Before and After Muhammad: The First Millennium Refocused

by Garth Fowden

Overview

A new historical framework integrating Islam into European and Asian history

Islam emerged amid flourishing Christian and Jewish cultures, yet students of Antiquity and the Middle Ages mostly ignore it. Despite intensive study of late Antiquity over the last fifty years, even generous definitions of this period have reached only the eighth century, whereas Islam did not mature sufficiently to compare with Christianity or rabbinic Judaism until the tenth century. Before and After Muhammad suggests a new way of thinking about the historical relationship between the scriptural monotheisms, integrating Islam into European and West Asian history.

Garth Fowden identifies the whole of the First Millennium—from Augustus and Christ to the formation of a recognizably Islamic worldview by the time of the philosopher Avicenna—as the proper chronological unit of analysis for understanding the emergence and maturation of the three monotheistic faiths across Eurasia. Fowden proposes not just a chronological expansion of late Antiquity but also an eastward shift in the geographical frame to embrace Iran.

In Before and After Muhammad, Fowden looks at Judaism, Christianity, and Islam alongside other important developments in Greek philosophy and Roman law, to reveal how the First Millennium was bound together by diverse exegetical traditions that nurtured communities and often stimulated each other.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691158532
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	12/08/2013
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Garth Fowden is Research Director at the Institute of Historical Research, National Research Foundation, Athens, and Sultan Qaboos Professor of Abrahamic Faiths at the University of Cambridge. His books include The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind and Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity (both Princeton).

Table of Contents

Prefatory Note and Acknowledgments ix

Abbreviations xi

Chapter 1. INCLUDING ISLAM 1

The West and the Rest 1

Edward Gibbon 5

Islam and late Antiquity 9

Summary 15

Chapter 2. TIME: BEYOND LATE ANTIQUITY 18

The roots of late antique studies 18

Burckhardt to Strzygowski 23

The Orient and Islam: Views from Vienna 30

Pirenne to the present 37

Chapter 3. A NEW PERIODIZATION: THE FIRST MILLENNIUM 49

Decline versus transformation 49

Maturations 53

Monotheist historiography 68

For and against the First Millennium 82

Chapter 4. SPACE: AN EASTWARD SHIFT 92

Discovering the Mediterranean 92

Discovering the East 96

Empires and commonwealths 101

The Mountain Arena 116

Chapter 5. EXEGETICAL CULTURES 1: ARISTOTELIANISM 127

Greek Aristotelianism 129

Christian polemic 136

Aristotle in Latin, Armenian, and Syriac 139

Alexandria to Baghdad 146

Arabic Aristotelianism 153

Chapter 6. EXEGETICAL CULTURES 2: LAW AND RELIGION 164

Roman law 166

Rabbinic Judaism 173

Patristic Christianity 181

Islam 188

Chapter 7. VIEWPOINTS AROUND 1000: ṬŪS, BASRA,

BAGHDAD, PISA 198

Tūs/Iran 199

Basra/Encyclopedism 204

Baghdad/Rationality 207

Pisa/The Latin West 212

Prospects for Further Research 219

Map: the Eurasian Hinge, with Circum-Arabian Trade Routes 106

Index 225

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Before and After Muhammad refocuses the chronological and geographical lenses through which historians view developments during the seminal period between ancient and medieval history in the West. Fowden writes clearly and convincingly. His research is thorough and his thesis is compelling."—Sidney H. Griffith, Catholic University of America

"Fowden presents a powerful and compelling new model for an integrated view of late antique and early medieval Christian, Jewish, and Muslim history that replaces traditional distinctions between East and West. Before and After Muhammad is an ambitious book, one that has the potential to shift fundamental paradigms."—Anthony Kaldellis, Ohio State University

Editorial Reviews

"[T]he points he raises are important to understanding chronology and periodization on a global scale."

Choice

"Before and After Muhammad refocuses the chronological and geographical lenses through which historians view developments during the seminal period between ancient and medieval history in the West. Fowden writes clearly and convincingly. His research is thorough and his thesis is compelling."—Sidney H. Griffith, Catholic University of America


"Fowden presents a powerful and compelling new model for an integrated view of late antique and early medieval Christian, Jewish, and Muslim history that replaces traditional distinctions between East and West. Before and After Muhammad is an ambitious book, one that has the potential to shift fundamental paradigms."—Anthony Kaldellis, Ohio State University

From the Publisher