung to ancient polytheistic or syncretistic beliefs, having adopted neither the State Christianity of the Roman empire nor the Zoroastrianism of the Persians, though both these religions had a presence in the region. The story of Mohammed receiving his monotheistic revelation of the One God as ‘recitations’, teachings to be learnt by heart, therefore makes great sense within this culture - but it also lies at the heart of the problems of what we know of the beginnings of Islam. Without written evidence, how can we be sure that what is taught today is what was taught then? We need to test the historical sources that have come down to us, in the same way as we would for any other historical narrative.

The Life of Mohammed, his Sayings and Traditions

What is understood about the life of Mohammed is taken primarily from the ‘Sirat Risul Allah’ (Life of the Messenger of God), written by ibn Hasham (died 833CE), and from the Sirat of al-Tabari (died 923CE), two to three hundred years after Mohammed. For neither of these do we have original or even early manuscripts, both were based upon a common source, now lost to us, written by ibn Ishaq in the mid-700sCE, approximately one hundred years after Mohammed. Unlike the Gospels of Jesus (the Injil), that were written by his direct disciples or by those who interviewed them, there are no eye-witness accounts of the life of Mohammed. Ibn Hasham himself wrote that he discarded much of what ibn Ishaq had recorded as unreliable, we therefore are asked to trust the faithful transmission of stories from generation to generation and the accurate assessment and transcription of the validity of these stories when eventually compiled into written form. One problem evident here is that ibn Hasham and al-Tabiri do not always agree, al-Tabiri for example includes the notorious event of the ‘Satanic Verses’1 in his account.

Similar to the Sirat, the sayings of Mohammed, the hadiths, that inform a lot of Islamic theology and conduct, were also written down centuries after the time of Mohammed. A hadith is a story about or a saying of Mohammed recollected by an eye-witness and then re-told to a student, who then re-told it to another student, in a chain of transmission down through the years and across the vast lands of the Islamic empire. The foremost of the compilations of hadiths, the Sahih al-Bukhari, was compiled by Muhammad ibn Ismail al-Bukhari in the mid-840sCE. According to tradition al-Bukhari learnt as many as 600,000 individual hadith during his career and whittled these down to just 7,563, rejecting the others because he considered their source or chain of transmission unreliable. This alone shows that the number of stories was abounding, with people likely making things up and attributing them to Mohammed for their own purposes. One has to ask, how good was al-Bukhari’s judgement? Is everything he accepted valid? Was everything he rejected invalid? We must acknowledge that what we have received is just the work of a human scholar working more than two hundred years after the events.

We can only conclude that the Sirat and the hadiths that are the foundation of so much of Islamic thought do not bear up to scrutiny as reliable sources. At best they are untestable, reliant upon chains of transmission that were deemed reliable by particular scholars 1200 - 1300 years ago but which are completely unverifiable.

How reliable is the Qu’ran?

If the Sirat and the hadiths are unreliable, what of the Qu’ran itself? Surely care was taken that the revelations of Gabriel to the Prophet were carefully recorded? The Qu’ran is considered to be a collection of recitations; revelations which we have been told were given to Mohammed by Angel Gabriel, recited by him to his followers and scrupulously preserved through the ages, first by memory and then in written form. The Qu’ran, we are told, in its original Arabic language, is the pure, unchanged and unadulterated word of God, a perfect copy of the eternal Qu’ran that resides in heaven. Why then have there been so many different versions? The earliest manuscript fragments we have, the Birmingham manuscript2 and the Sana’a palimpsest3 are written in early Arabic script without vowels. That is, the words are written as consonants only. Without consonants how do we know how the word is to be pronounced? Consider in English the sequence of letters Gd, that could become ‘Gad’, ‘God’, ‘goad’, ‘good’ or ‘guide’ when the vowels are added, significantly changing the meaning of any sentence in which that word appears. Every word written without vowels is open to variant meanings, the interpretation of a sentence then is based upon the interpretation of the individual and how he or she contructs meaning from the context and structure of that sentence. The Sana’a palimpsest was over-written with a vowelised version of the Qu’ran as the scribe put his meaning - or that of the individual he was copying - onto the parchment and shows many and significant variations to the underlying original. The existence of this palimpsest alone shows that the text of the Qu’ran underwent revision and standardisation from its earliest days, which in turn proves that the oral transmission from the mouth of the Prophet was imperfect. If even these earliest manuscripts show human revision and the frailty of trusting oral transmission, how can the text we have today be called the pure, unchanged and unadulterated word of God? History recounts there have been at least four revisions to the Qu’ran in attempts to standardise the text4 resulting in at least 37 variations.

The multiplicity of variations of the recitation of the Qu’ran are acknowledged by Muslim scholars but explained away as all being original from the Prophet, who they say repeated the recitations in seven different dialects for his followers – an act which, if true, could have done nothing but sow the seeds of the subsequent confusion of meaning. The earliest attempt to create a standardised Qu’ran was by the first Caliph, Abu Bakr (632 – 634CE), who ordered a written copy to be compiled after the death in battle of many of Mohammed’s companions. This original was referred to by the next revision undertaken by Caliph Uthman in 650CE, acting after he received reports from around the empire of numerous variant recitations being used. This Uthmanic recension, still devoid of vowelisation, was copied and sent to five locations. Upon completion Uthman ordered the destruction of all other written source material for the Qu’ran, to prevent contradiction of his version no doubt but also destroying any means of verification of his official compilation. One early copy of the Uthman manuscripts is still extant, dated to between 795 and 995CE in Tashkent. Further recensions, to standardise the Qu’ran from variant readings were undertaken by ibn Mujahid(d. 936CE), al-Shatibi (1194CE) and al-Jaziri (died 1429CE). The markings, known as diacritical marks, which denote the vowels in Arabic script, were added in the 9th and 10th century revisions as scholars attempted to fix the recitations once and for all. The current standard edition used by most Muslims, is the Hafs edition of the Uthmanic recension, compiled in 796CE but only declared the authoritative version to the exclusion of almost all others5 by King Fahd of Saudi Arabia in 1985CE.

Qu’ranic Sources

Even more problematic than how the Qu’ran has been received is its actual content, which can be shown to be compiled from other pre-existing works and to have significant inaccuracies and contradictions. Many of the stories contained within the Qu’ran, for example that of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Solomon, Jesus and Mary rely heavily on earlier Jewish and Christian writings. Here are just three examples of the Qu’ran borrowing from other sources:

Surah 3: 49, the story of the child Jesus making a sparrow out of clay is taken from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.

Surah 4: 157, the belief that Jesus was not crucified but someone else was changed into Jesus’ likeness and crucified, is recorded as a Gnostic heresy in the book, Against Heresies written by Irenaeus in 180CE.

Surah 18: 9 -25, the seven sleepers legend, is taken from a story recorded by Bishop Jacob of Serugh (450 – 521CE).

The similarity between some of the stories in the Qu’ran and other works extant at the time was noted by early opponents of Mohammed and is itself recorded in Surah 25:5,

‘And they say: "Tales of the ancients, which he has caused to be written: and they are dictated before him morning and evening."

The list of books from which elements of the Qu’ran appear to have been derived includes the Torah (books of Moses) and the Midrash (Jewish Bible commentary), together with apocryphal Christian writings such as The Infancy Gospel of Thomas (written in the late second century CE), the Pseudo-Gospel of Matthew (written in the early to mid-seventh century CE) and the Proto-evangelium of James (written in the mid-second century CE). Some scholars even argue that large sections of the Qu’ran are translations of Christian hymnbooks and prayer books, taken from the Syriac church that was widespread in the region. There is irony that Islamic scholars who decry that the Christian New Testament has been corrupted believe stories about Jesus and Mary derived from far less reliable sources.

Qu’ranic contradictions

Islam declares that the first revelations Mohammed received were while he lived in Mecca, then as now a hot, barren desert location, where he experienced much opposition from idolatrous, polytheistic inhabitants (mushrikun). Yet many of the surahs attributed to this time in Mecca describe a fertile land, where corn, grapes and olives grew abundantly in well-watered lands and numerous cattle grazed. Both cannot be true, Mecca cannot be both barren, inhospitable desert land and well-watered and agriculturally wealthy. Modern Mecca, like ancient Mecca, is a barren place almost completely devoid of water, not a place where there is abundant farming. Mohammed could not have been speaking to people in Mecca when he made those recitations. Similarly, there are also many surahs devoted to trade but Mecca was not a trading centre, being many miles off the nearest trading route and, as noted, devoid of the water resources to support a significant community.7

Another, even clearer evidence for the contradictory nature of the Qu’ran is the difference in tone between the earlier and later surahs. The surahs of the Qu’ran are divided into two parts, the Meccan, believed to have been received by Mohammed during his period in Mecca and the Medinese surahs, received after his flight to Medina in 622CE (the Hegira.) In Mecca, Mohammed and his small group of followers were largely rejected and opposed by the ruling clans; the surahs from that period are peaceful in nature. After the flight to Medina, where he obtained political power as a mediator between different tribes and ethnic groups, his revelations became markedly more warlike, aggressive and violent. His attitude mutated from one of peaceful co-existence to domination, subjugation and even the extermination of opponents. Islamic scholars seek a way around this by invoking an exegetical technique called ‘the Law of Abrogation.’ That is, a surah deemed to have been given later than another with which it conflicts, is deemed to over-ride or nullify the earlier one. This may be a way to avoid the internal theological contradictions of the Prophet’s revelations but it implicitly acknowledges that those contradictions exist. Nor can it disguise that Mohammed became increasingly violent once he had achieved some measure of political power. Either that, or the Mohammed of the Medina surahs is a different person from the Mohammed of the Meccan surahs.

Therefore the Qu’ran, like the Sirat and Hadith, has not come to us an unchanged and trustworthy revelation from God. It is a book heavily influenced by earlier written works, with many internal contradictions, revised and re-written over centuries. Since the written sources of Islam are unreliable, what can we know from other sources about the beginnings of Islam?

Archaeological evidence

As noted, the Qu’ran describes Mecca as a well-watered and fruitful land, which it is not. There is a way of reconciling this, if one abandons the orthodox Islamic narrative for a historical approach that places the rise of Islam in its political context. There is no archaeological evidence for the existence of Mecca until the end of the seventh century, sixty plus years after the presumed death of Mohammed, nor is there any other evidence in other literature or inscriptions of the time. No writings, monuments, coins or artefacts– nothing. The earliest known reference to Mecca is an inscription cut into the rock at Ḥuma al-Numoor, north west of Ṭāʾif, Saudi Arabia, about 60km from Mecca. The inscription declares that it was cut in year 78 (78AH, after Hegira/ 698CE) and the year in which the Masjid al-Haram mosque was built. The Masjid al-Haram is the mosque at Mecca which houses the Ka’aba, the structure which holds the black stone towards which Muslims pray. This is the earliest independent evidence for the existence of a place named Mecca. Archaeological evidence that does exist from early Islam is that of ancient mosques. Extensive field research by Dan Gibson7,8 has revealed that the qibla (the direction of prayer) of the earliest mosques did not point towards Mecca but primarily towards the ancient city of Petra (in modern day Jordan). Both the first mosque at Medina (built 623CE, 2AH) and the original A-Aqsa mosque, Jerusalem (built 705CE) are oriented towards Petra. After the mid-720s CE mosques were built either towards Petra or Mecca and some to a mid-way point or on a parallel axis. It is not until the 780s CE that mosques permanently oriented the direction of prayer towards Mecca. All this coincides with a periods of turmoil and revolution within the Arab empire as the Rashidun Caliphate gave way in quick succession to the Ummayad and Abbasid dynasties and the centre of power moved from Medina, first to Damascus and then Baghdad. That the Qu’ran recounts that Allah allowed Mohammed to change in direction of the qibla towards Mecca (Surah 2: 142- 145) but archaeology shows that mosques were being built facing other directions for over a century after his death is a strong indicator that that part of the Qu’ran is a later addition to the text, probably written into the Qu’ran to create retrospective justification for the change of the centre of the cult from Petra.

If we accept the archaeological evidence that Petra was the focal point of early Islam, many of the other evidences fall into place. Petra had been the stronghold of the Nabataeans, an Arab tribe that had inhabited the region for many centuries, maintaining an independent kingdom prior to conquest by Rome. It was a renowned centre of trade, having once controlled the spice and frankincense caravan trade routes; surviving contracts show that this trade was still thriving until at least the end of the sixth century CE, during Mohammed’s adult life. By the time of the Islamic conquests, the area was ruled by the Ghassanids, an Arab tribe that had migrated north, converted to Christianity and carved out a kingdom for themselves in trans-Jordan and Syria. As allies of Rome they formed an important buffer state between Rome and the Sassanian Persian empire9. Petra was renowned for its supplies of water, from both an abundant river and a sophisticated system of dams and cisterns to collect rain when it fell; the surrounding region did indeed grow the crops mentioned in the Qu’ran. In addition to this Petra possessed a High Place of Sacrifice, a cave that faced the city and a Temple to al-Lat, one of the principle deities mentioned in the infamous ‘Satanic verses’. It was a focus of Arab pilgrimage prior to Islam. Even in the seventh century CE its position on the edge of the Roman empire made it a refuge for unorthodox Christian sects, mystery religions and other deities. It is altogether a far better fit for the teaching and events ascribed to Mohammed’s life than an obscure backwater in the Arabian peninsula of which there is no record or trace from this period. Further than this, its position as a locus of the Arab, Roman and Persian worlds gave it immense strategic value in the conquests made by the Arabs in the decades immediately after the death of Mohammed.

How then did Mecca become the focus of Muslim worship?

The early Islamic empire was riven by civil war and regime change as different Arab tribes and leading members of the Muslim community contended for power. At the time of his sudden death by poisoning in 632CE, Mohammed had united the Arab tribes under his leadership from his power base in Medina. Upon his death Abu Bakr was chosen as leader (Caliph) but he reigned only two years before dying of an illness. Umar was chosen as Abu Bakr’s replacement and ruled for 10 years until his assassination in 644CE. The third Caliph, Uthman reigned until 656CE before his murder by a son of Abu Bakr. At this point Ali, the nephew and adopted son of Mohammed, who had long claimed the position of Caliph for himself, achieved his ambition. Ali however prove to be a divisive choice and a rebellion broke out among the powerful Quraysh tribe, led by Aisha, the youngest of Mohammed’s widows, supported by her nephew al-Zubayr and Talha, two of Mohammed’s ‘Companions’. Mu’awiya, a cousin of the murdered Uthman, also denounced Ali’s succession and was dismissed from his position as Governor of Syria. Despite defeating Aisha’s rebellion at the Battle of the Camel, Ali never gained full control of the empire. Mu’awiya and a radical Muslim group known as the Kharijites10 successfully defied him and in 661CE he was attacked while at prayer in the mosque in Kufa (in modern day Iraq). He died two days later from poisoned wounds. Ali’s son Hasan briefly ascended to the Caliphate but was defeated by a resurgent Mu’awiya in August 661CE. The era of the Rashidun (‘Rightly Guided’) caliphs of early Islam had come to an end and Mu’awiya became the founder of the Ummayad dynasty, in which the empire passed from father to son in a monarchical succession. This civil war, the First Fitna in Islamic history marked the splitting of the Muslim community into the two great parties that dominate to this day, the Shia supporters of Ali and his family right to leadership and the majority Sunni grouping.

Meanwhile al-Zubayr, the youngest of Mohammed’s Companions who had supported Aisha in her failed rebellion, pledged allegiance to Mu’awiya and was given the Governorship of Petra as reward. His allegiance however did not extend to Mu’awiya’s son Yazid and upon Mu’awiya’s death in 680CE he rebelled again and declared himself Caliph. Simultaneously Husayn, another son of former Caliph Ali declared his hand from his base in Khufa. Thus began the Second Fitna or civil war of the Islamic empire, which was to endure for ten years. Based in Petra, al-Zubayr could leverage his position as Companion to Mohammed, guardian of the Masjid Al-Haram, the Ka’aba and the black stone11 to rally support from all the faithful, notably the Abbasid faction of Iraq. This did not extend to the Ummayads who maintained their powerbase in Damascus and engaged the new usurper vigorously. The Caliphate descended into civil strife between al-Zubayr, the Ummayads, the pro-Ali faction of Khufa and other tribal groupings. The Ummayads themselves went through internal turmoil within their Syrian heartlands with rebellions and a the quick turnover of leadership; Yazid died in 683CE, to be briefly replaced by the aging Marwan, who himself died in 685CE to be replaced by his son abd al-Malik, who succeeded in stabilising the Ummayad dynasty. The pro-Ali faction were out of the race by April 687CE after successive defeats and by 690CE abd al-Malik was ready to face al-Zubayr. Having first defeated and killed Mu’sab, al-Zubayr’s brother and field commander, in 692CE he sent his general al-Hajjaj to besiege al-Zubayr in Petra. After a siege lasting 6 to 7 months, the city fell, the Masjid al-Haram and Ka’aba destroyed and al-Zubayr killed; the empire was re-united under one Caliph. Where however was the black stone, the centre-piece of Islamic ritual? That was now in Mecca and had probably been moved there in 685CE by Mu’sab after an earlier, abortive attempt by the Ummayads to besiege Petra. Perhaps wishing to protect the heritage of Arabian worship and the legacy of Mohammed from capture, perhaps wishing consciously wishing to create a new place of pilgrimage for his southern kinsmen and supporters, al-Zubayr had removed the black stone from its ancient sanctuary to a place remote and far removed from the wars that were engulfing the empire, a remote sanctuary in the deep heartland of Arabia.

Caliph abd al-Mailk was now faced with the challenge of re-building the empire and legitimising his rule. He sought to do so by emphasising Arab dominance and religious unity, with building works and coinage incorporating religious texts and motifs; coins that had passages from the Qu’ran instead of images of rulers, significant buildings such as the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca in 698CE and the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem by 705CE. Despite emphasising religious unity, abd al-Malik did not impose religious conformity, perhaps fearing that would be too incendiary for his fragile empire. Seeking peace, he built a new Ka’aba and Masjid al-Haram in Mecca for the black stone and the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem with a qibla pointing towards Petra, accommodating both the new resting place of the black stone and the traditional centre of the religion. Despite abd al-Malik’s best efforts and those of his successors, the Ummayads never acquired the undisputed rule they sought. Over the next 50 years the empire was to expand north, east and west, into the steppes of Asia, the borders of China and across North Africa into Spain and the Pyrenees mountains, but it was marred by continual unrest and rebellion. Eventually the Abbasids, the Iraqi based tribal faction that had once been in league with al-Zubayr, felt strong enough to attempt their own coup. In 750CE after a three year civil war Caliph Marwan II, the last Ummayad ruler of the empire was defeated and the new Abbasid dynasty took control, a dynasty that was to last for 500 years.

History it is said is written by the victors, the same might be said of religion, so often do the two go hand-in-hand. The settling of the empire under Abbasid rule brought to an end the early tumultuous days of Islam. In 762CE the capital was moved from Damascus to the newly built city of Baghdad, reflecting a shift of power from the Arab tribes with their fluid alliances towards a centralised state bureaucracy often run by the same families that had organised the old Persian empire. Petra was fatally damaged by earthquake and flooding in 713CE, declining rapidly after that point and mosques, which had wavered between facing Petra and Mecca since the Hegira in 622CE finally settled upon Mecca, always the favoured location for the Abbasids since their early association with al-Zubayr. As memories of earlier times faded the narrative and text of the Qu’ran and its interpretation were standardised under Abbasid oversight to reflect this new reality, first in the early 10th century by ibn Mujahid, and then again by al-Shatibi in the late 12th century. Islam had become a state religion with its holy text and established rituals, much as we know it today – but not as it was known to Mohammed and his earliest disciples.

To conclude, the written sources upon which Islam depends are untrustworthy in both their composition and their transmission. The Sirat and hadiths both reliant upon men correctly remembering stories over multiple generations and then reliably selecting those to believe. The Qu’ran itself being heavily influenced by previous writings and then altered and corrected multiple times, to create a standard narrative that fitted the requirements of the ruling elite. Meanwhile the archaeological evidence supports a story line that can make some sense of what has been received – but only at the expense of other parts of the common narrative of Islam. We can only conclude that the words of the Qu’ran as received today are unreliable, the person of Mohammed shrouded in mystery, and the development of Mecca as the centre of worship a late development over a century after Mohammed’s death. Islam is therefore not a religion upon which one can rely for spiritual life and assurance.

Footnotes:

1 a revelation Mohammed received but then rejected, having come to believe it was of Satan, not God.

2 Surahs 18 – 20 only, dated 568-645CE. A Surah is a recitation, sometimes described as a ‘Chapter’ of the Qu’ran.

3 Roughly half of the Qu’ran discovered at The Grand Mosque in Sa’ana, Yemen in 1972, dated to pre-671CE. A palimpsest is a text, written over another, the original having been cleaned off the underlying material; the original, underlying text can however still be detected.

4 Uthman in 652CE, ibn Mujahid (d. 936CE), al-Shatibi (1194CE) and al-Jaziri (d. 1429).

5The version most commonly used in North Africa, outside of Egypt, is the Warsh edition from the late eighth /early ninth century CE.

6Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 68, No, 3 (2005), Patricia Crone

7Early Islamic Qiblas, Dan Gibson, Independent Scholars Press, 2017

8 A Statistical Assessment of Early Islamic History and the Qibla: Comparing the Theories of David King and Dan Gibson: https://irispublishers.com/oajaa/pdf/OAJAA.MS.ID.000555.pdf

9After defeat at the Battle of Yarmuk in 636CE, where they fought alongside the Romans, the Ghassanid nobility retreated north into lands still held by the empire. Those that stayed, along with their allies in the Kalb tribe, and the Lakhmids (Arab allies of the Sassanians) became the core of the Arab armies of the Ummayad Caliphs.

10 The Kharijites initially supported Ali, then betrayed him. Based in southern Iraq the sect emphasised piety and equality among Muslims and often took things to violent extremes.

11 The black stone is believed to have fallen from heaven as a gift to Adam after his expulsion from paradise, it is the centre point of Muslim veneration. The black stone is held within a shrine (Ka’aba) which is itself located within the Masjid Al-Haram mosque. Masjid al-Haram means ‘The Forbidden Gathering Place’, the place of pilgrimage within which it is forbidden to kill. Many believe the black stone to be a meteorite. Other meteorites, such as the one once housed in the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, Turkey, which fell from ‘the heavens’, were believed in ancient times to be objects of religious significance.

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