Garth Fowden - Before and After Muhammad: The First Millennium Refocused

BEFORE AND AFTER MU H AMMAD

BEFORE AND AFTER MU H AMMAD

THE FIRST MILLENNIUM REFOCUSED

Garth Fowden

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

PRINCETON AND OXFORD

Copyright 2014 by Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

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ISBN 978-0-691-15853-2

Library of Congress Control Number 2013942727

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This book has been composed in Garamond Premier Pro

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aug. mmix

Prefatory Note and Acknowledgments

Before and after Mu h ammad develops my attempt in Empire to commonwealth (1993) to view Arsacid and Sasanid Iran, Rome, and the Caliphate within a single frame. Since then I have approached the early Caliphate by way of its material culture in Qu s ayrAmra (2004), and through philosophy (especially the Arabic Plotinus) in an uncompleted book titled Rational Islam and the reinvention of Aristotle. Except in its definition of the geographical framework, Before and after Mu h ammad barely overlaps with Empire to commonwealth; but it has been much fertilized by Rational Islam. It lays out, and in its last two chapters somewhat schematically exemplifies, a new historical periodization, whose practical demonstration will be provided, in due course, by a large-scale narrative to be titled The First Millennium: From Augustus to Avicenna.

Unless specified otherwise, all dates are CE, and translations listed in the notes are into English. There is no bibliography. All references are given in full at their first occurrence and in abbreviated form thereafter, with their first occurrence indicated in square brackets by chapter and footnote number separated by a colon (e.g., [2:32]). The first epigraph excerpt is from Sebastian Brocks article From antagonism to assimilation: Syriac attitudes to Greek learning, 1982, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Trustees for Harvard University. Originally published in East of Byzantium: Syria and Armenia in the formative period, edited by Nina G. Garsoan, Thomas F. Mathews, and Robert W. Thomson.

I would like to thank Johann Arnason for his early interest in and encouragement of my First Millennium project, and Glenn Most for inviting me to give three lectures, titled Beyond late Antiquity, at the Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, in April 2009. Rob Tempio, of Princeton University Press, suggested I turn these into a short book. I wrote a first draft during three intense weeks of August 2009 at Katounia, Limni, in the pine woods by the Euboean Gulf, where forty years earlier Dimitri Obolensky composed The Byzantine Commonwealth (1971), and Philip Sherrard worked until his untimely death in 1995. I am grateful to Denise Sherrard for her ever-generous hospitality.

Otherwise, Before and after Mu h ammad was conceived and written in the uniquely favorable environment provided by the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquity at the Institute of Historical Research, National Research Foundation, Athens, and in particular by Anna Mihailidou (Acting Director) and Harikleia Papageorgiadou (Head of Department), who sacrificed time and energy to protecting their colleagues from the worst effects of the Greek economic collapse. The book was completed in the winter of 201213, when I was fortunate to be a fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, and finally caught up with many publications not available in Greece.

Among those who have read part or all of this book, or otherwise assisted at its birth, the following deserve special thanks: Nadia Ali, Aziz al-Azmeh, Kamal Boullata, Hariclia Brecoulaki, Peter Brown, Elizabeth Key Fowden, Luca Giuliani, Anthony Kaldellis, Myrto Malouta, and Walter Pohl. I also thank all those who organized (Johann Arnason, Bo Strth) and took part in the meeting on The European foundation myth: A critical assessment and a relativisation of the European origo, which was convened at the University of Helsinki in May 2011 in order to discuss the Before and After Mu h am-mad/First Millennium project.

Finally, I thank Elizabeth and Gabriel for the good humor and solidarity that have kept us going through the last three and a half difficult years of crisis in Greece and temporary departure.

Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin
30th January 2013

Abbreviations

BEFORE AND AFTER MU H AMMAD

INCLUDING ISLAM

Although the divide between Islam and Europe will always be deeper than that between the different European peoples, there are two reasons why we simply cannot do without Islam in the construction of European cultural history: namely the unique opportunity to compare its assimilation of the same [antique] heritage, and on account of the abundance of [the two sides] historical interactions.