Clivedurdle

But that is what Nazarenus argues - someone - (Seneca?) - wrote a play that MML and J witnessed!

Returning to the thread, is tis the earliest external reference to MO?

Battle_of_Mu'tah

states

Laura D.

I think so. Theophanes died around 818, so significantly later. Tammuz mentions other possible sources. I have not fully tracked them down, but I don't put a lot of weight to them.

God bless,


Laura

rlogan

Thanks. I am inferring that these came from the religious sources - is that right?



Not quite. I'm not vested one way or the other with Mohammed since I'm so ignorant here.

If you wish me to make an if/then statement I'm happy to do so: If the record ends up being basically the same, I'm happy to dismiss Mohammed as completely fictional.

I need one very important missing ingredient here in the case of Mohammed.

In the case of the mythical Jesus, I know exactly where the source of the Myth is. The Hebrew Bible. You are pretty new here, but we've had multiple threads over the years on the complete construcetion of Jesus out of HB "Prophesies". It is the "proof" gleefully submitted by christians, in fact, that he is the messiah. Why - it is impossible for all those prophesies to be coincidentally true. I agree completely. It is no coincidence at all!


So in the case of Mohammed, if I am shown the source material as I have been for Jesus - then I am no longer speculating that he is entirely a myth.

Absent that material I would be more inclined to say there is one or more prototype military leader who became fictionalized. I would seek out which one or which ones were the more likely candidates in that case so that again, it is not a matter of speculation.

In the case of Robin Hood, for example, there are a couple of candidate personages one can point to as potential prototypes for the myth. This is the right thing to do - not end at a void of speculation. Fill the void with the argument from best explanation. Find the most likely source.

Laura D.

No, I am sorry if I misled you. I did not go to religious sources. My data is derived from Phillip Hitti's History of the Arabs (or via: amazon.co.uk) and the Wiki entry on Muhammad (with related side-entries). The "517" date is my reversal of "571". I selected the 571 date given by Phillip Hitti. Wiki cites a 570 date.

So, is it fair to state that your opinion as to Muhammad's historicity based solely on the source material identified to date in this thread is that he is fictional. But if additional source material surfaces, it might be appropriate to move him to Robin Hood status, e.g., military leader subsequently fictionalized.

I think it a fair inference that Muhammad had either oral or written access to the words and ideas in the Hebrew Torah and some access to Christian theology: hence the references to Jerusalem and Jesus. But as far as additional material, the North Arabians did not have a written language or were in the process of developing a written language in the time of Muhammad. So I do not believe we have readable pre-Islamic written source material. We do have the writings of Islamic scholars in the period after 632 who undertook to record pre-Islamic poetry, stories, and history.

In addition, there was an active caravan culture. Mecca was a trade city (not a particularly significant one). It drew polytheistic pilgrims who traveled to Mecca to see a variety of gods kept on hand (a revenue source for pre-Islamic Meccans). Muhammad destroyed those figures when he assumed the town's leadership if we go with the religious sources.

I am not sure that material is available. If you accept the writings (generally some years after Muhammad's death) of Islamic religious scholars (sadly, this is primarily what we have), we have some translated material. But my understanding is at times they excised ideas offensive to Islam.

rlogan

I see.


I am trying to be sincere with you and not play any kind of games -

I've been on IIDB for about three years and prior to that had read from an eclectic list. It took a couple of years since landing at IIDB to really develop a firm idea of my personal "argument from best explanation" on Jesus.

I think the prudent thing for a 'dozer operator to do is say the information provided is too sketchy to say much except that already I see there has been quite a lot of exaggeration to say the least.

I would normally check into the background of Phillip Hitti to see what I thought of him as a source. Just being honest here that if I saw he was a Christian fundy vs. a secular historian it would make a difference to me.

I have no hesitation to accepting Mohammed as a complete myth or a composite or what have you as the case may be.



I see. That poses an interesting problem, and I do not have the skills to speak to how one approaches the oral history "source" material.

It may then be that as spin is fond of reminding us - we should end up as agnostics. Just not enough reliable information to say one way or the other.


I imagine so.

Laura D.

Phillip Hitti is a scholar born in 1886 in Lebanon. He acted as a Professor of Semitic Literature and the Chairman of the Department of Oriental Languages at Princeton. I do not believe he was Moslem. I think he was a Maronite Christian (my memory may be playing tricks). I use his text as a go-to source for quick answers regarding Arab history.

He is a traditional historian. He worked in an earlier era. He worked with original sources, which is necessary, because even today, a significant body of older manuscripts remain to be translated out of the original Arabic.

In some ways, working with original source material in Arabic is more difficult than the Hebrew and Greek texts. We don't have the same access to translated sources on the Internet. This is slowly changing. You can access some of these texts (both copies and originals) at universities. The University of Arizona has a large body of ancient Islamic texts. But I have to confess, I found working with these texts very, very difficult (I was doing a comparative study involving pre-Islamic poetry).

And to those continuing this thread, I throw out a quick link that might stimulate areas of research: http://www.democraticunderground.com...ress=214x70565.

God bless,


Laura

Clivedurdle

What languages was this pre islamic poetry in?

Earlier you mentioned Meccan caravan routes. I thought there was doubt about if mo actually operated in that area, and that there was not actually much there!

Clivedurdle

Is one hundred years later really the earliest external coroboration? Who conquered North Africa and Spain?

Laura D.

Arabic. During the extant period, Arabic had two principal dialects:

(1) South Arabic, spoken in Yemen with variants such as Sabaen, Himyarite, Minaean, and the related kindred dialects of the Mahra and Shirh; and

(2) North Arabic (Arabic as we know it today), spoken in Arabia generally, exclusive of Yemen.

By 600 CE, South Arabic had pretty much died. But we do have the living, independent languages of Mahri and Socotri that developed from South Arabian via the ancient Sabaen language.

We read of South Arabic inscriptions collected from European travelers. People claim there exist exemplars of written South Arabic dating back to 800 BCE. A lot of the scholars who worked with translating the South Arabic inscriptions and documented that process are in German. My high school German is not up to the task.

And of course, you have many Arab sources. But virtually all of these sources come from Islamic scholars.

The pre-Islamic literature I studied is akin to Homer's Illiad. It represents oral traditions written down 200 to 300 years after the fact. It's preserved and written down post Islamic period. You see similarities in the Qu'ran to some of these pre-Islamic poetic forms. But again, these oral traditions are written down much later and are written down generally by Islamic scholars. Moreover, I did not date any of these materials personally, so for now, we can dismiss them from consideration.

Well, as a matter of principle, yes, doubt exists as to (1) whether Muhammad operated in Mecca; and (2) doubt exists as to whether Mecca existed during the 570 to 622 period. We have yet to see evidence in this thread that Mecca existed or that anyone inhabited North Arabia during the 570 to 622 period.

The push into North Africa started in 644 and continued through 709 when they had it all. From 665 to 689, the Moslems pushed hard into North Africa. They took out Spain between 711 and 718. So you have external coroboaration that Moslems had engaged in military conquest. And even that they did so in the name of a Muhammad.

Tammuz

This is not entirely correct. Poetry was the passion of the Arabs. They lived hard lives in a harsh land, they moved their herds, they fought each other and so on. But poetry was their love, and poets were highly regarded in the society. In Mecca there was a poetry competition each year, and the victor poet got to hang his poem on Kaba for a year. I assume that the hanged poems must have been written (they didn't have any soundtrackers). Islamic Awareness (a Muslim apologist site) has a list of pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions: http://www.islamic-awareness.org/His.../Inscriptions/

Indeed. When Fatima, the daughter of Muhammed was repeating the verse 54:1, she met the daughter of Imrul Qays (an ancient Arabian poet who died several decades before Muhammed's birth) who heard Fatima's repeating, and she cried out: "O that’s what your father has taken from one of my father’s poems, and calls it something that has come down to him out of heaven".

This is true. Patricia Crone has theorized that Muhammed operated in some city that is located in modern Iraq. And I think that a few of the early mosques found weren't pointing towards Mecca.

As in regards to the question of the historicity of Muhammed, I would like to point out that hardly any historian today doubts that he existed. Neither Patricia Crone or Ibn Warraq, who are minimalists when it comes to Islamic history, seems to doubt that Muhammed ibn Abdullah existed as a historical figure. Though this is appeal to authority, but still.