The Satanic Verses controversy has a long and recent past. The incident reached global fame after the 1988 publication of Salman Rushdie’s novel. Long before, however, the topic was fiercely debate in medieval Muslim scholarship. A general 🧵 for non-specialists. 1/ 
The Satanic Verses incident is known as the Story of the Cranes (قصة الغرانيق) in the Islamic tradition. It narrates the occasion when the Prophet Muhammad (died 632 CE) mistook the whispers of Satan for divine revelation. 2/
The satanic intrusions led Muhammad to utter verses in praise of the pagan idols of seventh century Mecca leading him to recognise their powers of intercession with God. 3/
Let’s take a more detailed look at the historicity of the incident. But first, it is worth mentioning that all Muslim group and sects today vehemently reject the Satanic Verses incident on both theological and historical grounds. 4/
Similarly, a number of academic specialists of Islam think the incident is the result of the literary invention of very early Muslim biographers and historians (for reasons I’ll explain below). 5/
What does it mean to say the Satanic Verses incident appears in the Islamic tradition? It means the Muslim historical sources that collect, carry, and preserve the cultural memories of the first Muslim community have recorded and reported the Satan Verses incident. 6/
We have at least 50 historical reports from the first 200 years of Islam (roughly 610-810 CE) that describe in detail the occasion when the Prophet Muhammad supposedly mistook the deception of Satan for the command of God, thereby altering the message of the Quran. 7/
These 50 or so reports are known as narrations (or رواية in Arabic). The should be understood as historical memories that follow specific style and hermeneutic in literary narrative. Let’s take a look at one example from the 50 narrations. 8/
The narration here is recorded in one of the earliest and most authoritative biographies of Muhammad, by a certain Ibn Ishaq who died in 767 CE. The full text is available in English translation. 9/
The narration is quite long but a close reading shows the following discernible narrative units and motifs. The first motif: Muhammad was distressed and under pressure from his local tribe. Satan exploited the situation by feeding him false revelation. 10/
The second motif: Muhammad joined the pagan Arabs in venerating of their idols, named Lat, Uzza, and Manat. The pagans rejoiced and took great delight that Muhammad and his Muslim followers afforded their pagan religion some respect. 11/
The third motif: Muhammad is reproached by the Archangel Gabriel who is the one that usually brings him revelation from God. Gabriel rebukes Muhammad, telling him ‘what have you done! This isn’t God’s revelation’. 12/
The fourth motif: God forgives the grieving Muhammad and reminds him that previous prophets have fallen into similar traps set up for them by Satan.13/
The rest of the narrations bear the same general contours as the one above, with notable changes in the wording and some divergent narratives. These are not our concern here. 14/
Reports of the Satanic Verses incident were recorded by virtually every biographer of Muhammad in the first two centuries of Islam: ‘Urwah b. al-Zubayr, Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri, Musa b. ‘Uqbah, Ibn Ishaq, Abu Mash‘ar, Yunus b. Bukayr , and al-Waqidi. 15/
Similarly, in the first 200 years of Islam, exegetes of the Qur’an recorded the incident: Abu al-‘Aliyah , Sa‘id b. Jubayr, Mujahid b. Jabr, Dahhak, ‘Ikrimah, Muhammad b. Ka‘b, al-Hasan al-Basri, Qatadah, Abu Salih, ‘Atiyyah al-‘Awfi al-Suddi, Kalbi, Muqatil, 16/
Ibn Jurayj, Ma‘mar b. Rashid, and Yahya al-Basri. Six of these transmitted the incident on the authority of ‘Abd Allah Ibn ‘Abbas, with remarkably consistency. Ibn ‘Abbas was a close and learned companion of Muhammad. 17/
A study of the transmission history of the incident shows it was widely circulated and reported in first two hundred years of Islam in almost every important intellectual centre in the Islamic world from the Hijaz to Syria to Iraq to Transoxania to North Africa. 18/
All the major cities of the Islamic world knew of the incident—and accepted it a true—in places like Medina, Mecca, Basra, Kufa, Baghdad, Rayy, Balkh, Samarqand, Marw, Sanaa, Fustat, and Qayrawan. 19/
This leads us to the next important question: why was embarrassing incident accepted as true? To understand the reasons behind their early Muslim acceptance of the Satanic Verses we need to understand why later Muslims rejected it. 20/
Later Muslims dismissed the incident as spurious and theological abominable based on two considerations: one, Muhammad was a protected by God. He was, in their view, infallible and not prone to make mistakes in his delivery of the revelation. 21/
Two, the historical reliability of the early transmitters of the Satanic Verses incident is dubious and rely on spurious historical information. The first rejection relies on theological doctrine called Infallibility of Prophet while the second is based on Hadith Criticism. 22/
This begs the question, though. Why did the early Muslim transmit such a story if it was indeed a literary invention of fecund imagination? Here we need to understand that early Islamic memory (including the life of Muhammad) was preserved by 3 distinct discourses. 23/
That is, the earliest historical accounts of Islam and the life of Muhammad break into 3 different and often disagreeing methods of preserving history. The 3 discourses are called Hadith, Sirah, and Tafsir. 24/
The Satanic Verses incident is reported in the genre of writing history that falls under Sirah and Tafsir. The former genre describes the biography and life of Muhammad, while the latter is exegesis or commentary of the Qur’an. 25/
The Hadith, on the other hand, was a different cultural and intellectual project to the first two. The identity of Muhammad as constituted by each of these historical memory discourses often reflects cultural project of these distinct genres of writing. 26/
The aim of the scholars of the Hadith movement was to establish legal, praxial, and creedal norms through the authoritative documentation of the words and deeds of Muhammad as produced from the historical memory of the early Muslim community. 27/
The Hadith scholars were concerned with prescribing the specific content of Islam as it relates to the elaboration of Islamic law. Hadith collections formed the bedrock of Islamic law. 28/
Law, in turn, was imitated the example of Muhammad. Hadith carried the statements and acts of the prophetic, forming the basis of detail legal, praxial, and creedal rules that regulated the lives of Muslims. 29/
The Hadith cultural project invested greatly in scrutinising the validity, credibility, and authenticity the historical memory of Muhammad. It fell back on a thorough process of investigation, historical criticism, and evaluation. 30/
The Satanic Verses incident was not included in any of the canonical Hadith collections. They deemed it inauthentic and incongruent with their theological project (which required the Prophet to be infallible). 31/
Scholars of Sirah and Tafsir were not primarily concerned with establishing norms of religious law and praxis for Muslims, rather they sought to construct a narrative of the moral-historical epic of the life of Muhammad in his heroic struggle to establish divine religion 32/
The Sirah, which carries many of the Satanic Verses reports, “is nothing if not an epic. Its central figure is a man of noble lineage but disadvantaged birth—a vulnerable orphan dependent on the protection of an aged uncle. 33/
He possesses extraordinary virtue that is recognized by all in his tribe, but is without fortune or power. This man is singled out by God to be His Messenger and charged with the mission of leading his people out of the darkness of idolatry to the salvation of monotheism; 34/
but his Message of monotheism and morality is rejected by his tribe, and draws only a few close friends and relatives, slaves and low-born freemen. His followers are persecuted; some are tortured and martyred, while others flee across the sea into exile. 35/
He is abused, spat upon, doused in offal. His uncle and wife die, and his clan is then boycotted by the tribe and almost starves to death.” 36/
The Sirah is thus a deliberate attempt to portray a struggling and humanised Muhammad that goes on to rise against life’s vicissitudes to make monotheism triumph supreme. 37/
The Satanic Verses incident was invented, the claim goes, by the Sirah scholars in order to tell a heroic story of peril, suffering, fortitude, persistence, faith, courage, and triumph. 38/
In summary: the Satanic Verses story appears in the earliest historical sources of Islam. It is rejected by others. Critics deem it a literary invention to imbue Muhammad with virtue, which received little if any supper by later orthodoxies. 39/
For a full treatment with excruciating details, consult the brilliant work (which I summarised above) of the late Shahab Ahmed. FIN.


Addendum: please excuse all the typos and infelicities. I did the thread on my phone and in a hurry.
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