Duvduv

1) Why is there no biography among the Arabs at all of Muhammad for some 200 years after he allegedly died?

2) How could there have been an Islamic caliphate in Damascus under Muawiyya so soon after Muhammed had died?

3) What actual evidence exists supporting the idea of a massive Islamic (as opposed to Arab) conquest of North Africa??

4) Why are so many figures associated with Muhammad never mentioned in the Quran, i.e. Ali??

5) How could Ali and then Hussein have engaged in a "war" with the Damascus Islamic caliphate in Kufa, Iraq which is so far away from Damascus?

6) Why are so many suras in the Quran taken from Jewish midrashic sources such as Midrash Rabba and Pirkei de Rabbi Eliezer though often out of context?

7) Why does the Quran appear to be a cut and paste job involving pre-existing stories from among Jewish-friendly or Christian-friendly sources?

8) Why is there no actual evidence for the existence of any Shia regimes in Islamic history before the Safavvid dynasty of Iran, and why does Shia Islam appear to be a syncretic religion combining elements of historical Islam with Ali veneration and Imamism, which would appear to have been similar but distinct religious movements?

Cheerful Charlie

List of biographies of Muhammad
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...es_of_Muhammad

Sahl ibn Abī Ḥathma (d. in Mu'awiya's reign, i.e., 41-60 AH), was a young companion of the Prophet. Parts of his writings on Maghazi are preserved in the Ansāb of al-Baladhuri, the Ṭabaqāt of Ibn Sa'd, and the works of Ibn Jarir al-Tabari and al-Waqidi.[1]
Abdullah ibn Abbas (d. 78 AH), a companion of Muhammad, his traditions are found in various works of Hadith and Sīra.[1]
Saʿīd ibn Saʿd ibn ʿUbāda al-Khazrajī, another young companion, his writings have survived in the Musnad of Ibn Hanbal and Abī ʿIwāna, and the Tārīkh of al-Tabari.
ʿUrwa ibn al-Zubayr (d. 713). He wrote letters replying to inquiries of the Umayyad caliphs, Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan and al-Walid I, involving questions about certain events that happened in the time of the Prophet. Since Abd al-Malik did not appreciate the maghāzī literature, these letters were not written in story form. He is not known to have written any books on the subject.[2] He was a grandson of Abu Bakr and the younger brother of Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr.
Saʿīd ibn al-Masīb al-Makhzūmī (d. 94 AH), a famous Tābiʿī and one of the teachers of al-Zuhri. His traditions are quoted in the Six major hadith collections, and in the Sīra works of Ibn Ishaq, Ibn Sayyid al-Nās, and others.
Abū Fiḍāla ʿAbd Allāh ibn Kaʿb ibn Mālik al-Anṣārī (d. 97 AH), his traditions were mentioned in Ibn Ishaq and al-Tabari.[1]
Abbān ibn Uthmān ibn Affān (d. 101-105 AH), the son of Uthman. His traditions are transmitted through Malik ibn Anas in his Muwaṭṭaʾ, the Ṭabaqāt of Ibn Sa'd, and in the histories of al-Tabari and al-Yaʿqūbī.[1]
ʿĀmir ibn Sharāḥīl al-Shaʿbī (d. 103 AH), his traditions were transmitted through Abu Isḥāq al-Subaiʿī, Saʿīd ibn Masrūq al-Thawrī, al-Aʿmash, Qatāda, Mujālid ibn Saʿīd, and othersAbū Fiḍāla ʿAbd Allāh ibn Kaʿb ibn Mālik al-Anṣārī (d. 97 AH), his traditions were mentioned in Ibn Ishaq and al-Tabari.[1]


Cheerful Charlie

Duvduv

These are dependent first on Tabari who mentions Abu Ishaq, whose writings did not survive (if they ever existed). Tabari wrote about 200 years after Muhammed allegedly died in 632. Obviously if the Quran itself is a cut and paste job, the it is not hard to assume that the history of the Prophet and his companions is also cut-and-paste with alot of legends.
Please re-examine my initial questions.
However it appears as though most folks on the Board are not interested in this subject, which is unfortunate.

Huon

Perhaps because they did not need one, at that time.

Look at a book of history, the answer needs 10 pages.
Look at a book of history, the answer needs 10 pages.
The Quran is not a book of history.
Look at a book of history, the answer needs 10 pages.
Dunno. The authors and the revisors of the Quran had never heard of Odin, and could not quote Norwegian stories.
And why not ?
Look at a book of history, the answer needs 50 pages.

steve_bnk

I see Moses and Mohammed as similar. Both brought monotheism to a group of tribes. Both borrowed from existing ideas. There was no contemporary corroboration of the existence of Moses.

Neither were recorded in any real time journalistic/historical fashion.

I see Islam and Judaism as having the same questions to be asked. Buddhism as well.

Duvduv

Unfortunately, unlike other threads, no on is so far addressing substantive issues. My list of questions remains unaddressed. There is more to this than generic comments.

Grog

I have been reading this thread for enlightenment, but alas. It's not a subject I know enough to comment on. I wish others would.

I have been meaning to read this book (discussed here on Vridar):

In the Shadow of the Sword

But haven't gotten to it yet. Maybe next (after plantagenets and 1491).

steve_bnk

1. As with the Moses, and Buddha there are no contemporary corroborations and journalistic accounts of the figures. Your question is more of technology and overall literacy issue in those times. There were no professional biographers and historians. There were no data bases. Information was transmitted oral as stories.

2. Why presume the writer(s) had accurate time lines? What are the details of the time line you are questioning?

3. Africa today. Ottoman Empire. Islam displaced Christianity. The Catholic Saint Augustine was African.

4. Who knows why the writers wrote what they did. Unanswerable.

5. Far? Damascus to Baghdad 469 miles as the crow flies. War could mean a few thousand men on each side. Details of the war?

6. All religions seem to borrow. Islam built on Judaism. The sharia laws are not unlike Leviticus types of punishments. We had the debate on the Jewish plagiarism of Gilgamesh. Jewish monotheism had precedents. The Jewish civil and moral codes were not entirely unique.


7. From what I read in the Koran and in several books on Mohammed he presented himself as the last prophet in the Abrahamic line which included Moses and Jesus. He refers to Jews as 'the people of the book' who had lost the true moral compass, brought back by Islam.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_of_the_Book

'...People of the Book (Arabic: أهل الكتاب ‎ ′Ahl al-Kitāb) is a term used to designate non-Muslim adherents to faiths which have a revealed scripture[1] called, in Arabic, Ahl-Al-Kitab (Arabic: أهل الكتاب ‎ "the people of the Book" or "people of the Scripture"). The three[clarification needed] types of adherents to faiths that the Qur'an mentions as people of the book are the Jews, Sabians, Magians and Christians.[clarification needed]

In Islam, the Muslim scripture, the Qur'an, is taken to represent the completion of these scriptures, and to synthesize them as God's true, final, and eternal message to humanity. Because the People of the Book recognize the God of Abraham as the one and only god, as do Muslims, and they practice revealed faiths based on divine ordinances, tolerance and autonomy is accorded to them in societies governed by sharia (Islamic divine law).

In Judaism the term "People of the Book" (Hebrew: עם הספר, Am HaSefer) was used to refer specifically to the Jewish people and the Torah, and to the Jewish people and the wider canon of written Jewish law (including the Mishnah and the Talmud). Adherents of other Abrahamic religions, which arose later than Judaism, were not added.[2] As such, the appellation is accepted by Jews as a reference to an identity rooted fundamentally in Torah.[3]..'

Duvduv

It would be nice to get as substantive on this subject as on the subject of Christianity and even Judaism. So far it's not that much. At least to the extent of addressing the possibility that the Muslim religion and Quran emerged AFTER the establishment of the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad in a manner not unlike what happened under the Constantinian regime.

Minimalist

I recommend Robert Spencer's "Did Mohammed Exist."

It will answer many questions, although not the way the imams want them answered.