A's Reviews > Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World

5.5/10.

Crone and Cook have written a historical-critical overview of the origins and transformation of Islam, showing discrepancies between the religion and historical documents, as well as looking at similarities between it and other religions at the time. For example, it is shown that the Samaritans at the time of Islamic growth had a political-theological hierarchy (just as does Islam) and had thrown out the religious use of the prophetic books from the Old Testament. It is also shown that many early Mosques are pointing in the wrong direction, which means that Mecca was not the supposed holy site until later. Furthermore, the first 100 years of Islamic documents were all thrown down the memory hole by a certain leader in the late 700s who did not want anyone finding historical discrepancies.

Unlike today, there was an initially cordial relationship between Jews and Muslims. In fact, the Jews of Jerusalem first believed that the Islamic Arabian horsemen were a sign of the Messiah coming. We also have records of Muslims praying to Mary, the mother of Jesus, along with one external writer, Jacob of Edessa, who writes this in 708 AD: "The Mahgraye [Islamic Arabs] too ... all confess firmly that he [Jesus] is the true messiah who was to come and who was foretold by the prophets; on this subject they have no dispute with us, but rather with the Jews .. They reproachfully maintain against them ... that the messiah was to be born of David, and further that this messiah who has come was born of Mary. This is firmly professed by the Mahgraye, and not one of them will dispute it, for they say always and to everyone that Jesus son of Mary is in truth the messiah". Something is up here.

The next part in the book compares different religious structures. There are two axises on which religions fit: universalism/particularism and elitist/mass. Judaism and Zoroastrianism (essentially Judaism for Indo-Europeans) are particularist mass religions, Christianity is a universalist mass religion, but Buddhism and Hellenism (essentially Greek philosophy) are elitist and universalist. In the latter two, there is an esoteric religion which the aristocracy practices with much self-discipline and rational structure, but the masses are given a watered down, mythological version of what the aristocrats practice.

Then the book transforms into an utterly confusing, labyrinthine maze of Near Eastern culture, religion, history, and personages — of which 99.9% of people do not know of. Crone and Cook review the religions and societies of Assyria, Hellenic Egypt, Babylon, Syria, and Persia, and then show how they contributed/transformed when they contacted with Islam. The problem is that the authors' writing style is extremely agile, and assumes that you are a master at Arabic history. I am not. As an example of how they write: "The rapprochement between Shi'ism and Iran was nonetheless a very limited one. To a certain extent, this was a matter of historical accident: the Buyids having missed their chance, it was not until the rise of the Safawids that Shi'ism was superimposed on the after-image of Sasanid Iran". It is not explained who the Safawids or Buyids are, and without my expert knowledge of Shi'ism (I barely know what it is) and Sasanid Iran, I have no idea what to make out of the phrase, "it was not until the rise of the Safawids that Shi'ism was superimposed on the after-image of Sasanid Iran". Going through this type of sentence for 70 pages in a row is a Herculean effort, but, despite that effort, I barely got anything out of the latter part of the book. I am one to just read through a book, instead of stopping every sentence to search more about the facts laid out, so I got tired quickly of the perennial deluge of Islamic names thrown at me.

Overall, I would not recommend this to anyone not well versed in Islamic history. If you know 80% of the major events, figures, movements, sects, places, and cultures, then you're good to go. Unfortunately, that does not include me as my historical knowledge is centered around the West. Perhaps someone could recommend me a good starter historical-critical book on Islam which does not assume much knowledge on Islamic history, but for now I rest my case.