Prophetic times

The subject here is colossal, covering a substantial stretch of the later Roman empire, the last years of the Persian empire, the conversion of the Arabs, the spread of Christianity and what happened to Judaism. The time span runs, effectively, from the death of Jesus to the moment in the eighth century when the Abbasids acquired through violence the vast empire of the Umayyads, stretching from the Loire to the Hindu Kush, and founded Baghdad. The title of Tom Holland’s book is rather studiously general, but his central topic is unmistakable: the founding and establishment of Islam and its political and martial setting.

If Holland didn’t want to make a point of this in his title, one couldn’t blame him. The traditional account of the first days of Islam, the revelation of the Qu’ran to the Prophet Mohammed from 610, the unbroken line of authentic hadiths, or sayings, from the Prophet’s time to this, the details of the Prophet’s autobiography — all these are still strenuously upheld by most Islamic scholars.

There may be a reason for this. Scholars in recent years who have raised questions about the Prophet, or who have suggested that the Qu’ran has changed over time, or who have even discussed the sources in detail have found themselves driven into exile, defenestrated, or subjected to death threats. People have said since the 11th century AD that Moses could not possibly be the author of the first five books of the Bible. Suggesting anything remotely similar now about the Qu’ran is to condemn you to an existence where the gendarmerie have to accompany your children to school every day.

Actually, there is much evidence in support of some aspects of the traditional narrative, including for the Prophet’s existence. We know that the Arabs started numbering their years from the moment of revelation from documentary evidence from very soon after the Prophet’s recorded death.

There is internal evidence in the Qu’ran that it was, indeed, composed during the period of the Prophet’s lifetime — sura 30, verse 1 alludes to the loss of Palestine to the Persian emperor Khusrow II in 614.