 First edition | |
| Author | Tom Holland |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Islam |
| Publisher | Little, Brown |
Publication date | 2012 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Pages | 544 |
| ISBN | 978-1408700075 |
| OCLC | 900788954 |
In the Shadow of the Sword (2012) is a history book charting the origins of Islam by Tom Holland.
The work draws from the revisionist scholarship of Patricia Crone (and further refinements produced by John Wansbrough, Fred Donner, Andrew Rippin, Christoph Luxenberg et al) in applying rigorous textual analysis to the Hadithic corpus. [1] [2] [3]
Holland asserts that the oldest extant biographical details about Muhammad are writings by theological scholars post-dating his death by nearly two hundred years who needed to justify their tools and authority, that there is no mention of the Quran or any associated commentary in any source till as late as eighth century AD and that Mecca is not located to any geographical precision in the Quran. [4] [1]
The one (Ibn Hisham's biography of Prophet) features angels; the other gods. Why, then, should we believe that the account of the Prophet's first great victory is any more authentic than the legend of the siege of Troy?
— Tom Holland, In the Shadow of the Sword: The Battle for Global Empire and the End of the Ancient World
Emphasizing on these premises, he questions the mainstream view on early days of Islam deriving from later-era Muslim sources as entirely flawed in its conflation of literature with history and instead, seeks to sketch a broad-brush revisionist history about the development of Islam as a socio-political response to the gradual rise of Arabs over two centuries. [1] [5] [3] [6] Holland holds that Quranic imagery does not tally with desert Arabia and assigns Islam's birth-place to be Syria-Palestine; he goes on to retrieve Muhammad as a member of a literate Jordanian elite who knew the power of faith and say that Gabriel's revelations along with other mainstay features of Islam were actually perfected editions of a set of ideas borrowed from the changing societies in the Near East and existing religions. [2] [1] [7] [3]
Dan Jones, writing for The Daily Telegraph , praised Holland for his impressive scholarship, penned in similarly impressive prose. [7] In the end, he broached — "Is this Satanic Verses territory?" — something Holland himself referenced at the very beginning of the book. [7]
Anthony Sattin, writing in The Guardian , admired Holland for his provocative work which boldly re-examined the earliest spans of Islam. [4] Malise Ruthven, reviewing for The Wall Street Journal noted it as a magisterial tour-de-force wherein Holland convincingly connected the end of empires with the rise of Islam. [3]
Barnaby Rogerson, writing for The Independent , noted the work to be extraordinarily rich, detailed and enchanting; his writing was praised in particular. [1] He however noted that the sources offered by Holland, even from the non-Muslim world, supported the mainstream scholarship at large and appeared to have been misused by Holland in pursuit of his point; Holland's repositioning of Islam's place of origin to be Syria-Palestine and doubts about Mecca's position were held as wild and unconvincing. [1]
Richard Miles, writing in the Financial Times , noted it to be an exhilarating read which was ultra-skeptical of Islamic sources and highly confrontational. At the end, he posed the questions: "And if much of the history of early Islam is fabricated, then how to explain the consensus that exists across a range of texts from bitterly opposed sectarian communities (Sunni, Shia, etc)? Do we really believe that an entire community invested in this vast lie about the prophet, and that somehow some shadowy force was able to control all dissenting opinion within Arab circles?" [6]
Historian Glen Bowersock wrote a scathing review in The Guardian , holding the work to be titillating yet grossly irresponsible and unreliable. [2] Bowersock criticised Holland for his lack of linguistic proficiency in any of the oriental tongues, which Bowersock said led to Holland making linguistic errors and being completely dependent on translations and secondary sources. Bowersock also said that Holland was ignorant of decades of research on pre-Islamic Arabia, and that he failed to account for the recent discoveries of late-antique South Arabian inscriptions as well as early Qur'an manuscripts. [2] Holland wrote a response to Bowersock in the same publication, addressing and arguing against Bowersock's criticisms. [8]
Ziauddin Sardar, writing for the New Statesman , said that the book seemed to be tailored to suit the rise in Islamophobic sentiments around the globe, and presented a grand narrative based on works of a "largely discredited group of orientalists", whose ample criticisms Holland seemed to be ignorant about. [5] He finished his critique with "I find Holland’s total dismissal of Muslim scholarship arrogant (which I know he is not), insulting (which I know he does not mean to be) and based on spurious scholarship (though his scholarship is usually sound)." [5]
Nebil Husayn, formerly of Princeton University, wrote a sharply critical review of the book in the Journal of Shi'a Islamic Studies , in which he described the work as an epitome of orientalist history which was set upon to prove the intellectual and cultural aridity of 7th c. Arabia. [9]
Mecca is the capital of Mecca Province in the Hejaz region of western Saudi Arabia and the holiest city according to Islam. It is 70 km (43 mi) inland from Jeddah on the Red Sea, in a narrow valley 277 m (909 ft) above sea level. Its metropolitan population in 2022 was 2.4 million, making it the third-most populated city in Saudi Arabia after Riyadh and Jeddah. Around 44.5% of the population are Saudi citizens and around 55.5% are Muslim foreigners from other countries. Pilgrims more than triple the population number every year during the Ḥajj pilgrimage, observed in the twelfth Hijri month of Dhūl-Ḥijjah. With over 10.8 million international visitors in 2023, Mecca was one of the ten most visited cities in the world.
Shia Islam is the second-largest branch of Islam. It holds that the Islamic prophet Muhammad designated Ali ibn Abi Talib as his successor and the Imam after him, most notably at the event of Ghadir Khumm, but was prevented from succeeding Muhammad as the leader of the Muslims as a result of the choice made by some of Muhammad's other companions at Saqifah. This view primarily contrasts with that of Sunni Islam, whose adherents believe that Muhammad did not appoint a successor before his death and consider Abu Bakr, who was appointed caliph by a group of Muhammad's other companions at Saqifah, to be the first rightful (rashidun) caliph after Muhammad.
Husayn ibn Ali was a social, political and religious leader. The grandson of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and a son of Ali ibn Abi Talib and Muhammad's daughter Fatima, as well as a younger brother of Hasan ibn Ali, Husayn is regarded as the third Imam (leader) in Shia Islam after his brother, Hasan, and before his son, Ali al-Sajjad. Being the grandson of the prophet, he is also a prominent member of the Ahl al-Bayt. He is also considered to be a member of the Ahl al-Kisa, and a participant in the event of the mubahala. Muhammad described him and his brother, Hasan, as the leaders of the youth of Paradise.
The Battle of Karbala was fought on 10 October 680 between the army of the second Umayyad caliph Yazid I and a small army led by Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, at Karbala, Sawad.
Ashura is a day of commemoration in Islam. It occurs annually on the tenth of Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar. For Sunni Muslims, Ashura marks the parting of the Red Sea by Moses and the salvation of the Israelites. Also on this day, Noah disembarked from the Ark, God forgave Adam, and Joseph was released from prison, among various other auspicious events having occurred on Ashura according to Sunni tradition. Ashura is celebrated in Sunni Islam through supererogatory fasting and other acceptable expressions of joy. In some Sunni communities, the annual Ashura festivities include carnivals, bonfires, and special dishes, even though some Sunni scholars have criticized such practices.
Abu Muhammad Abd al-Malik ibn Hisham ibn Ayyub al-Himyari, known simply as Ibn Hisham, was a 9th-century Muslim historian and scholar. He grew up in Basra, in modern-day Iraq and later moved to Egypt.
The Hamdanid dynasty was a Shia Muslim Arab dynasty of Northern Mesopotamia and Syria (890–1004). They descended from the ancient Banu Taghlib tribe of Mesopotamia and Arabia.
Juhayman ibn Muhammad ibn Sayf al-Otaybi was a Saudi religious dissident and ex-soldier who led the Ikhwan during their Grand Mosque seizure in 1979. He and his followers besieged and took over the Grand Mosque of Mecca on 20 November 1979 and held it for two weeks. During this time, he called for an uprising against the House of Saud and also reportedly proclaimed that the Mahdi had arrived in the form of one of the Ikhwan's leading officials; al-Otaybi's insurgency ended with Saudi authorities capturing the surviving militants and publicly executing them all, including al-Otaybi. The incident led to widespread unrest, culminating in large-scale anti-American riots throughout the Muslim world, particularly after Iranian religious cleric Ruhollah Khomeini of the Islamic Revolution falsely claimed over a radio broadcast that Juhayman's insurgency at the holiest Islamic site had been orchestrated by the United States and Israel.
Malise Walter Maitland Knox Hore-Ruthven is an Anglo-Irish academic and writer.
Al-Qāsim ibn Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr was a jurist in early Islam.
The event of the mubahala was an aborted attempt to resolve a theological dispute between Muslims and Christians in c. 632 CE by invoking the curse of God upon the liars. These debates took place in Medina, located in the Arabian Peninsula, between a Christian delegation from Najran, a city in South Arabia, and the Islamic prophet Muhammad, who proposed this solution probably when their discourse had reached a deadlock concerning the nature of Jesus, human or divine.
Thomas Holland is an English author and popular historian who has published best-selling books on topics including classical and medieval history, and the origins of Islam.
Glen Warren Bowersock is a historian of ancient Greece, Rome and the Near East, and former chairman of Harvard’s classics department.
Shi‘a Islam, also known as Shi‘ite Islam or Shia, is the second largest branch of Islam after Sunni Islam. Shias adhere to the teachings of Muhammad and the religious guidance of his family or his descendants known as Shia Imams. Muhammad's bloodline continues only through his daughter Fatima Zahra and cousin Ali who alongside Muhammad's grandsons comprise the Ahl al-Bayt. Thus, Shias consider Muhammad's descendants as the true source of guidance along with the teaching of Muhammad. Shia Islam, like Sunni Islam, has at times been divided into many branches; however, only three of these currently have a significant number of followers, and each of them has a separate trajectory.
The Ghurabiyya Shi‘a were a ghulat sect of Shi‘a Islam. They are one of the best known of a few extremist Shi‘i sects who adopted the belief that the angel Gabriel was mistaken when passing on the prophecy to Muhammad instead of Ali.
Criticism of Twelver Shia Islam dates from the initial ideological rift among early Muslims that led to the two primary denominations of Islam, the Sunnis and the Shias. The question of succession to Muhammad in Islam, the nature of the Imamate, the status of the twelfth Shia Imam, and other areas in which Shia Islam differs from Sunni Islam have been criticized by Sunni scholars, even though there is no disagreement between the two sects regarding the centrality of the Quran, Muhammad, and many other doctrinal, theological and ritual matters. Shia commentators such as Musa al-Musawi and Ali Shariati have themselves, in their attempts to reform the faith, criticized practices and beliefs which have become prevalent in the Twelver Shia community.
Shia Islam originated as a response to questions of Islamic religious leadership which became manifest as early as the death of Muhammad in 632 CE. The issues involved not only whom to appoint as the successor to Muhammad, but also what attributes a true successor should have. Sunnis regarded Caliphs as a temporal leaders,. To the Shiite, however, the question of succession is a matter of designation of an individual (Ali) through divine command. In the same way, Shias believed that each Imam designated the next Imam by the leave of God. So within Shia Islam it makes no difference to the Imam's position whether he is chosen as a Caliph or not.
Islam: The Untold Story is a documentary film written and directed by Kevin Sim and presented by the English novelist and popular historian Tom Holland. The documentary explores the origins of Islam, an Abrahamic religion that developed in Arabia in the 7th century and criticises the orthodox Islamic account of this history, claiming that the traditional story lacks sufficient supporting evidence. It was commissioned by the British television company Channel 4 and first broadcast in August 2012. Its release followed the publication of Holland's In the Shadow of the Sword: The Battle for Global Empire and the End of the Ancient World (2012), which also discussed the rise of the Arab Empire and the origins of Islam.
Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources is a 1983 biography of the Islamic prophet Muhammad by Martin Lings.
The revisionist school of Islamic studies is a movement in Islamic studies that questions traditional Muslim narratives of Islam's origins.