Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World by Patricia Crone; Michael Cook

Review by: J. Wansbrough

Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 41, No. 1
(1978), pp. 155-156
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of School of Oriental and African Studies
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REVIEWS
155
83-94),
and
History (nos. 95-100).
The whole
is embellished
by
105 illustrations contained on
60 excellent
plates,
and 19
diagrams
of
genea-
logies, stemmata,
etc. The author's anti-
quarian
interests are well exhibited in this
anthology
of Arabic and Islamic
lore,
adduced
with a marked
prosopographical emphasis,
e.g.
in the section of rhetoric
(pp. 299-334)
an
excursus on the Fandri
family
of
Bursa,
in the
section on
scriptural exegesis (pp. 50-61)
a
similar exercise for the Ibn
al-Munajja family
of
Damascus,
on
jurisprudence (pp. 104-8)
the same for the
Sajdwandi family,
on medicine
(pp. 203-13)
for the
Qiifiini
family
of
Mamlfik
Cairo,
the most
amusing being,
re no.
95,
a
Sharifian
pedigree,
a
supplementary
Stamm-
baum for his own
family supplied by
Sellheim's
student,
Ramzi Kutbi of Mecca
(pp.
361-6 and
diagram 19).
All this material is
eminently
useful,
often
entertaining,
but somehow
unassimilated to
any recognizable concept
of
literary history. Here, again,
the author's own
assessment is as accurate and honest as could
be
(p. xxi):
'So ist
gewissermassen ein
Band
voller
Anmerkungen entstanden'.
J. WANSBROUGH
PATRICIA CRONE and MICHAEL COOK:
Hagarism:
the
making of
the Islamic
world.
ix,
268
pp. Cambridge,
etc.:
Cambridge University Press,
1977.
?7.50.
The
eccentricity
of this
monograph
lies as
much in its historical method as in its contro-
versial thesis. The latter
might
be set out
approximately
:
(1)
'Islam'
began
as a messianic and
irredentist movement called '
Hagarism '
(pp. 3-38) ;
(2)
the Middle Eastern sector of the ancient
world
generated
a
tripartite typology
of
Christian cultures :
Coptic/peasant,
Nes-
torian/aristocratic, Syrian/ascetic (pp. 41-70).
(3)
in that environment 'Islam' evolved
from
(Hagarene)
barbarian
conquest
to
(Pharisaic)
cultural
pluralism (pp. 73-151).
The several
arguments
here are buttressed
by
three
appendixes (apocalyptic imagery, episte-
mology, juridical adaptation),
85
pp.
of
notes,
an
impressive bibliography,
and an
eminently
useful index. The authors' erudition is
quite
extraordinary,
their
industry everywhere
evident,
their
prose
ebullient. No
simple
description
could do it
justice:
in the manner
of Pirandello or
Symons
the whole is formu-
lated as a kind of
quest, e.g.
'The mutual
understanding
that
"you
can
be in
my
dream if I can be in
yours
"
may
have
provided
a viable basis for an alliance
of Jews and Arabs in the wilderness. But
when the Jewish messianic
fantasy
was
enacted in the form of an Arab
conquest
of
the
Holy Land, political
success was in itself
likely
to
prove doctrinally embarrassing.
Sooner rather than
later,
the mixture of
Israelite
redemption
and Ishmaelite
genea-
logy
was
going
to curdle'
(p. 10).
'The
religion
of Abraham
provided
some
sort of answer to the
question
how the
Hagarenes
could enter the monotheist world
without
losing
their
identity
in either of its
major
traditions'
(p. 14).
'The
Hagarenes
had thus found solutions to
the most
pressing problems they
faced in the
aftermath of the break with Judaism. Their
religion
of Abraham established who
they
were, their Christian messianism
helped
to
emphasize
who
they
were
not,
and their
scriptural position,
in addition to
helping
out with
messianism,
endowed them with a
sort of
elementary
doctrinal
literacy,
a line
to shoot. The trouble was that these solu-
tions were
utterly
inconsistent with one
another '
(p. 15).
'But the root of the trouble was that the
Hagarenes
had not
yet
faced
up
to the basic
dilemma of their
religious predicament.
They
had
begun
with an
uneasy
combination
of Israelite
redemption
and Ishmaelite
genealogy;
the
specific
content of each
term
might change,
but the fundamental
problem
remained that of
making
an alien
religious
truth their own. There were
really
only
two solutions. On the one hand
they
could
proceed
after the manner of the
Ethiopian Christians,
that is to
say by
themselves
adopting
Israelite descent. But
in view of the
play they
had
already made
of their Ishmaelite
ancestry,
it is
hardly
surprising
that
they
should have
clung
to it
throughout
their entire doctrinal evolution.
On the other
hand,
if
they
would not
go
to
the
truth,
the truth
might perhaps
be
persuaded
to come to them. On the founda-
tion of their Ishmaelite
genealogy, they
had
to erect a
properly
Ishmaelite
prophetology.
It was a
daring
move for so
religiously
parvenu
a
nation,
but it was the
only way
out'
(p. 16).
The
suspense
is
occasionally
intolerable: will
this
parvenu
nation make the
right
choice?
Will the
community
survive ? What
price
success ? It
seems, indeed,
that the
problem
of
identity
in Islam is not
exclusively
a
legacy
of
colonialism;
it has been there all the time.
Now comment
upon
the Islamic world
picture
sketched
by
the authors in the second and
third
parts
of their
exposition
is
beyond my
competence.
I am
compelled
to limit
my
remarks to their identification of
Hagarism.
For that exercise a remarkable selection of
sources has been marshalled: however dis-
parate
these
might
seem
they
do
represent
the
cumulative witness of outsiders to that
pheno-
menon later known as Islam.
They also,
it
might
be
added,
exhibit
polemical stereotypes
(apocalyptic,' dialogue
devant le
prince ')
and
most,
if not
all,
have been or can be
challenged
on
suspicion
of
inauthenticity.
Whatever the
verdict in each
case,
the entire
corpus
manifests
a distinct
literary type,
a kind of
'minority
historiography'.
Its
documentary
value is
here
virtually unquestioned.
Such
largesse
could be born of
desperation:
'Islamic'
sources for the
Umayyad century
are admit-
tedly meagre, and it is that
period which the
authors are concerned in the first
part
of their
work to
explore. Once into
'Babylonia' and
the second half of the
eighth century they
VOL. XLI. PART 1.
11
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156 REVIEWS
appear
to be satisfied with the notion of
locally
adjusted
rabbinic
calques.
This even finds
felicitous
formulation, e.g.
' One is
tempted
to
say
that the halakha of
Iraq
is as innocent of
scripture
as the
scripture
of
Syria
is innocent
of halakha'
(p. 30),
or 'reduction of mishna
to midrash '
(p. 31,
three
times), though
in the
light
of those
very passages,
as well as of the
paragraph
on '
naive
fundamentalism '
(p. 38),
I cannot understand
why
the authors have
to,
or wish
to,
' assume Mu'tazilism to have been in
the first instance a
style
of
theology
and
only
secondarily
an attitude to the sources of law '
(p. 181,
n.
24).
More
puzzling,
however,
is the non-halakhic
scriptural period
in
Syria:
the reconstructed
entity had, apparently,
to be
given
a
name,
but selection of
'Hagarism' might
well be
questioned.
The
pun (and
could it ever have
been more than that
?)
was
elaborated,
if not
invented, by
F. Nau in the course of his
long
and
vituperative relationship
with Islam
(cf.
Les Arabes
chretiens, Paris, 1933, 129-32,
which
really ought
to have found a
place
in the
bibliography here).
The
juxtaposition muhajir
:
Hagar,
even if it were
etymologically
sound,
cannot
really support
the messianic and
irredentist
superstructure
erected here to
explain
the Arab
expansion
into the Fertile
Crescent. The material is
upon
occasion
misleadingly presented, e.g. Ephrem certainly
did not
prophesy
an exodus of
Hagarenes
from
the desert
(p. 13),
nor did Levond
report
Leo's
description
of
Hajjdj destroying
old
Hagarene
writings (p. 18).
The 'Samaritan
calques'
(pp. 21-8)
are more
interesting,
but for all that
not more
compelling:
it is not clear to me at
least
why
Shechem rather
than, say,
Hebron,
or for that
matter, Jerusalem,
had to
provide
a
sanctuary
model,
nor that even the most
radical
concepts
associated with the Islamic
imdma
(elitist, esoteric, gnostic,
but N.B. never
cultic)
had to be derived from the Samaritan
priesthood.
Like 'Moses
redivivus', rejection
of the OT
nebi'im, prohibition
of
wine,
and
other confessional emblemata, concepts
of
sanctuary
and of communal
authority,
if
they
had
really
to be
borrowed, might
or could have
been found almost
anywhere (the
relevant
literature is limitless:
Schoeps
on the Ebion-
ites or Meeks on the
Prophet-King
would
do).
My
reservations here,
and elsewhere in this
first
part
of the
book,
turn
upon
what I take to
be the authors'
methodological assumptions,
of which the
principal
must be that a vocabu-
lary
of motives can be
freely extrapolated
from a discrete collection of
literary
stereo-
types composed by
alien and
mostly
hostile
observers,
and
thereupon employed
to
describe,
even
interpret,
not
merely
the overt behaviour
but also the intellectual and
spiritual develop-
ment of the
helpless
and
mostly
innocent
actors. Where even the
sociologist
fears to
tread,
the historian
ought
not with
impunity
be
permitted
to
go.
From the
growing
litera-
ture on rules of conduct for the latter I should
like to cite
a
single
valuable caveat:
' " Tradi-
tion " did not merely
transmit the
past,
it
created it' (M.
I.
Finley,
The use and abuse of
history, 25).
J. WANSBROUGH
HARRY
AUSTRYN
WOLFSON: The
phi-
losophy of
the Kalam.
(Structure
and
Growth of
Philosophic Systems
from
Plato to
Spinoza, Iv.)
xxvii,
779
pp.
Cambridge, Mass.,
and London: Har-
vard
University Press,
1976.
$35.70,
?22.45.
On so recondite a
subject
as
speculative
theology
to
compose
a book both lucid and
precise, yet eminently readable,
is no mean
achievement. The late Professor Wolfson
(1888-1974)
has done
just
that: in 750
pp.
a
detailed
analysis
of
kaldm,
its historical
development,
dialectical
elaboration,
and
technical lexicon. To those at all
acquainted
with Wolfson's
scholarship
this achievement
will have been
anticipated,
as
well, perhaps,
as
the
indisputable
fact that his
performance
is
virtually unique.
The number of
vague,
muddled,
and
impressionistic
accounts of
Islamic
theology
need
hardly
be
recapitulated
:
here we have a
description
whose
clarity
is a
product
of both a
very
subtle intellect and a
lifetime of effort devoted to
study
of the
very
complex
source materials. The substance of
the work is an
analysis
of the six basic
problems
of kaldm: divine attributes
(pp. 112-234),
nature of the
Qur'dn (pp. 235-303),
creation
(pp. 355-465),
atomism
(pp. 466-517),
caus-
ality (pp. 518-600),
and
predestination/free
will
(pp. 601-719),
the whole
encompassed by
an
introductory chapter
on historical
descrip-
tions of the
kaldm
(pp. 1-111)
and an
epilogue
on its contributions to the elaboration of
monotheist
speculative theology (pp. 720-39),
and intersected
by
a
study
of Islamic and
Christian formulations of Trinitarianism
(pp.
304-54).
Wolfson's
exposition
is both
systematic
and
comparative
but
also,
within the framework of
his
comprehensive study
of Philonic and
patristic theology,
historical.
Having
heard,
nearly
30
years ago,
his lectures on
Averroes,
Maimonides,
and
Aquinas,
I
expected (rightly,
as it
happens)
to find here considerable stress
upon terminological
transfer as the
likely
means
by
which
philosophical concepts
were
adopted
and
adapted
within the
tripartite
monotheist
tradition. Axiomatic
throughout
the work,
this
view
is
explicit
in the author's
pro-
grammatic
statements on
'
origin,
structure,
diversity' (pp. 70-9). Incidentally,
to his
discussion of
analogy (qiyds)
could be added
(pp. 12-24)
the observation that in
early
exegetical writings
the distinction between
qiyds
and
naz.r
turned
precisely upon
the
absence
and/or presence
of an 'illa or ratio
(see
my Quranic studies, 1977, 166-70).
Wolfson
recognized
of course that the sources for a
study
of
kalam
are
essentially polemical
and
that
'
origins'
had to be
sought
in contexts of
systematic
or structural
consistency.
One
oversight ought,
however,
to be mentioned:
in his discussion
(pp.
239-40, esp.
n.
22)
of
Arabic
renderings
of 'Word of God' he
ventures, after
adducing kalum
and kalimat, to
comment
' As for Muslims, though
as a rule the
term used
by
them for
"
Word
" in the sense
of the
pre-existent
Koran is
kcalam, they
would
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