Robert Hoyland
Auteur de In God's Path: The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire
A propos de l'auteur
Robert G. Hoyland is Professor of Late Antique and Early Islamic Middle Eastern History at New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World and author of Arabia and the Arabs.
Œuvres de Robert Hoyland
Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam (1997) 46 exemplaires
From Hellenism to Islam: Cultural and Linguistic Change in the Roman Near East (2009) — Directeur de publication — 20 exemplaires
Theophilus of Edessa's Chronicle: The Circulation of Historical Knowledge in Late Antiquity and Early Islam… (2011) 16 exemplaires
The 'History of the Kings of the Persians' in Three Arabic Chronicles: The Transmission of the Iranian Past… (2018) 6 exemplaires
Doctrine and Debate in the East Christian World, 300-1500 (2011) — Directeur de publication — 5 exemplaires
The Late Antique World of Early Islam: Muslims among Christians and Jews in the East Mediterranean (SLAEI 25) (2015) 5 exemplaires
From Albania to Arran : The East Caucasus between the Ancient and Islamic Worlds (ca. 330 BCE-1000 BCE) (2020) 2 exemplaires
Muslims And Others In Early Islamic Society (The Formation of the Classical Islamic World) (2004) 2 exemplaires
Oeuvres associées
Khalifa ibn Khayyat's History on the Umayyad Dynasty (660-750) (Translated Texts for Historians LUP) (2015) — Directeur de publication, quelques éditions — 12 exemplaires
Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul: Polemon's Physiognomy from Classical Antiquity to Medieval Islam (2007) — Contributeur — 7 exemplaires
Étiqueté
Partage des connaissances
- Date de naissance
- 1966-01-18
- Sexe
- male
- Nationalité
- UK
- Organisations
- University of St Andrews
Membres
Critiques
Listes
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Auteurs associés
Statistiques
- Œuvres
- 15
- Aussi par
- 4
- Membres
- 462
- Popularité
- #53,212
- Évaluation
- 3.8
- Critiques
- 4
- ISBN
- 46
- Langues
- 1
Any scrap of writing (including that on artefacts and buildings) from this period that has any bearing on Islam has been documented and, in very many cases, quoted where it has anything to say about the rise of this influential religion.
The scope is exhaustive, and it is meant to be. It is a quite astonishing scholastic achievement which included, among other things, Hoyland actually translating documents into English where this had never been done. I wouldn’t describe it as a page-turner, at times it’s a bit dry. However, you do expect that from this genre. Get into the texts he presents however and it brings this era of history alive in a way that I’d never experienced before.
The motivation for such a work is laid out in the introduction
"Islamicists, who once rejoiced that their subject “was born in the full light of history,” have recently been discovering just how much apparent history is religio-legal polemic in disguise, some even doubting whether the host of Arabic historical works that appear in the late eighth and early ninth centuries contain any genuine recollection of the rise and early growth of Islam." page 3
He then goes on to cite the examples of Cahen, Crone and Cook who delved into this area but laments the fact that others have not pursued this line of enquiry. To address that, his work is an attempt
"to elucidate and expand what constitutes Islamic history, …. [by] … drawing upon the writings of Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians"page 3
His thesis is sound: If you want to be sure of what someone claims, you need first hand testimony as well as witness testimony.
So, what did I learn?
Well, I learned that isnads shouldn’t be dismissed summarily:
"By the late ninth century, isnad criticism was highly developed and scholarship professional, so one should not simply dismiss isnads as fictitious without some consideration." page 493
Instead, we can dismiss them after “some consideration”.
I learned that claims that Hajjaj ibn Yusuf revised the text of the Qur’an are attested by both Islamic and non-Islamic sources and that we can trust the latter to the extent that they are corrobated by the former.
But the greatest thing I learned was that the burden of proof for the traditional story of the origins of Islam lies fairly and squarely with those who promulgate it:
"before AH 72 the archaeological record is strangely silent about Islam, and this despite the fact that we do have a fair amount of material from this time. A similar problem occurs with regard to the Qur’an, which seems to have been ignored by Muslims as a source of law until the early eighth century." page 550
There are also a few more problems the story that we typically hear.
"The total lack of specifically Islamic declarations made by the Sufyanid line of Umayyads, the proliferation of them issued by the Marwanid branch and the religious causes espoused by the various opposition movements of the intervening civil war lead us to the conclusion that it was pressure from rebel factions that induced the Marwanids to proclaim Islam publicly as the ideological basis of the Arab state." page 553
This is where that “consideration” Hoyland mentioned comes into play. We have isnads, but when we consider specific hadith and their respective isnads, we have to give “some consideration” as to why we have the ones we do.
For anyone with an interest in pursuing the reality of the origins of Islam, it’s a masterpiece and a required read.
For more reviews and the 1001 Books Spreadsheet, visit http://arukiyomi.com… (plus d'informations)