Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World by Patricia Crone; Michael CookReview by: J. WansbroughBulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 41, No. 1(1978), pp. 155-156Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of School of Oriental and African StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/615636 .

Accessed: 05/06/2014 10:21

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Cambridge University Press and School of Oriental and African Studies are collaborating with JSTOR todigitize, preserve and extend access to Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University ofLondon.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 188.48.65.30 on Thu, 5 Jun 2014 10:21:33 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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

This content downloaded from 188.48.65.30 on Thu, 5 Jun 2014 10:21:33 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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

This content downloaded from 188.48.65.30 on Thu, 5 Jun 2014 10:21:33 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions