Freethought & Rationalism Archive

stephan huller · 12-22-2012, 11:47 PM

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...-a-874048.html

mountainman · 12-23-2012, 12:46 AM

Yule dates the image to the time around 530 AD

Shafeesthoughts · 12-23-2012, 07:15 AM

Very interestingly confirms what Muslims know about their early
history.

Duvduv · 12-23-2012, 09:17 AM

I don't see in this article any direct link between this "kingdom" and the advent of Islam. The idea of the "triumph" of Islam in the 7th century is also merely an internal Islamic claim. There is no evidence (even archeological) that the sweep of the Arabs in the 7th-8th century involved followers of the Islamic religion as we know it or followers of the Quran offered by one "Mohammed."

Clivedurdle · 12-23-2012, 10:01 AM

Tom Holland Shadow of the Sword discusses this.

Quote:

“I had read Karen Armstrong, Barnaby Rogerson and these biographies of Mohammed, and I assumed that the sources for his life and for the early conquests were pretty solid. I thought that we would have the equivalent of a Cicero or a Caesar, contemporaries writing about it that would give us at least a rough sense of the narrative. And then to discover that the first mention of Mohammad in Arabic is almost 60 years after his death and that the first datable mention of his life isn’t until 200 years after his death, and that the first mention of Mecca outside the Koran isn’t until 100 years after his death – and that it is located in Iraq – it makes you think, well, this is odd.”

This lack of historical sources isn’t seen as a problem for Muslims, to whom the Koran is the very speech of God, unedited by human hand. No text could possibly be holier. To a Muslim, the Koran offers all the explanation anyone could possibly need of how a sophisticated religion could suddenly spring up, uncontaminated by all other religions, in a desert.

Yet Holland isn’t a believer. So rather than interpret the Koran as the revealed word of God, he sees it as a sophisticated ancient text which is plugged into currents and trends reaching back for centuries. To Holland, all the monotheistic religions – Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam – influence each other, even at when they start separating themselves out into codified religions.

Did he begin the book with this thesis in mind? “It was inchoately there. Having written Millennium, what struck me was how long it took the states of what became Christian Europe to get over the Roman Empire. It takes a long time for Roman Europe to become Christian medieval Europe. And I thought the same about this period. Can it really be the case that a switch gets flicked and then suddenly Persia and the Roman Near-East becomes Islamic? Civilizations don’t change like that. It must be a more gradual process.”

In the absence of contemporary sources on early Islam, Holland draws heavily on his knowledge of the empires eclipsed by its rise and of the Near East and of pre-Islamic society. The sixth century plagues that wiped out a third of the population of the Near East (but to which the nomads of the desert seemed immune), the Christian mystics in the Syrian desert, the rebellions that weakened the Persian empire, the decades-long wars waged by Constantinople, the spread of sects into Arabia – all have their part in this story.

Holland, who employed a Syriac and Arabic-speaking researcher but relied on his own Greek and Latin, emphasises that such a wide-ranging approach has its benefits. “All of the fields of study in this book are ones which take a lifetime of scholarship to really become an expert in – we’re talking Koranic scholarship, the history of early Islam, Roman, Persian and Talmudic studies. But when you look at them all together, you realise that the experts in various disciplines are hardly ever aware of what is going on in other, parallel, ones. Maybe it takes a fool to rush in where angels fear to tread …”

http://carnageandculture.blogspot.co...hor-of-in.html

Duvduv · 12-23-2012, 10:30 AM

One of the most interesting things I have found is that no contemporary Jewish sources ever describe anything about an official Islam in the first centuries (i.e. any of the writings/responsa of the gaonim of Babylonia). In the writings attributed to the early "Karaite" Anan ben David in Baghdad, nothing about the practices and beliefs about "Muslims" is ever even mentioned.

aa5874 · 12-23-2012, 04:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Duvduv

One of the most interesting things I have found is that no contemporary Jewish sources ever describe anything about an official Islam in the first centuries (i.e. any of the writings/responsa of the gaonim of Babylonia). In the writings attributed to the early "Karaite" Anan ben David in Baghdad, nothing about the practices and beliefs about "Muslims" is ever even mentioned.

The reason why there is nothing about Muslisms is simply because the writings of the early "Karaite" Anan ben David were interpolated or redacted. :banghead:

Duvduv · 12-23-2012, 04:26 PM

Why would that be the case? The Karaites wrote in Hebrew and Aramaic, and it would be very easy to make references to the religion of the Arabs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

Quote:

Originally Posted by Duvduv

One of the most interesting things I have found is that no contemporary Jewish sources ever describe anything about an official Islam in the first centuries (i.e. any of the writings/responsa of the gaonim of Babylonia). In the writings attributed to the early "Karaite" Anan ben David in Baghdad, nothing about the practices and beliefs about "Muslims" is ever even mentioned.

The reason why there is nothing about Muslisms is simply because the writings of the early "Karaite" Anan ben David were interpolated or redacted. :banghead:

Tenorikuma · 12-23-2012, 05:54 PM

I don't know if it's relevant, but there was a recent article at The Bible and Interpretation about how Jewish and Christian artists throughout the Medieval period (and sometimes right until the 20th century) depicted the Dome of the Rock mosque as the Jewish temple.

It seems that from the time it was built, Jews and Christians regarded the mosque as a continuation or reconstruction of Herod's (or Solomon's) temple, rather than as belonging to a foreign religion.

sotto voce · 12-23-2012, 07:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tenorikuma

I don't know if it's relevant, but there was a recent article at The Bible and Interpretation about how Jewish and Christian artists throughout the Medieval period (and sometimes right until the 20th century) depicted the Dome of the Rock mosque as the Jewish temple.

It seems that from the time it was built, Jews and Christians regarded the mosque as a continuation or reconstruction of Herod's (or Solomon's) temple, rather than as belonging to a foreign religion.

A pope kissed a Koran. There was and remains nothing to choose between 'Judaism', papism and Mohammedanism, bar cosmetics, so such cosiness would be unsurprising.

12-22-2012, 11:47 PM	#1
stephan huller Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: seattle, wa Posts: 9,337	Buried Christian Empire Casts New Light on Early Islam http://www.spiegel.de/international/...-a-874048.html

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12-23-2012, 12:46 AM	#2
mountainman Contributor Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Falls Creek, Oz. Posts: 11,192	Yule dates the image to the time around 530 AD

12-23-2012, 07:15 AM	#3
Shafeesthoughts Regular Member Join Date: Apr 2012 Location: London Posts: 379	Very interestingly confirms what Muslims know about their early history.

12-23-2012, 09:17 AM	#4
Duvduv Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: USA Posts: 4,095	I don't see in this article any direct link between this "kingdom" and the advent of Islam. The idea of the "triumph" of Islam in the 7th century is also merely an internal Islamic claim. There is no evidence (even archeological) that the sweep of the Arabs in the 7th-8th century involved followers of the Islamic religion as we know it or followers of the Quran offered by one "Mohammed."

12-23-2012, 10:30 AM	#6
Duvduv Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: USA Posts: 4,095	One of the most interesting things I have found is that no contemporary Jewish sources ever describe anything about an official Islam in the first centuries (i.e. any of the writings/responsa of the gaonim of Babylonia). In the writings attributed to the early "Karaite" Anan ben David in Baghdad, nothing about the practices and beliefs about "Muslims" is ever even mentioned.

12-23-2012, 05:54 PM	#9
Tenorikuma Regular Member Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: Japan Posts: 156	I don't know if it's relevant, but there was a recent article at The Bible and Interpretation about how Jewish and Christian artists throughout the Medieval period (and sometimes right until the 20th century) depicted the Dome of the Rock mosque as the Jewish temple. It seems that from the time it was built, Jews and Christians regarded the mosque as a continuation or reconstruction of Herod's (or Solomon's) temple, rather than as belonging to a foreign religion.

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