Did Muhammad really die after the onset of the Muslim conquest of the Near East? This four-decade-old question in the study of early Islamic history has found new urgency after the publication of a new monograph dedicated to this topic. Since posting the announcement for my talk 
next month on the subject I’m being asked if the lecture will be recorded (the answer to which is no, unfortunately we can’t afford such luxuries). I’ve written a rather detailed paper on this subject which is currently under review. But for those interested, I want to do a
thread summarising my observations on some of the evidence. Firstly, I have to say that it’s impossible to give a short answer to this question. The only short answer I would give is ‘yes and no’. No, partly because of the reasons that I’m going to spell out presently, and yes,
because despite the fact that I think a revision of Muhammad’s date of death is unwarranted, my reconstruction of the evidence is at such stark odds with the traditional narrative that it’s impossible to say it vindicates it. But let’s go through the actual evidence for a late
date of death for Muhammad. The evidence culled by Stephen Shoemaker in his 2011 book is varied and heterogeneous. In this thread I will only go through three Christian sources, the Mozarabic Chronicle of 754, the Syriac Chronicle of 775, and the Chronicle of Zuqnīn. Those
interested may consult my article on the papyrus fragment J. David-Weill 20 for a fuller treatment, here: academia.edu/31246167. The Syriac Chronicle of 775 is believed to have been composed immediately after the accession of the Abbasid caliph al-Mahdī to the throne in 1087 of
the Alexandrian era (AG)/158 of the Muslim calendar (AH). This is what the chronicler’s brief account has to say about the rise of Islam and the conquests:
The date of 930 AG (618-19 CE) has long perplexed scholars, but as I have argued in the above-mentioned paper, it is an erroneous reference to the epoch of the Muslim calendar, traditionally identified with Muhammad’s immigration (hijra) to Medina (an identification I accept here
for the sake of argument). How do we know this? The epoch of the Muslim calendar falls on 933 AG. As mentioned above, the date of the composition of this chronicle is 1087 AG, or 158 AH. Unlike the Alexandrian calendar which is solar, the Muslim calendar is lunar, so the date of
158 is 157 LUNAR years after the hijra, which took place in year 1 AH (158 – 1 = 157). The fact that the Muslim calendar was a lunar one, however, seems to have been lost on the chronicler, who mistakenly deducted the number 157 (which was the number of LUNAR years passed since
the hijra) from the Alexandrian date of 1087 to arrive at the date of 930 (1087 – 157 = 930). This was an obvious mistake because at the time the number of solar years elapsed since the hijra was 154 years (1087 – 933 = 154). But the chronicler was simply unaware of this fact,
and put the origins of Islam at 930 instead. Now, having established that this date is in fact an erroneous reference to the epoch of the Muslim calendar, let’s get back to the chronicler’s statement about this date: ‘in 930… Muhammad and the ṭayyāyē… subdued the land’.
Wherever the word ‘land’ here refers to, it’s obvious that the chronicler is equating the starting point of Muslim chronology (the ‘hijra’) with the conquests, thereby telescoping the events in hindsight. The fact that the chronicler counts Muhammad as the first Muslim ‘king’
slightly later in the text was not of much help either, as it further amplified the notion that the Islamic empire started with Muhammad, whose own reign had supposedly started at year 1 AH. So, all things are being equated with each other here: Muhammad was the first Muslim king
whose reign started in the year 1 AH, the year 1 AH was the date of the founding of the Muslim empire, so Muhammad must have founded the Muslim empire, and, by extension, must have also been the initiator of the conquests—all of which patently anachronistic. The same holds true
for the other two sources, the Chronicle of Zuqnīn and the Mozarabic Chronicle of 754. The so-called non-Muslim sources’ presentation of early Islamic history, therefore, is not free of biases of its own. Each source, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, should be subjected to rigorous
analysis, and no group of sources should be prioritised over another in toto. Any prioritisation should take place on an individual basis, and only after careful analysis, not as an a priori. More importantly, the division of our source material for early Islamic history into
‘Muslim’ and ‘non-Muslim’ is a false dichotomy which our disciplinary boundaries has bequeathed us: Islamic/oriental studies has its roots in the accursed super-discipline of ‘area studies’, and as such its practitioners are supposed to master the languages relevant to
‘their area’. Many scholars have no doubt went against the grain and exploited sources in other languages as well, but the modus operandi and mindset have always been the same: there were ‘Muslim’/‘Arabic’ sources and there were ‘non-Muslim’/‘non-Arabic sources’. This dichotomy,
which has resulted in isolated analyses of the two sets of sources and given rise to competing reconstructions of early Islamic history, would be a non-starter in a history department. It’s about time we did away with these outmoded mentalities and started engaging, as critically
as possible, with the whole gamut of available sources for early Islamic history. To be continued…
Photo: Charles Martel defeats the Saracens at the Battle of Tours (miniature), from Les Grandes chroniques de France, folio 117v, British Library.
Photo: Charles Martel defeats the Saracens at the Battle of Tours (miniature), from Les Grandes chroniques de France, folio 117v, British Library.
PS: I seem to have mistakenly posted a photo of another one of Shoemaker's books, my apologies. The correct reference is The Death of a Prophet: The End of Muhammad's Life and the Beginnings of Islam (Philadelphia 2012).
