Islam’s real origins?

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Memory is a double-edged sword in the human consciousness. We relish, and even idolise, memories of the past, but we often overlook memory’s enduring partner: forgetfulness. Our memories are rife with deliberate amnesia, and history, at best, is a selective remembrance. Historians edit and repackage the past, sometimes invidiously omitting those “inconvenient truths” which could upset their preferred interpretations. Memory’s imperfect fabric is the platform from which Tom Holland plunges into the story of the rise of Islam in his latest book, In the Shadow of the Sword.

Ostensibly, Islam was born “in the light of history” — the details of Islam’s origins and rapid expansion in the Near East purportedly have been faithfully remembered by the Muslim tradition. But Holland questions whether Islam’s version of history can be trusted: after all, most Arabic primary sources were written some centuries after Muhammad and naturally were subject to the selective biases of Muslim historians and theologians. In a direct challenge to the tradition’s authenticity, Holland marshals alternative sources, principally Byzantine and Persian, to explore how others saw Islam’s rise and he weaves a complex historical critique into a dramatic narrative.

He deftly navigates the vast array of unfamiliar names, sects and languages of the Near East between AD 400 and 750, and strikes a narrative course towards startling conclusions. Holland argues that Muhammad did not originate from Mecca, the first generations of Muslims were not called Muslims at all, and the entire enterprise of Islam emerged from a particular mix of ethnic, religious and historical conditions in that specific time and space. For Holland, Islam was a logical response to the zeitgeist, far from a miraculous spiritual revelation in Arabia.

Given Islam’s central position in the current political limelight, revisionist historians will eagerly consume this bold foray into its origins, but readers must be cautious when drawing conclusions. Holland is not so cautious in his writing. He commences with the usual historian’s caveat that his interpretations are only tentative, but his tenacious style and judicious selection of evidence radically revise history with the self-assurance and inspiring logic of a barrister in closing argument.

Absent, however, is the case of opposing counsel. Over the past century, the Muslim tradition has been challenged by many academics and it has proven remarkably resilient in its own defence. It is an imperfect record, but the Muslim account of history, the textual integrity of the Koran and the mnemonic capacity of oral traditions are more robust than Holland gives them credit. The Muslim narrative is biased towards its particular version of history but few scholars today would claim it was entirely fabricated. Holland would have done better to adopt a cautious and sensitive approach to the Arabic sources, rather than abandoning them in favour of a sensational rewriting of history.

Ultimately, Holland’s work is another selective recollection of the past, carefully constructed according to his own revisionist agenda. To demonstrate his thesis of Islam’s organic development, he deliberately crafts a vision of Late Antiquity into which Islam fits as the perfect jigsaw piece, smoothly caressing all the contours of the contemporary intellectual, spiritual, economic and political circumstances. His story requires wholesale creative reinterpretation (he curiously imagines the pre-Islamic Ghassanid Arabs as Christian holy warriors), as well as various omissions of inconvenient truths which gainsay his historical reconstruction (in denying Mecca’s initial importance, he overlooks the fifth Caliph Mu’awiya’s early inscription near Mecca).

Holland’s alternative explanation of the “real” origins of Islam falls short of its objective. A prodigiously lucid historical narrative, such as Holland’s, which boldly claims to recover the true past, constructs a bridge too far. Once elapsed, the events of history survive in memory only as kernels of recollection, relentlessly eroded by the ravages of time and endlessly reinterpreted as tastes and agendas of historians change.

Holland’s book is entertaining reading and interesting food for thought, but does not cogently unearth a hitherto concealed cachet of truth. To paraphrase an old warning, “Beware of historians bearing the truth”! They are but forgetful storytellers, spinning yarns of bygone times.

Peter Webb teaches Arabic and classical Arabic literature at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

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