The Historical Muhammad Book

Preface     vii
Introduction and Overview of the Life of Muhammad     1
Donner's Reply to the Skeptics     6
Enter Muhammad: An Overview     8
The Battle of the Trench     12
Ibn Khaldun's Social and Economic Theory     16
Bedouins and Sedentary Peoples     16
Asabiyah     17
Pre-Islamic Arabia     25
The Hijaz on the Eve of the Rise of Islam     27
Pre-Islamic Religion     29
The Role of Abraham, Hagar, and Ishmael     36
Who was the Sacrificial Son?     37
The Islamic Theory that Abraham, Ishmael, and Hagar Traveled to the Valley of Mecca     38
Abraham, Ishmael, and the Kaaba     40
William Muir on the Abrahamic Question     41
Muir on the Founding of Mecca and the Abrahamic Legend     43
Recent and Current Scholarship     46
The Religion of Mecca     48
The Kaaba and its Devotees     49
Hanifiya and the Religion of Abraham     50
More on Pre-Islamic Religion in the Arabian Peninsula     63
Possible Influences on Muhammad's Inspiration     74
Jewish Historians on the Jews of Arabia     78
Baron on Pre-Islamic, Arab-JewishRelations in Arabia     82
The Jews of Arabia: A Recent Re-Examination     87
Richard Bell's Origin of Islam in its Christian Environment     95
W. Montgomery Watt's Muhammad     107
Watt's Muhammad at Mecca     107
The Daughters of Allah or the So-Called Satanic Verses     112
More on the "Daughters of Allah" Affair     113
A Sociological Argument     118
Watt's Muhammad at Medina     120
Muhammad at Medina: William Muir's Analysis     124
Muhammad and the Jewish Tribes of Medina     125
The Battle of Badr     128
Current Research on the Massacre of the B. Qurayza     133
The Conquest of Khaybar     133
Muhammad and the Jews     137
Muhammad and the Jews: G. D. Newby's Re-Examination of the Evidence     143
Concluding Sociological Reflections     154
Abu Bakr and the Ridda     162
Notes     165
Bibliography     170
Index     175