Gerald R. Hawting (born 1944) is a British historian and Islamicist.
Hawting's teachers were Bernard Lewis and John Wansbrough. He received his Ph.D. in 1978. He is Emeritus Professor for the History of the Near and Middle East at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. [1]
In the line of John Wansbrough, Hawting concentrated on the question for the religious milieu in which Islam came into being. He analysed available sources about the religions on the Arabian Peninsula in the time before Islam in detail. According to Hawting, Islam did not develop within a world of polytheism as is reported by the traditional Islamic traditions which were written 150 to 200 years after Muhammad. Instead, Islam came into being on the basis of a conflict among various types of monotheists which considered each other to fail in living a perfect monotheism, and considering each other to practice idolatry.[ citation needed ]
Another theme of Hawting's research is the period of the Umayyad dynasty which was of great importance for the formation of Islam as a religion. [2] Also Hawting's works [3] [4] are related with ibadism. [5] Hawting is a representative of the Revisionist School of Islamic Studies.[ citation needed ]
As editor and co-author:
The Umayyad Caliphate or Umayyad Empire was the second caliphate established after the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and was ruled by the Umayyad dynasty. Uthman ibn Affan, the third of the Rashidun caliphs, was also a member of the clan. The family established dynastic, hereditary rule with Mu'awiya I, the long-time governor of Greater Syria, who became caliph after the end of the First Fitna in 661. After Mu'awiya's death in 680, conflicts over the succession resulted in the Second Fitna, and power eventually fell to Marwan I, from another branch of the clan. Syria remained the Umayyads' main power base thereafter, with Damascus as their capital.
Mu'awiya I was the founder and first caliph of the Umayyad Caliphate, ruling from 661 until his death. He became caliph less than thirty years after the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and immediately after the four Rashidun ('rightly-guided') caliphs. Unlike his predecessors, who had been close, early companions of Muhammad, Mu'awiya was a relatively late follower of Muhammad.
IgnácGoldziher, often credited as Ignaz Goldziher, was a Hungarian scholar of Islam. Alongside Joseph Schacht and G.H.A. Juynboll, he is considered one of the pioneers of modern academic hadith studies.
The Kharijites were an Islamic sect which emerged during the First Fitna (656–661). The first Kharijites were supporters of Ali who rebelled against his acceptance of arbitration talks to settle the conflict with his challenger, Mu'awiya, at the Battle of Siffin in 657. They asserted that "judgment belongs to God alone," which became their motto, and that rebels such as Mu'awiya had to be fought and overcome according to Qur'anic injunctions. Ali defeated the Kharijites at the Battle of Nahrawan in 658, but their insurrection continued. Ali was assassinated in 661 by a Kharijite dissident seeking revenge for the defeat at Nahrawan.
Marwan ibn al-Hakam ibn Abi al-As ibn Umayya, commonly known as Marwan I, was the fourth Umayyad caliph, ruling for less than a year in 684–685. He founded the Marwanid ruling house of the Umayyad dynasty, which replaced the Sufyanid house after its collapse in the Second Fitna and remained in power until 750.
John Edward Wansbrough was an American historian of Islamic origins and Quranic studies and professor who taught at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), where he was vice chancellor from 1985 to 1992.
Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr ibn al-Awwam was the leader of a caliphate based in Mecca that rivaled the Umayyads from 683 until his death.
Martin Hinds was a British scholar of the Middle East and historiographer of early Islamic history who was born in Penarth, Wales.
The Abbasid revolution, also called the Movement of the Men of the Black Raiment, was the overthrow of the Umayyad caliphate, the second of the four major caliphates in Islamic history, by the third, the Abbasid caliphate.
The Battle of Marj Rahit was one of the early battles of the Second Fitna. It was fought on 18 August 684 between the Kalb-dominated armies of the Yaman tribal confederation, supporting the Umayyads under Caliph Marwan I, and the Qays under al-Dahhak ibn Qays al-Fihri, who supported the Mecca-based Abdallah ibn al-Zubayr; the latter had proclaimed himself Caliph. The Kalbi victory consolidated the position of the Umayyads over Bilad al-Sham, paving the way for their eventual victory in the war against Ibn al-Zubayr. However, it also left a bitter legacy of division and rivalry between the Qays and the Yaman, which would be a constant source of strife and instability for the remainder of the Umayyad Caliphate.
The siege of Mecca in September–November 683 was one of the early battles of the Second Fitna. The city of Mecca was a sanctuary for Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr, who was among the most prominent challengers to the dynastic succession to the Caliphate by the Umayyad Yazid I. After nearby Medina, the other holy city of Islam, also rebelled against Yazid, the Umayyad ruler sent an army to subdue Arabia. The Umayyad army defeated the Medinans and took the city, but Mecca held out in a month-long siege, during which the Kaaba was damaged by fire. The siege ended when news came of Yazid's sudden death. The Umayyad commander, Husayn ibn Numayr al-Sakuni, after vainly trying to induce Ibn al-Zubayr to return with him to Syria and be recognized as Caliph, departed with his forces. Ibn al-Zubayr remained in Mecca throughout the civil war, but he was nevertheless soon acknowledged as Caliph across most of the Muslim world. It was not until 692, that the Umayyads were able to send another army which again besieged and captured Mecca, ending the civil war.
Khālid ibn ʿAbdallāh al-Qasrī was an Arab who served the Umayyad Caliphate as governor of Mecca in the 8th century and of Iraq from 724 until 738. The latter post, entailing as it did control over the entire eastern Caliphate, made him one of the most important officials during the crucial reign of Caliph Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik. He is most notable for his support of the Yaman tribes in the conflict with the Qays who dominated the administration of Iraq and the East under his predecessor and successor. Following his dismissal, he was twice imprisoned and in 734 tortured to death by his successor, Yusuf ibn Umar al-Thaqafi.
The Umayyad dynasty or Umayyads was an Arab clan within the Quraysh tribe who were the ruling family of the Caliphate between 661 and 750 and later of al-Andalus between 756 and 1031. In the pre-Islamic period, they were a prominent clan of the Meccan tribe of Quraysh, descended from Umayya ibn Abd Shams. Despite staunch opposition to the Islamic prophet Muhammad, the Umayyads embraced Islam before the former's death in 632. Uthman, an early companion of Muhammad from the Umayyad clan, was the third Rashidun caliph, ruling in 644–656, while other members held various governorships. One of these governors, Mu'awiya I of Syria, opposed Caliph Ali in the First Muslim Civil War (656–661) and afterward founded the Umayyad Caliphate with its capital in Damascus. This marked the beginning of the Umayyad dynasty, the first hereditary dynasty in the history of Islam, and the only one to rule over the entire Islamic world of its time.
Muḥakkima and al-Haruriyya refer to the Muslims who rejected arbitration between Ali and Mu'awiya I at the Battle of Siffin in 657 CE. The name Muḥakkima derives from their slogan lā ḥukma illā li-llāh, meaning "no judgment (hukm) except God's". The name al-Haruriyya refers to their withdrawal from Ali's army to the village of Harura' near Kufa. This episode marked the start of the Kharijite movement, and the term muḥakkima is often also applied by extension to later Kharijites.
Norman Calder (1950-1998) was a British historian.
The revisionist school of Islamic studies is a movement in Islamic studies that questions traditional Muslim narratives of Islam's origins.
The Hashemite–Umayyad rivalry was a feud between the clans of Banu Hashim and Banu Umayya, both belonging to the Meccan Arab tribe of Quraysh, in the 7th and 8th centuries. The rivalry is important as it influenced key events in the course of early Islamic history.
The Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, founded in 1917 as Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, is an interdisciplinary journal of Asian and African studies, published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the SOAS University of London. The first editor was also the first director of the School, Edward Denison Ross. The name changed in 1940 as a consequence of the change in the School's name to incorporate African Studies. Later editors have included Christopher Shackle, T.H. Barrett, and G.R. Hawting, and its current editors are Ayman Shihadeh and Mulaika Hijjas.
ʿAbd Allāh ibn Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān, commonly known as al-Uswār, was an Umayyad prince from the Sufyanid line of the dynasty. He was the son of Caliph Yazid I. After the death of his brother, Caliph Mu'awiya II, in 684, he and his brother, Khalid ibn Yazid, were deemed too young to succeed by the pro-Umayyad tribes of Syria and Umayyad rule was vested in the line of a distant kinsman, Marwan I. Abd Allah was a famed archer and horseman and commanded part of the army which took over Iraq from anti-Umayyad forces during the Second Fitna in 691.
The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam is a 1999 book in the field of Quranic studies published by G. R. Hawting. The book explores the Quranic conception of paganism and idolatry and how it has been understood, or perhaps misunderstood, through the lenses of later Islamic tradition, especially major works such as the Book of Idols of Hisham ibn al-Kalbi, as well as other sirah and tafsir, which Hawting sees as unreliable and more representative of later attitudes towards the history of pre-Islamic Arabia as opposed to genuine information transmitted from the lifetime of Muhammad and earlier.