The Emergence of Islam: Classical Traditions in Contemporary Perspective

Introduction to Part 1: Historical Overview

3 as Alexandria and Damascus, the great majority of people in the Near East at the time of Islam’s emergence were Christians. Many of the Arabs themselves had become Christians, and some had begun to speak Syriac in addition to Arabic. The notion of Arabs as a unified ethnic group developed only gradually. The Bible generally refers to “Arabs” in the same way it refers to “Ishmaelites.” Both terms seem to be labels for nomads: Isaiah (13:20) speaks of Babylon becoming so desolate that not even an “Arab” would pitch his tent there; the author of Genesis has“Ishmaelites”on camels pass by Shechem and purchase Joseph from his brothers (Gen. 37:25). Islam today is a global religion with adherents from diverse nations, races, and cultures. The storyof itsorigins,however,takesplaceamong a specific group of people: the Arabs of the late antique Near East. The Arabs at the time lived in an area that stretched from modern-day Yemen in the south to the Taurus Mountains of modern-day Turkey in the north, from the Mediterranean Sea in the west, to the Tigris River in the east. They were in part nomadic, in part settled, and they lived among a number of other peoples in the region. Most of these other peoples spoke a dialect of Aramaic (the language of Christ) known as Syriac, although in large urban centers many spoke Greek. While a significant presence of Jews could be found in Yemen and in cities such Introduction to Part 1: Historical Overview v The Emergence of islam 4 Jewish and Christian works written after the Bible, but before Islam, often refer to certain groups of Arabic speakers by the name of their tribe. In some cases, however, all those who spoke some dialect of theArabic language are described as “Hagarenes” or “Ishmaelites.” These latter terms reflect an association that Jews and Christians made between the Arabic speaking tribes, who were often tent-dwelling nomads living in the desert or its fringes, and the biblical story in which Abraham casts out Hagar and her son Ishmael into the desert wilderness (Gen. 21:14). Greek-speaking Byzantine Christian authors tended use the term “Saracens” (the term that would later become the standard label for Arabs in the Latin West) for Arabic speakers, a term derived from the Greek form of the name of one northern Arabian tribe. Some Christian authors (perhaps beginning with St. Jerome, d. 420) argued that the Arabic speakers themselves used this term in the hope of associating themselves with Sarah and thereby to hide their descent from Hagar. Others connected “Saracen” to the Greek word scenitae, meaning “tent-dwellers.” Both ideas reflect the idea of Arabs as nomads, children of the wilderness. For its part, the Quraan presents itself as a book for the Arabs: “We have sent it down as an Arabic Quraan; haply [“that perhaps”] you will understand”(Q 12:2). Such verses suggest that the story of Islam’s emergence involves not only the appearance of a new religion but also the unification of the Arabic-speaking tribes and the rise of the idea that they all make up one people: they are all Arabs, the descendants of Abraham through Ishmael (as the Jews are his descendants through Isaac). This connection between Abraham, the Arabs, and Islam is expressed in the genealogy of Muhammad. Although the idea is not explicit in the Quraan, Muslims consider Muhammad a descendant of Abraham through Ishmael; they also relate that Muhammad met Abraham during his ascent to heaven where he discovered that they look like each other. Thus Muhammad is presented as a “new Abraham.” This presentation presumably offered a way for early Muslims to conceive of and defend their religion in the context of the seventh-century Middle East. With their ethnic identity as Arabs, and their religious identity as descendents of Abraham, Muslims could enter into the religious debates already taking place between Christians and Jews and among various Christian sects. Yet Muslims did not appear in the Middle East as religious missionaries who sought to make disciples of other nations. They appeared as conquerors who subjected other nations to their rule. In the 630s, Arab armies swept through the Near East. The mighty Persian Empire collapsed entirely in the face of their attacks. (The last Persian emperor was killed in 651.) The Byzantine Empire at last withstood the Islamic conquests, but only by establishing a final line of defense in the Taurus...