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Islam’s Origins: Myth and Material Evidence

American Academy in Berlin
23.2K subscribers
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1.5M views 6 years ago
The traditional narrative of Islam’s origins centers on the career of the prophet Muhammad (d. 632 CE) in Arabia and the rapid spread of his movement throughout the Near East immediately after his death. Over the past half-century, however, scholars have come to realize that this picture is the product of the Islamic community of the eighth, ninth, and later centuries and that its goal of providing a satisfying narrative may not accurately reflect how Islam actually began and grew into the major world religion we know today. In this lecture, Fred M. Donner argues that a more historically accurate view of Islam’s origins has been hindered by the scarcity of documentary evidence from the seventh century and considers some of the key sources that may help us understand these momentous events in Islamic history. ...more
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Islam's Origins Myth and Material Evidence

2:52

Muhammad

4:04

Death Date for Muhammad

4:13

Mecca

4:31

Revelation of God's Word to the Prophet

7:28

Monotheism

8:40

Prophecies

9:08

Warnings about the Impending Last Judgment

9:31

The Islamic Conquest

16:18

Koran Text

28:13

Documentary Evidence from the 7th Century

37:05

Papyri from the 7th Century

41:01

' S Basically a Kind of Shift in Focus the Believers Now Are Defined as those Not Just To Believe in One God in the Last Day but as those Who Believe in One God in the Last Day and Who Follow the Quran as Their Scripture and Who Accept Muhammad as the Prophet Who Brought the Scripture and Actually to this Day That's Still the Simplest Way To Define a Muslim as You Know Muslims Fight each Other All the Time as Most People Most Religions Do She's against Sunnis and So On but One Thing They all Exert the Two Things They all Accept Is the Koran Is the Scripture and Muhammad Is Their Prophet about

46:21

And of Course the Challenge once You Find Them Is You Have To Read Them To Figure Out What They Say and this Is Also Not So Easy because Often the Writing Is Torn I Mean this One Is Pretty Clear What's Available Is Clear but You Know What Was over Here or on the Lines above or in Long You Know We Don't Know but You Get What You Get and You Try and Work with It One Hopes One Would Find More Complete Documents and I Think Is My Last Slide I'Ll Show You a More Complete Document That I Found Guess What in all Places Chicago

54:53

That this Was What You Should Do Well these Chains of Authority Then Were Scrutinized by Muslim Scholars They Said Well You Know It Says It Went from a to B to C but B You Never Studied with Cc Died before B Was Born You Know So this Is a Weak Hadith It Can't Be True so They Did that Kind of You Know that's Due Diligence It Was Formally and They Constructed End Collection of Hadith Which Is like One Percent of the Total Number Which Were Considered the Sound Hadith Someone Had Strong Chains of Authority but Even in those Collections of Sound Hadith We There Are Many that We Know Must Be Fabricated Where the Prophet Is Seen as Predicting Things That Happened Two Hundred Years after His Death I Mean Yeah He Was a Prophet but I Really Don't Think He Foresaw Authorizes the Best of the Feasting

1:06:05

But They Also Look at the Body of Text and They Try To Coordinate Them and One Thing We Can Do by Looking at these Analysis Try To Decide When this Hadith Went into Circulation We Can See if You Have Many Different Transmissions of It You Can See How the Chains of Authority Kind Of Converge on Someone and that Person Is Probably the Person Who Put It into Circulation Even though He Said He Got It from Three Generations Earlier if You Don't Have any Other Transmissions Probably He Put It into Circulation so He either Made It Up or His Teacher Made It Up and He Spread It So One More Question and Open Up to the Floor cuz They'Re a Lot Smarter People Out There than Me and It Struck Me When You Put Up One of Your Slides

1:07:06

Golden Age of Islamic Philosophy

1:26:30
Islam’s Origins: Myth and Material Evidence
15KLikes
1,580,618Views
2019Apr 3
The traditional narrative of Islam’s origins centers on the career of the prophet Muhammad (d. 632 CE) in Arabia and the rapid spread of his movement throughout the Near East immediately after his death. Over the past half-century, however, scholars have come to realize that this picture is the product of the Islamic community of the eighth, ninth, and later centuries and that its goal of providing a satisfying narrative may not accurately reflect how Islam actually began and grew into the major world religion we know today. In this lecture, Fred M. Donner argues that a more historically accurate view of Islam’s origins has been hindered by the scarcity of documentary evidence from the seventh century and considers some of the key sources that may help us understand these momentous events in Islamic history.

Follow along using the transcript.

American Academy in Berlin

23.2K subscribers