Hoyland - Seeing Islam as others saw it: a survey and evaluation of Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian writings on early Islam

STUDIES IN
LATE ANTIQUITY AND EARLY ISLAM
13

ROBERT G. HOYLAND

THE DARWIN PRESS, INC.
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY
1997

Copyright 1997 by THE DARWIN PRESS, INC., Princeton, NJ 08543.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hoyland, Robert G., 1966

Seeing Islam as others saw it : a survey and evaluation of Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian writings on early Islam / Robert G. Hoyland.

p. cm. - (Studies in late antiquity and early Islam ; 13)

Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

ISBN 0-87850-125-8 (alk. paper)

1. Islamic Empire-History-622-661-Historiography. 2. Islamic Empire-History-661-750-Historiography. 3. Middle East-Civilization-History-To 622-Historiography. I. Title.

II. Series.

DS38.1.H69 1997

939.4-dc21

97-19196

CIP

Second Printing, 2001.

The paper in this book is acid-free neutral pH stock and meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

Printed in the United States of America

In Memory of My Father

The essential vocation of interpretive anthropology is .. to make available to us answers that others have given, and thus to include them in the consultable record of what man has said. (Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, Fontana, London 1993, 30)

It is incumbent upon every writer to set forth what the various scholars have said according to the sense in which they said it. (Masd, Murj al-dhahab, ch. xlix, 1205)

PART I
The Historical and Literary Background

PART IIA
Incidental References to Islam

Cosmas of Jerusalem (wr. mid-eighth c.) and Hymnography

Ishoyahb III of Adiabene (d. 659)

PART IIB
Deliberate References to Islam

The Apocalypse of Peter/ Book of the Rolls

Romanus the Neomartyr (d. 780)

Derivative Accounts

PART III
Writing the History of Early Islam

Abrahamic/Primitive Monotheism

PART IV
Excurses

Maps

Many of the authors who feature in this book begin their work by be-moaning the enormity of the task that lay before them and protesting the extent of their own inadequacy. This plea of mea parvitas was of course a literary device, which served to forestall accusations of audacity and to aggrandise the subject being treated, but it might also reflect, as is certainly the case here, genuine reservations. Ps.-Joshua the Stylite, when embarking upon his Chronicle, had felt like a man who, not knowing how to swim well, is ordered to go down into deep waters, but was saved from drowning and drawn forth from the sea by the prayers of his patron. I have been equally fortunate, rescued from excessive error and confusion by the unstinting generosity and kindness of a number of experts in their fields whom I have continually plagued for information and advice: Sebastian Brock (Syriac), Sidney Griffith (Christian Arabic), James Howard-Johnston and Cyril Mango (Byzantine history and Greek) and Robert Thomson (Armenian). While I was at Princeton University in 1990-91, as a Jane Eliza Proctor visiting fellow and Fulbright scholar, Peter Brown, Michael Cook and Avrom Udovitch afforded me both sure guidance and a warm welcome. And while at Groningen University in 1992, as an Erasmus scholar, Han Drijvers and Gerrit Reinink availed me without demur of their erudition and hospitality. Though in a more intangible way, equally beneficial were the many enjoyable evenings I spent in the learned and provocative company of Peter OBrien, Shaun Haselhurst and Thierry Labica.

There are others to whom I owe a more specific debt. Averil Cameron read the entire manuscript, made many corrections and instigated numerous improvements. Bernard Flusin and Andrew Palmer made avail-able to me their rough editions of as yet unpublished texts, the Narrationes of Anastasius of Sinai and the Lives of Theodotus of Amida and Simeon of the Olives respectively. Yehuda Nevo galvanised me to cultivate a more intimate acquaintance with archaeological evidence, and I remember with fondness our many heated arguments in Gods wilderness over the origins of Islam. Alan Jones, who since undergraduate days has always looked after my interests, aided with the arrangement of study trips and grants. Nitzan Amitai-Preiss devoted much effort at different times and in different continents to solving sundry Hebrew conundra. Kiki Kasidou and Voula Fett, both of Thessaloniki University, first set me on the road to the acquisition of Greek. Brenda Hall, registered indexer of the Society of Indexers, toiled hard to provide what is an essential tool for a volume such as this. And Veronique Overeijnder proofread the whole text, a labour of love, and never ceased to give encouragement.