Revisionist school of Islamic studies

The revisionist school of Islamic studies (also historical-critical school of Islamic studies and skeptic-revisionist Islamic historians) is a movement in Islamic studies that questions traditional Muslim narratives of Islam's origins.

Until the early 1970s, non-Muslim Islamic scholars—while not accepting accounts of divine intervention—did accept Islam's origin story "in most of its details", and accepted the reliability of its traditional literary sources – tafsir (commentaries on the Quran), hadith (accounts of what the Islamic prophet Muhammad approved or disapproved of), and sira (biography of Muhammad). Revisionists instead use a "source-critical" approach to this literature, as well as studying relevant archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics and contemporary non-Arabic literature. They believe these methodologies provide "hard facts" and an ability to crosscheck, whereas traditional Islamic accounts—written 150 to 250 years after Muhammad—are/were subject to biases of and embellishments by the authors and transmitters.



The school is thought to have originated in the 1970s and includes (or included) scholars such as John Wansbrough and his students Andrew Rippin, Norman Calder, G. R. Hawting, Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, as well as Günter Lüling, Yehuda D. Nevo and Christoph Luxenberg. It is "by no means monolithic" and while its proponents share "methodological premises", they have offered "conflicting accounts of the Arab conquests and the rise of Islam". It is sometimes contrasted with "traditionist" historians of Islam who do accept the traditional origin story, though adherence to the two approaches is "usually implicit" rather than "stated openly".

Main theses
The events in early Islamic times have to be newly researched and reconstructed with the help of the historical-critical/source critical method (the process of evaluating the validity, reliability, relevance, etc., of a source, to the subject under investigation). Revisionists are unwilling to rely on the Quran and Hadith. Based on alternate primary sources from the surrounding milieus, they argue that Islam started as a monotheistic movement that included Arabs and Jews alike. This movement arose at the northern fringe of the Arabian peninsula, close to the Byzantine and Persian Empires. The change of the qibla, the direction of prayer, from Jerusalem to Mecca may be an echo of this earlier movement. A group of researchers rejected the historical existence of Muhammad and stated that what was said about him was not a historical, but a legendary figure (as well as Jesus and Moses). According to Volker Popp, Ali and Muhammad were not names, but titles of these figures.

The revisionists view the Islamic expansion as a secular Arab expansion; only after the ascension of the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750 CE) was an exclusive Arabian Islamic identity shaped, shifting the origin narrative to the Arabian peninsula. In broader outline the revisionists argue that:

Nature of early Islam

 * Islam did not rise among polytheistic pagans in Mecca, but in a milieu where Jewish and Christian texts were well-known. The "infidels" were not pagan polytheists but monotheists who were polemically considered to deviate slightly from monotheism (G.R. Hawting, Fred Doner).
 * The connection between Muslims and Jews was very close in the early times of Islam. Jews too were called "believers" and were part of the ummah. Anti-Jewish texts such as, for example, the account of the slaughter of the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza came into being long after Muhammad when Islam had separated from Judaism (Fred Donner).

Consolidation of religious authority

 * In the beginning, secular and spiritual power were united in the person of the caliph. There were no special religious scholars. Religious scholars came into being only later and conquered the spiritual power from the caliphs (Patricia Crone, Martin Hinds).

Location of early Islam

 * The geographical descriptions in the Quran and later traditions do not fit Mecca. They rather point to a place somewhere in north-western Arabia, e.g. Petra in Jordan (Patricia Crone, Michael Cook).

Expansion of Islam

 * The Islamic expansion was probably not Islamic, religiously motivated, expansion, but a secular, Arab expansion. The expansion did not yet result in oppression of the non-Muslim population (Robert G. Hoyland).

Reshaped identity of early Islam

 * After Muhammad there were at least two phases which were of major importance for the formation of Islam in its later shape:
 * The Umayyad Caliphate (661–750 CE), especially Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (647–705), shaped the Islamic narrative, creating an exclusive Arabian Islamic identity (Donner). Under the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem was built. There the word "Islam" appears for the first time. Until this moment the Muslims called themselves simply "believers", and coins were minted in the Arabic empire showing Christian symbols. Abd al-Malik also plays a major role in the reworking of the Quranic text (Patricia Crone, Michael Cook).
 * It was during the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258) that practically all Islamic traditional texts about Islam's beginnings were written. The Abbasids, as the victorious party in the conflict with the Umayyads, had great interest in legitimizing their rule. This motivation obviously crept into the traditional texts (Patricia Crone).

Influence of conquered peoples

 * Patricia Crone argues that Sharia law was founded not on traditions of rasul allah, the messenger of God, Muhammad, but on the law "of the Near East as it had developed under Alexander. The Muslim sifted and systematized this law in the name of God, imprinting it with their own image in the process." This provincial law that "the Umayyad caliphate in general and Muawiya in particular" employed, became what we now call sharia after a "long period of adjustments by the ulama".
 * Robert G. Hoyland also argues that if the basis for sharia was the doings and sayings of Muhammad, these must have been carefully noted and carefully transmitted to later ulama by the early salaf generation. But this doctrine is belied by quotes of early (salaf) Islamic scholars who specifically deny common use of hadith of Muhammad:
 * "I spent a year sitting with Abdullah ibn Umar (son of the second Caliph, d.693) and I did not hear him transmit anything from the prophet";
 * "I never heard Jabir ibn Zayd (d. ca. 720) say 'the prophet said ...' and yet the young men round here are saying it twenty times an hour".
 * According to Tom Holland, the conquering Arab warriors were overwhelmingly illiterate, while the early Ulama (the class of guardians, transmitters and interpreters of religious knowledge in Islam) consisted overwhelmingly of conquered peoples—namely Zoroastrians and Jews—who converted to Islam and had a strong scholarly tradition.

Textual integrity of the Quran

 * The Quranic text as is in use today shows many differences to the earliest existing manuscripts. A core part of the Quran may derive from Muhammad's annunciations, yet some parts of the Quran were definitively added later or were reworked later. In addition to this, many small deviations came into the text as with other ancient texts which were manually copied and copied again (John Wansbrough).
 * The existence and significance of Muhammad as a historical person depends especially on the question whether any, and if so, how many, parts of the Quran can be attributed to his time, or whether all or most parts of the Quran came into being only after Muhammad's time. The researchers' opinions differ over this question (Yehuda D. Nevo). Fred Donner suggests an early date for the Quran. (This thesis has been abandoned by many in the 21st century thanks to studies and dating of early manuscripts. Michael Cook, who earlier supported it, says recent studies are "a testimony to the continuing accuracy of the transmission of the variants". Tom Holland also agrees that "the evidence seems to suggest" that the contemporary standard Quran "was uttered by Muhammad in the period that Muslim tradition has insisted that he lived".)
 * The Quran is not written in a "pure" Arabic as the Syriac language seems to have had a certain influence on the language of the Quran which was forgotten later. This could be a possible explanation of why a fifth of the Quranic text is difficult to understand (Karl-Heinz Ohlig).

Origins and methodology
The influence of the different tendencies in the study of Islam in the West has waxed and waned. Ibn Warraq believes "the rise of this revisionist school" may be dated from the Fifth colloquium of the Near Eastern History Group of Oxford University in July 1975, and Robert Hoyland believes revisionists were ascendant in the 1970s and 1980s.

Until the early 1970s, non-Muslim Islamic scholars—while not accepting accounts of divine intervention—did accept its origin story "in most of its details", and accepted the reliability of tafsir (commentaries on the Quran), hadith (accounts of what the Islamic prophet Muhammad approved or disapproved of), and sira (biography of the prophet). Revisionists instead use a "source-critical" approach to this literature, as well as studying relevant archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics and contemporary non-Arabic literature. They believe these methodologies provide "hard facts" and an ability to crosscheck, whereas traditional Islamic accounts—written 150 to 200 years after Muhammad—are/were subject to biases of and embellishments by the authors and transmitters.

Post-War scholarship
From World War II to sometime around the mid-1970s, there was what scholar Charles Adams describes as "a distinctive movement in the West, represented in both religious circles and the universities, whose purpose" was to show both a "greater appreciation of Islamic religiousness" and to foster "a new attitude toward it" and in doing so make "restitution for the sins of unsympathetic, hostile, or interested approaches that have plagued the [pre-World War II] tradition of Western Orientalism". Herbert Berg gives Wilfred Cantwell Smith and W. Montgomery Watt as examples of proponents of this "irenic" approach to Islamic history, and notes that the approach necessarily clashed with the questions and potential answers of revisionists since these clashed with Islamic doctrine.

Studies of Hadith
The revisionist school has been said to be based on the study of Hadith literature by Islamic scholars Ignác Goldziher (1850–1921) and Joseph Schacht (1902–1969), who argued that the traditional Islamic accounts about Islam's early times—written 150 to 250 years after Muhammad—cannot be relied on as historical sources. Goldziher argued (in the words of R.S. Humphreys), "that a vast number of hadith accepted even in the most rigorously critical Muslim collections were outright forgeries from the late 8th and 9th centuries—and as a consequence, that the meticulous isnads which supported them were utterly fictitious".

Schacht argued Islamic law was not passed down without deviation from Muhammad but "developed [...] out of popular and administrative practice under the Umayyads, and this practice often diverged from the intentions and even the explicit wording of the Koran ... norms derived from the Koran were introduced into Muhammadan law almost invariably at a secondary stage."

Extension of hadith-arguments
The revisionists extended this argument beyond hadith to other facets of Islamic literature—sira (Muhammad's biography), the history of the Quran's formation, and the historical developments under the first Islamic dynasty, the Umayyad Caliphate. The true historical events in the earliest times of Islam have to be newly researched and reconstructed (revisionists believe) by applying the historical-critical method, or alternately, in the words of Cook and Crone, historian must "step outside the Islamic tradition altogether and start again". This requires using the
 * 1) "source-critical approach to both the Koran and the Muslim literary accounts of the rise of Islam, the Conquest and the Umayyad period";
 * 2) comparing traditional accounts with
 * 3) accounts from the seventh and eighth century CE that are external to the Muslim tradition;
 * 4) archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics from the seventh and eighth century CE—sources which should be preferred when there is a conflict with Muslim literary sources.

Revisionists believe that the results of these methods indicates that (among other things) the break between the religion, governance, culture of the pre-Islamic Persian and Byzantine civilization, and that of the 7th century Arab conquerors was not as abrupt as the traditional history describes (an idea advanced in the statement of the Fifth colloquium of the Near Eastern History Group of Oxford University). Colloquium organizers argued that if "we begin by assuming that there must have been some continuity, we need either go beyond the Islamic sources or [...] reinterpret them".

Heyday of the revisionist school
Hoyland believes the "heyday" of revisionism occurred sometime before the 1980s, when the "public profile of Islam" increased "massively" and (Hoyland argues) the "left-leaning" tendency of Western academics "shy" of criticizing Islam, "favored the traditionalist [i.e. pre-revisionist] approach", while "pushing skeptics/revisionists to become more extreme". (Hoyland seeks to find a middle way between revisionism and uncritical "traditionalism".)

The designation Revisionism was coined first by the opponents of the new academic movement and is used by them partially still today with a less than positive connotation. Then, the media took up this designation in order to call the new movement with a concise catchword. Today, the adherents of the new movement also use Revisionism to designate themselves, yet mostly written in quotation marks and with a slightly self-mocking undertone.

Major representatives
Among the "foremost" proponents of revisionism are John Wansbrough (1928–2002), Patricia Crone (1945–2015), Michael Cook, Yehuda D. Nevo (1932–1992), and Fred M. Donner. The new movement originated at the SOAS (School of Oriental & African Studies) at the University of London with the publications of two works by Wansbrough: Quranic Studies (1977) and The Sectarian Milieu (1978). Andrew Rippin (1950–2016), Norman Calder, G. R. Hawting, Patricia Crone and Michael Cook were students of Wansbrough. In 1977 Crone and Cook published Hagarism, which postulated—among other things—that Islam was established after, not before, the Arab conquests and that Mecca was not the original Islamic sanctuary. Later, both distanced themselves from the theses of Hagarism as too far reaching, but continued to "challenge both Muslim and Western orthodox views of Islamic history". Martin Hinds (1941–1988), also studied at SOAS and Robert G. Hoyland was a student of Patricia Crone.

In Germany at the Saarland University, Günter Lüling (1928–2014) and Gerd-Rüdiger Puin focused on the historical-critical research of the development of the Quran starting in the 1970s, and in the 2000s, Karl-Heinz Ohlig, Volker Popp, Christoph Luxenberg and Markus Groß argued that Muhammad was a legendary, not historical figure. Hans Jansen from the Netherlands published a work in 2005/7 arguing in detail why (he believed) known accounts of Muhammad's life were legendary. Yehuda D. Nevo also questioned the historicity of Muhammad. Sven Kalisch, a convert to Islam, taught Islamic theology before leaving the faith in 2008 when he questioned the historicity of Mohammad (as well as Jesus and Moses).

James A. Bellamy has done textual criticism of the Quran and his proposed "emendations", i.e. corrections of the traditional text of the Quran. Fred Donner, in his several books on early Islamic history has argued that only during the reign Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (685–705) did the early ecumenical monotheism of the Arab conquerors begin to separate from Christians and Jews.

Popular historian Tom Holland's work In the Shadow of the Sword (2012) has popularized the new research results and depicted a possible synthesis of the various revisionist approaches.

Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World (1977)
In Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World, Patricia Crone and Michael Cook set aside traditional Islamic history to draw on archaeological evidence and contemporary documents in Arabic, Armenian, Coptic, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin and Syriac. They depict a 7th-century Arab conquest of Byzantine and Persian lands that is not yet "Islamic". According to various sources the conquered people (Greek Magaritai, Syriac Mahgre or Mahgraye) call their conquerors "Hagarenes" rather than Muslims. Instead of being inspired to conquest by a new prophet, holy book and religion, the Arabs are described as being in alliance with the Jews, following a Jewish messianism to reclaim the Promised Land from the Byzantine Empire. The Qur'an came later (according to the authors) as a product of 8th-century edits of various materials drawn from a variety of Judeo-Christian and Middle-Eastern sources while Muhammad was the herald of Umar "the redeemer", a Judaic messiah.

Patricia Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (1987)
In Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam, Patricia Crone argues that Mecca could not have been a hub of overland trade from Southern Arabia to Syria in the time of Muhammad for several reasons. It was not on the overland trade route from Southern Arabia to Syria, but even if it had been, that land route was not very important compared to the maritime trade route, and ceased to be used by the end of the second century CE at latest. Meccan trade, except for Yemeni perfume, was mainly in cheap leather goods and clothing, and occasionally, in basic foodstuffs, which were not exported north to Syria (which already had plenty of them), but to nearby regions. Furthermore, the literature of Arab trading partners who kept track of Arab affairs (Greek, Latin, Syriac, Aramaic, Coptic) makes no mention "of Quraysh (the tribe of Mohammed) and their trading center Mecca". All of which suggests traditional "histories" passed down about Muhammad's life as a Meccan merchant traveling far and wide and suffering at the hands of powerful Meccan tribes are "pure fabrications", and it is far more likely Muhammad's career took place not in Mecca and Medina or in southwest Arabia at all, but in northwest Arabia.

Hans Jansen, De Historische Mohammed (2005/2007)
The arguments against the plausibility of the classical Islamic traditions about Islam's beginnings were summarized by Hans Jansen in his work De Historische Mohammed. Jansen points out that because of the cryptic nature of the Quran, which usually alludes to events rather than describing them, and seldom describes the situation for which a revelation was made, the historically questionable traditions are of great importance for the interpretation and understanding of the Quran. Many Islamic traditions came into being long after Muhammad on the basis of mere guesses for what situation a Quranic verse had been revealed. Because of these historically questionable traditions, the interpretation of the Quran has been restricted ever since.

Non-scholarly
Ibn Warraq, an author known for his criticism of Islam, has compiled several revisionist essays in his book, The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. Fred Donner, reviewing the book, notes that by favoring Wansbrough's school of revisionism, the author presents a "one-sided selection" that fails to consider the challenges to this line of revisionism. The result is "a book that is likely to mislead many an unwary general reader."

Robert Spencer, a notable Islam critic, wrote a popular work on Islamic Revisionist Studies called Did Muhammad Exist?.

Criticism of revisionism
The consequent historical-critical analysis of early Islam met severe resistance in the beginning since then provocative theses with far-reaching meaning were published without sufficient evidence. Especially Patricia Crone's and Michael Cook's book Hagarism (1977) stirred up a lot of harsh criticism. Important representatives of Revisionism like Crone and Cook meanwhile distanced themselves from such radical theses and uncautious publications.

Criticism is expressed by researchers like Tilman Nagel, who aims at the speculative nature of some theses and shows that some revisionists lack some scholarly standards. On the other hand, Nagel accepts the basic impulse of the new movement, to put more emphasis on the application of the historical-critical method. A certain tendency to take revisionists seriously becomes obvious e.g. by the fact that opponents address their criticism not any longer to "revisionism" alone but to "extreme revisionism" or "ultra-revisionism".

Gregor Schoeler discusses the revisionist school and depicts the early controversies. Schoeler considers revisionism to be too radical yet welcomes the general impulse: "To have made us thinking about this all and much more remarkable things for the first time—or again, is without any doubt a merit of the new generation of the 'skeptics'."

François de Blois, who is Teaching Fellow at the Department of the Study of Religions at SOAS, London, rejects the application of the historical-critical method to Islamic texts. He argues that this method was developed with Christian texts in mind, and thus, although it has been accepted as sound to be applied universally to any text (religious or not), there is no reason to apply this method to Islamic texts.