Raiders of the Lost Ark

When I recently visited Yemen, I had read about a sensation which had happened more than 30 years ago. When restoring parts of the Grand Mosque in Sana’a in 1972, workers stumbled in a small niche between the outer and inner structure of the roof across fragments of paper manuscripts. Careless as they were, they packed the pages into potato bags and subsequently forgot about them. Years later, the president of the Yemeni Antiquities Authority, Qadhi Ismail al-Aqwa’, realized that he had to ask for international assistance to study what is now known as one of the oldest versions of the Holy Qur’an. It was the German Qur’anic paleographic Gerhard R. Puin who started the restoration of the tens of thousands of fragments of the Holy Scripture. Little has been published in the meantime since the message might be too disturbing for the common faithful Muslim. See the article by Toby Lester in The Atlantic Monthly here.


In upcoming August, there might be another heavy dispute about the hidden origins of Islam. The German Professor emeritus Karl-Heinz Ohlig and G. R. Puin are going to make their so far only in German distributed Book available in English, then providing the general public with a highly controversial compilation of texts by different authors. Some of them have started to linguistically analyze the text as being Syrian-Aramaic and re-read parts of the Holy Qur’an in a completely different way. In the publisher’s announcement of The Hidden Origins of Islam, it reads as follows:

“The standard histories of Muhammad and the early development of Islam are based on Islamic literature that dates to the ninth and tenth centuries--some two centuries or more after the death of Muhammad in 632. Islamic literary sources do not exist for the seventh and eighth centuries, when, according to tradition, Muhammad and his immediate followers lived. All that is preserved from this time period are a few commemorative building inscriptions and assorted coins.

Based on the premise that reliable history can only be written on the basis of sources that are contemporary with the events described, the contributors to this in-depth investigation present research that reveals the obscure origins of Islam in a completely new light. As the authors meticulously show, the name "Muhammad" first appears on coins in Syria bearing Christian iconography. In this context the name is used as an honorific meaning "revered" or "praiseworthy" and can only refer to Jesus Christ, as Christianity was the predominant religion of the area at this time. This same reference exists in the building inscription of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, built by the caliph `Abd al-Malik.

The implication of these and other findings here presented is that the early Arab rulers adhered to a sect of Christianity. Indeed, evidence from the Koran, finalized at a much later time, shows that its central theological tenets were influenced by a pre-Nicean, Syrian Christianity. Linguistic analysis also indicates that Aramaic, the common language throughout the Near East for many centuries and the language of Syrian Christianity, significantly influenced the Arabic script and vocabulary used in the Koran. Finally, it was not until the end of the eighth and ninth centuries that Islam formed as a separate religion, and the Koran underwent a period of historical development of at least 200 years.”


I have read the original German book from 2005 about the hidden origins of Islam (and its sequel from 2007) with much interest. Even in Germany, the book was perceived very controversially. Famous German orientalists Tilman Nagel and Angelika Neuwirth criticized the approach of, in particular, Christoph Luxenberg, and his new interpretation of the oldest still visible Qur’anic inscriptions on the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem may in fact be very peculiar. As an example, Luxenberg reads muhammad and abdullah not as nouns but rather gerundives (the praised one, the servant, respectively) and assigns both to Jesus (Isa bin Maryam) rather than to the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad. Belonging mainly to the revisionist party, most authors of the compilation cannot really be considered scientifically serious but rather striving for sensation. One typical example might be ‘hobby’ numismatic Volker Popp with his peculiar interpretations of coins found in the 1st and 2nd century AH. That coins which were once circulating among inhabitants of a particular region are not radically exchanged under new reign is so self-evident that it does not really deserve special attention.

Anyway, the book will undoubtedly incite new discussions, this time among an international audience.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lady Shatita

Image
In order to learn more about Shi’a Islam and the piety of ordinary people it would have been most helpful to visit at least some of the plenty of Emamzadehs (holy sites) all over Iran. So, it was a most welcome opportunity and, in fact, great honor when my Kuwaiti friends invited me to accompany them on their several bus trips in Khorasan on the occasion of their 2006 pilgrimage to the Holy City of Mashhad. Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sasanian Empires each embraced half of the then known world when they climaxed. And even when Iran was under the reign of Seleucids, Arabs, Seljuks, or Mongols, the Iranians imprinted their lifestyle and culture on the non-welcome invaders, who in any sense immensely benefited. So, the austere new religion Islam, which replaced Iran’s state religion Zoroastrianism, was fundamentally reorganized, and, as I see it as an outsider, filled with life. The rapid and shocking decline of the Sasanid Empire at the end of a century-long fight with Byzantium, and the
Read more

Persianization

Image
Kuwait’s Arab Times had attracted my attention to Esfahan’s gorgeous Great Mosque in an article in 2003. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find so far a webpage of the article which praised the wonders of Iran’s largest mosque and one of the most significant and finest buildings of the Islamic world. I visited the site the first time at my second trip to Esfahan in late spring of 2004. I took some pictures in the vast courtyard, soaked the peaceful atmosphere there, and watched the few visitors from Iran and elsewhere. I had forgotten about the many details of the article and faintly had read some of the notes in my travel guide. My second visit in late 2007 was driven by scientific interest. I had recently posted (at Freelance ) my rather amateurish studies and thoughts about a suggested ‘conceptual breakthrough’ in Islamic architecture and art in the late 15th century, i.e., quasi-crystalline tessellations, which had led to world-wide attention due to its publication in the Science magazine
Read more

Buyid Architecture in Esfahan

Image
Older than what is now visible in Esfahan’s Great Mosque (although the first mosque there was built in the 7th century) is what has remained of the Jurjir Mosque . The fragmentary façade of the Jurjir Mosque had been discovered during restoration work at Masjed-e Hakim in 1955. The fragment had been hidden for centuries behind a mud wall. The beautiful Hakim mosque itself is a Safavid mosque from the 17th century. The Jurjir façade is the only remains of a 10th century mosque which was commissioned by the Buyid (Buwayhid) vizier Al-Sahib ibn Abbad (d. 995), a Mutazilite scholar. The Buyid Dynasty, who ruled in Iraq and Iran, effectively brought the Abbasids era in Baghdad to an end. Although the Abbasids retained the caliphate, they were deprived of all secular power. Buyids were originally Zaydi, or Fiver Shi'as. They later began to lean closer to the nowadays dominating Twelver Shi'a branch of Islam. In general tolerant in religious matters, the Buyid rulers in Baghdad even
Read more