The Emergence of Islam: Contours and Controversies

HDS 3348 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

The birth of Islam in the seventh century C.E. was a momentous historical turning point, but many aspects of this crucial process remain vigorously debated in modern scholarship. Did the Prophet Muhammad preach monotheism to a group of crude idolaters, or were his opponents already monotheists (if imperfect ones) who were also familiar with biblical ideas about God and history? Was Mecca an important center of Arabian pilgrimage and commerce before Islam, or was it a small town of local significance that grew in influence only after Islam? Did the followers of the Prophet and the residents of Arabia imagine themselves as sharing a common ethnic identity as “Arabs,” or did they subscribe to a multiplicity of local tribal or geographical identities and developed a shared sense of being “Arab” after they conquered the Near East? Did the early Muslims believe in the imminent end of the world or not? Was Islam originally an ecumenical monotheistic movement open to Jews and Christians, or did Islam’s earliest adherents consider it a new and exclusive religion separate from Judaism and Christianity? Is the Qur’anic text a record of Muhammad’s own preaching or the result of a collective effort that continued after him (and perhaps had begun before him)?
This course is dedicated to an in-depth discussion of such fundamental historiographic questions. In the process, we will delve into some of the earliest literary and documentary witnesses to Islam’s beginnings and read from foundational works of scholarship on Islam’s origins. Jointly offered in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as Religion 2800.