Since the publication of Javad Hashmi’s article regarding my DPhil research, some readers have quite understandably asked for more details. The full DPhil thesis should be available soon (and will be made available on this blog), but in the meantime, I can at least offer a summary thereof to give a better idea of the … [Read more…]
The hypothesis that early Islam—from the time of the Prophet to at least the second fitnah—constituted some kind of pan-Abrahamic or pan-Abrahamitic movement or coalition is widespread in recent secular, critical scholarship.[1] The earliest iteration of this hypothesis—which posited that proto-Islam was some kind of Judaeo-Arab alliance or coalition—can be found in Patricia Crone and … [Read more…]
In late September of 2022, I passed the final exam (viva/defence) for my PhD at Oxford University, pending minor corrections. The subject of my thesis was the famous and controversial hadith about the Islamic prophet Muḥammad’s marriage to his wife ʿĀʾišah bt. ʾabī Bakr at a young age: according to the dominant version of the … [Read more…]
In his ʾAnsāb al-ʾAšrāf, the Baghdadian litterateur and genealogist ʾAḥmad b. Yaḥyá al-Balāḏurī (d. post-270/883-884) recorded the following concerning the birth of the Islamic prophet Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib (d. 11/632): As for Quṯam b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib: his mother was Ṣafiyyah bt. Jundub, the mother of al-Ḥāriṯ b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, and he … [Read more…]