The new book by Tom Holland on the origins and rise of Islam and the collapse of the Roman and Persian empires, In the Shadow of the Sword, has been gathering mixed reviews in the general press. Barnaby Rogerson in the Independent dismissed a few of Holland’s ideas on the birth and nature of Islam as fanciful or speculative, but saw these as only “slight flaws” in an otherwise compelling narrative of the period; Michael Scott in the Telegraph produced a masterpiece of evasion, describing it as a handsome volume tackling an important question from a novel perspective with a fluid style that was “also bound to encounter the full spectrum of critical reaction”; Ziauddin Sardar in the New Statesman objected, more in sorrow than anger, to Holland’s dismissal of the entire Muslim scholarly tradition on the development of Islam and the Qur’an and his reliance instead on the controversial theories of Patricia Crone and her associates. Finally, there was the magisterial academic demolition job offered by Glen Bowersock in the Guardian: “Holland came to his work on Islam unencumbered by any prior acquaintance with its fundamental texts or the scholarly literature… Holland seems to have confined himself largely to interpreters, learned or otherwise, writing in English, but his efforts to inform himself, arduous as they may have been, were manifestly insufficient… Holland’s cavalier treatment of his sources, ignorance of current research and lack of linguistic and historical acumen serve to undermine his provocative narrative.” Holland has now offered a response to the last of these.I don’t intend to get involved in the detailed arguments about the interpretation of unpublished early Qur’anic manuscripts and the like; my experience in this field is limited to teaching a single class on the early centuries of Islam as part of a general course on late antiquity, a class based entirely on a synthesis of standard works in English. Clearly, given the likely reach of Holland’s work into the student population and hence the likely appearance of this ‘revisionist’ approach in discussion and essays in years to come, I’m going to have to familiarise myself with his argument, and read more of Crone’s ‘Hagarism’ thesis than I’ve hitherto been inclined to do. For the moment, however, I simply want to comment on one aspect of Holland’s defence of his book, and the questions it raises about the enterprise of ‘popular history’.
One of Bowersock’s criticisms was that Holland had missed an important manuscript; the latter’s response was that he had on the contrary deliberately left it out because of uncertainty about its date – “I hope, then, that it will be understandable why, in a book aimed at a general readership, I opted not to venture into such a quagmire”. This is all too believable – and scarcely a unique occurence, even if it isn’t normally stated so baldly. Historians – I’m trying to resist the phrase ‘proper historians’, without much success – focus on such problems, teasing out all the different strands and debating the different possibilities and interpretative strategies; even when (or if) they settle on a reading, they are expected to show their working, so to speak. Popular historians omit any such complexities and suppress any doubts, for fear of unsettling their readers by revealing unexpected gaps or inconsistencies in the story. The traditional reflex response of historians to more or less anything, especially to the claims of social scientists about the past – “yes, but it’s rather more complicated than that” – is wholly suppressed.
I’ve lamented in the past the fact that television programmes on historical subjects, especially on antiquity, tend to present a seamless and final narrative or descriptive account, offered up by a single figure of authority who clearly has absolute command of the entire subject; in contrast, at least some archaeology programmes are prepared to focus on the process of discovery and the existence of debates and uncertainties. Of course they’re equally fictitious, just different kinds of stories about the past and our relationship with it, but there is nevertheless a striking difference in the effects and affect of these different accounts, the kinds of knowledge and understanding they claim or attempt to convey. On the one hand, the past appears as something known; on the other, the past appears as something that has to be discovered and reconstructed. The historian who simply knows stuff versus the archaeologist who investigates it. The demise of talking heads in history programmes – which, silly though they often were, at least gave the impression of history as in some sense a collaborative enterprise and a matter of debate – in favour of the single omniscient presenter simply reinforces this idea.
Works of popular history are often rather more sophisticated than this; the author is more likely to acknowledge his or her dependence on the scholarship of others, and notes and bibliographies are normally provided for anyone who wants to consult them – even if they’re kept well out of the way of the main text, to make sure that they don’t disrupt the flow and confidence of the narrative. In a few cases, there are even attempts to highlight the existence of debate and of alternative accounts. However, consciously or unconsciously, the model for such attempts is not the work of conventional academic historians but the literary mode of Dan Brown: the traditional account of the past is revealed to be a conspiracy promoted by some kind of shadowy establishment forces, heroically opposed by a small group of marginalised iconoclasts who uncover the truth. The Catholic Church has suppressed the true story of the descendents of Jesus in order to maintain its own power, until the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail came along; Islam invented stories about its origins in order to present itself as a new revelation and to underpin its drive to conquer the world, opposed only by Crone and Holland.
I’m not for a moment suggesting that Holland is consciously signing up for a crusade against Islam, or deliberately seeking to target those demographics that are already convinced that every Muslim is secretly plotting to establish a worldwide Caliphate. Indeed, there’s evidence that he’s quite oblivious to these possibilities. Bowersock’s review noted that the Dutch edition of the book appeared under the title The Fourth Beast, and expressed concern that “a marketing strategy of this kind looks like a conscious effort to profit from recent Dutch anxiety over Muslim immigrants”. Holland’s response was that the title had been chosen from a list of possibilities that he’d produced for all his publishers, and that the Fourth Beast in the prophecy in Daniel 7 has been taken to refer to both the Roman Empire and the original Caliphate, hence it’s a perfectly appropriate title. He may genuinely not see that these two positions aren’t incompatible; it may not be his marketing strategy, but his Dutch publisher might have fewer scruples or illusions about the appeal of such a title.
This is of course tangential; the most detailed and scrupulous scholarship can be driven by a dubious political agenda, or appropriated by others regardless of the author’s intentions. Bowersock’s review over-stepped the mark in appearing to ascribe malevolence to the author rather than naivety. It also, it must be said, showed remarkable naivety of its own in claiming that the quality of the book (as revealed through his detailed criticisms) would undermine its hopes for success. On the contrary, a detailed academic critique of such a book entirely misses the point in this context, as far as many potential readers are concerned; it simply reinforces the impression of a heroic outsider having the courage to tell the truth in the face of the criticisms of the academic establishment and the complaints of over-sensitive Muslims. “Academic nit-picking, point scoring and sheer spleen,” says one letter to the Guardian. “The proof of Holland’s scholastic integrity is in the reading.” I honestly don’t know what that means – he tells a good story so it must be true? – but it does confirm my sense that I am entirely, congenitally incapable of writing that sort of book or attracting that kind of reader.
Far be it from a mere writer of popular history to suggest to a ‘proper’ historian how to conduct his research, but I generally find that it helps to read a book before writing an entire blog post on it. Should you deign to read ‘In the Shadow of the Sword’, you will discover that its entire first chapter – some 20,000 words in all – is devoted entirely to a discussion of the sources, the staggering range of academic opinion on the subject, and an acknowledgement of just how subjective any narrative of Islam’s origins must necessarily be. The point about qur’anic dating is that, in the absence of consensus among those few specialists who are qualified to comment on it, everyone else who writes about Islam’s origins – whether from a traditionalist or revisionist perspective, whether for an academic or a generalist readership – is obliged to look for alternative criteria when constructing narratives and arguments. Those alternative criteria exist, I believe, in the context of the age into which Islam was born. Nor, of course, am I alone in believing that – and it would be the height of arrogance and ingratitude on my part to pretend that I was. All I am doing is conveying to a general audience what is a gathering consensus among historians of late antiquity: that Islam did not emerge, as Muslim tradition would have it, as lightning from a clear blue sky. Far from being some kooky theory that only a gullible sensationalist would ever swallow, it would seem to me, based on private discussions, that pretty much every historian of the period (although not Glen Bowersock, self-evidently), would accept such a perspective. Between Patricia Crone and Fred Donner, the differences nowadays are more those of nuance than of substance.
I entirely agree that to review a book without having read it would be utterly absurd and unacceptable, but that wasn’t my aim. Rather, I was responding to certain aspects of your response to Bowersock’s review, and what these suggested about the nature and constraints of history produced for a general, non-academic audience.
Have you seen Chase Robinson’s piece in the TLS this week? His take on the historiography of early Islam corresponds much more closely to what I too would estimate to be its current state than Bowersock’s. Truly, my perspective is not that of a lonely and heroic iconoclast – in fact, I am thoroughly centrist.
I can understand completely why you’re offering these sorts of arguments, given the nature of Bowersock’s review (and its elements of classic delegitimisation tactics). I’m more interested in a different set of questions: not so much the state of the scholarship but how it’s presented, not so much the answer to a historical problem or controversy but the ways in which the problem is conceived. In brief, different kinds of historical accounts for different audiences, and the nature and explanation of those differences.
Let’s put this in terms of a couple of ideal types, exaggerating key traits. Assume that all historians are perfectly well aware that there are always issues with the evidence: substantial gaps, major uncertainties in interpretation and so forth. For A, who wants to provide information about the ancient world (whether narrative or description), this is a problem, as it raises doubts about the reliability of some of the things they want to say; they don’t ignore the existence of scholarly controversy, but rather develop their own view of the correct interpretation and then, crucially, present this as if it were the obvious or only interpretation, with the existence of controversy relegated to passing comments, footnotes, endnotes or brief references in the introduction to problems of evidence. For B, however, the controversy is precisely what is interesting and important; they therefore present the whole process of working through the different arguments, evaluating different interpretations etc. – in other words, the actual work of the historian, rather than simply the end result.
I’m not suggesting that ‘academic’ history is only ever B (on the contrary) or that ‘popular’ history is only ever A (but I do think it tends towards that end of the spectrum). Nor am I – despite my loose phrasing in the original post – implying a clear hierarchy, i.e. that only type B history or academic history are ‘proper’ history; on the contrary, they’re different kinds of discourse aimed at different audiences and requiring very different skills. I do genuinely doubt that I am capable of writing history of the A type for a non-specialist audience, simply because all my instincts insist on complexity over simplification. That isn’t to say that I write, or want to write, only for other academics – I enjoy writing for students enormously – but that my natural approach is to start with the problems and debates, and to seek to explain in accessible terms why the past is complicated and controversial, rather than presenting a past that appears to be more or less uncomplicated and uncontroversial.
At the risk of adding to the list of people I’m insulting with this blog, I would compare this to what I see of students making the transition from school to university. Many of them arrive having been taught to think of historical topics in terms of, say, twenty key points that need to be included in any essay. They’re fully aware that university study will expect a lot more of them – but too often, at the beginning, they conceive of this in terms of there being forty, or sixty, key points to assimilate. Their lecturers’ insistence on arguments and debates rather than just ‘facts’ – type B rather than type A history – can seem profoundly disconcerting if not deliberately unsettling, and I’m sure that some of them get to the end of their course still feeling that they would be happier being told lots of interesting things about the past rather than being taught how to ‘do’ historical analysis.
Part of the reason for this is that this is why people are interested in the past: they want information about other times and past events. (As to why they’re interested in this, I tend to start quoting Nietzsche, but will desist as it’s tangential to this argument). But that’s not the only reason; it’s also because they’ve been taught that this is what history is all about. History at school could be taught differently, to consider questions about how we know things about the past rather than just learning things that we (allegedly) do know – but, for various contingent and cultural reasons, it isn’t.
I wonder, then, if the same could be true of the wider, non-specialist audience for history. Clearly there is considerable demand for Type A books, giving information and narratives, and there are some excellent examples of this (I have no hesitation in recommending Persian Fire, for example). Is it the case that there is no demand at all for other sorts of history – for books that convey something of what it is to do historical research rather than simply presenting its results, for books that focus on the complexities, uncertainties and gaps, rather than smoothing them over? Is this a contingent phenomenon, given that past historians like A.J.P.Taylor and M.I.Finley were able to reach a relatively wide audience with works that focused expressly on problems rather than facts?
I will ponder your questions, and reply in due course…
The popularization of science is a necessity, and this can be done in a good or a bad way, as everything. The good way gives a basic understanding and opens up for further reading and thinking. The bad way is closing down the subject to one single and simple “truth”.
Concerning the origins of Islam, it helps a lot to open the way for questions – but I wonder especially when it comes to Islam whether it helps to give answers.
I think of believers, real Muslims. Do they need answers? No, they have them, already. And they have a deep distrust for alternative answers. And they have no clue about the bridges between faith and reason, which are well-developed in the Christian world. What they need and what has a chance, is the capability to ask, and concepts of bridging the gap between faith and reason.
By presenting the historical-critical method together with the (not necessarily correct) result, that Muhammad never lived, Muslims are not invited to start asking questions – they are repelled. It would be better to show that “something is wrong” with the traditional story-line of Islam and to open up ways to follow for reaching answers – whether it be with or without a real Muhammad in the end. Think always of Christianity: If the Christians who started with developing historical-critical methodology knew the results, they probably never started. You cannot make the second step before the first one. This is the problem of Islam.
This “something is wrong” is well-presented in Hans Jansen’s “biography” of Muhammad. Except the epilogue, where Jansen abruptly presents the idea, that Muhammad never lived, the whole book is written in form of questions and presented self-contradictions in traditional documents, leaving it to the reader to think about. I really enjoyed it: This can make a believer start thinking without repelling him by a harsh result.
What is also missing are concepts and ideas for believers, why faith is not destroyed by historical deviations from tradition. For modern Christians, this is almost self-evident, but many Muslims still have to learn this. Exactly the lack of knowledge about the compatibility of faith and reason is at the grounds, why Muslims often react so harshly on criticism: They feel fundamentally critizied, although the criticism was not meant fundamentally, but only directed on a certain aspect far from the center of Islamic belief.
The question is: Who will read Holland’s book and who will have an increase in wisdom by reading it, in terms of an open Platonic dialectic inquiry?
As someone who’s professionally and personally committed to questioning almost everything in sight – the unexamined life is not worth living, the unexamined world will get you when you’re not looking, and anyway it’s fun – I agree with a lot of this.
I am, however, disturbed by your apparently simple contrast of Christianity and Islam. Yes, European Christianity does develop the historical-critical method and subject its own beliefs and history to scrutiny – and significant numbers of modern Christians reject this more or less absolutely, even in the West, let alone in Africa. They already have the answers, they have no need of the questions or of the idea that questioning is good.
Conversely, there is a long tradition of criticism and debate in Islam, and of course many different variants on the core beliefs; but this is often obscured, partly because most of us (me included) don’t read Arabic, partly because the loudest and most powerful voices have been those adhering to more extreme and anti-modern versions, and partly (I suspect) because certain commentators in the West take the view that proper questioning ought to lead to the abandonment of such nonsensical beliefs, hence the fact that the scholars remain Muslims shows that they can’t have been properly critical.
In other words, I think this is a problem with dogmatic religious belief rather than with one particular religion.
No, you are not right. You miss the point by 100%. First, I agree that the potential of Islam to go beyond traditionalism and dogmatism is the same as in Christianity, and history of Islam shows, that this potential is there, yes — it has a chance to be developed and realized, yes —
— but you miss the point, (a) that this potential ever had been developed as far as in the western world, and (b) that this potential is developed and realized in the present-day Islam. It is not.
Where are the respected religious teachers with great influence, who teach the compatibility of enlightenment and religion, of human rights and Islam? I see only single teachers with no influence at the moment, who do this. Whereas the Catholic church — the leading Christian church — declared officially as religious doctrine: The civic freedom of religion, the compatibility of Christianity with e.g. Evolution theory and civic equal rights for women. Even Galilei was officially rehabilitated … I cannot see any such thing in the Islamic world. I do not know any such a document by any respected Muslim authority.
The teachers in Cairo, Qom, Teheran, Riad? No. The state Islam in Turkey, Morocco, etc.? No. Tunisian and Libyan revolutioners? No. The Indonesian Muslim council? No. Gulf Emirates? No. Do you know any mosque in your neighborhood, where the compatibiliy of faith and enlightenment, of human rights and religion is taught, as it is done in almost every local church community I ever got to know? No you do not.
It is clearly *not* a question of selective perception. The organizations of Muslims who want to live and believe according to this compatibility are a small minority. They exist, the chance is there, but the chance is not realized in the broad.
Instead, sentences can be heard by western Muslim lobbyists like these: “Islam does not need reason an enlightenment, it is itself the enlightenment.” Or that the whole enlightenment was a “Roman catastrophe”. – And such sentences I *never* heard of a Christian, at least in western Europe. The common sense among Christians in western Europe is the compatibility of faith and reason, of religion and human rights. And all Christians all over this world follow this, more or less. Even in Africa. Even “Intelligent Design” is a try to catch up with this. “Intelligent Design”, as strange as it looks, is a try to establish compatibility. Laugh about it, but do not despise it. Because … where are such things in the Islamic world on a broader level, now?
It is clear that an educated person *never* can speak of an equality in development of Christianity and Islam in our days, not to speak of the Western world, which is clearly to be distinguished by Christianity, otherwise he excommunicates himself from the République des Lettres. This development of Islam is something still to be realized, or there will be inevitably the clash of civilizations. There is indeed a problem especially with Islam. It can be solved with all respect for Islam, but only, if the problem is recognized.
And IMHO the book of Holland does not contribute to this solution.
Somehow I don’t think that continuing this dialogue is going to get us anywhere – Intelligent Design as a genuine attempt at finding common ground between Christianity and science? Come off it. If I mention the work of someone like Abdulaziz Sachedina, you’ll doubtless note that an Iraqi Ayatollah condemned his ideas as being un-Islamic, thus ‘demonstrating’ the hostility of the whole of Islam to rational argument, whereas I imagine that the deliberate marginalisation of Hans Kung by the Roman Catholic church doesn’t in any way undermine their claims to be fully accepting of the claims of reason. Clearly Islam and Christianity have had very different histories over the last couple of centuries, something that’s clearly bound up with the expansion of Western (Christian) power across the globe – but you come very close to implying that the differences are intrinsic rather than contingent.
@Abahachi:
Since you imputed some things to me, I have to answer.
You impute me to conclude (“you’ll doubtless note”) from one single Muslim authority to the whole of Islam – but I do not, as can be seen above. I indeed see the potential and the chances of Islam to create compatibility to human rights etc. – but: they are *not* yet realized in the broad. It can easily be seen from your very own example: “An Iraqi Ayatollah”, as you call him, who is no other than Grand Ayatollah Sistani (!), has of course much more authority and influence and power to define things in Islam than Abdulaziz Sachedina. And this is the crucial point: Successful development of a religion depends *crucially* from the official acceptance of reforms by the religious authorities in official documents. This happened widely in Christianity, but not in Islam. It *could* happen also in Islam, but it has *not* yet happened. Maybe Abdulaziz Sachedina’s ideas will prevail one day – but this day still has to come.
I know and have some understanding that it is very hard to accept that the Catholic Church, usually the symbol of backwardness, is — currrently — much more advanced and reformed than Islam, as demonstrated above — but it simply is the case and we have to recognize this, to have a proper analysis of the reality. Also your “Come off it” concerning the fact, that “Intelligent Design” is already a step towards reason and science, although a strange step in the eyes of more developed minds, shows a lack of understanding for the problems of religious reforms.
You impute me to “come very close to implying that the differences are intrinsic rather than contingent” – I cannot see, from which statement you conclude this. Islam has all chances to go the same ways as did Christianity – but it didn’t happen so far. Grand Ayatollah Sistani and almost all the other leaders of Islam, the respected influential authorities who together define what “the” Islam currently, practically and really is, have not gone this way.
It is not allowed for educated persons to see things through rose-colored glasses.
Link added: Hassan Butt, 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/jul/01/comment.religion1
Getting back to popular history…
It goes without saying, of course, that academic and popular historians are playing to different galleries – but that doesn’t mean that the obligation on popular historians to get their facts right is any the less. Indeed, in many ways, it might be argued, it is greater – a wrong fact in a work of popular history, after all, will tend to spread far more widely than one in a scholarly monograph. The same goes, mutatis mutandis, for keeping abreast of the latest trends in scholarship – one of the things I found frustrating about the Guardian review, for instance, was its cavalier dismissal of a development in qur’anic scholarship so mainstream now as to be verging on the consensus. As for its claim that no one before me had argued that Mecca might not have been Mecca – it was, as Gerald Hawting put it in his letter to the Guardian last Saturday, “astounding”.
I would also argue that popular history is not simply an inferior version of academic history – an aristotelian woman to a man. There are times when the need to construct a convincing narrative out of shreds and patches can really serve to concentrate the mind – one of the reasons why I ended up thinking the way I did about the origins of Islam, for instance, was precisely the need to make sense of it without recourse to a deus ex machina – the kind of discipline that composing a narrative will invariably impose on an author. The perspectives of an academic writing monographs and a popular historian writing narratives will inevitably be different – and the one, I feel, is not necessarily inferior to the other.
One other advantage accruing to popular history is more specific, perhaps, to ancient and medieval history – and that is the fact that so many of the sources are already shaped as narratives. Read the scholarship on Herodotus, say, and you will find that the Histories are treated either as a quarry full of tantalising historical details to be mined, or else as literature. It seems as hard for scholars to treat it as both as it is for the mind’s eye to see the silhouette of a rabbit and a duck simultaneously. One of the joys of writing popular history is that you CAN be true to a source’s literary character, while also keeping within the acceptable bounds of historical enquiry. You can give your account of Thermopylae a stirringly Homeric character, while also questioning how we could know anything about the last stand at all.
First and foremost, many thanks for taking the trouble to put together such a thoughtful reply, and apologies that it’s taken me a while to respond – we’re into the exam marking season, so blogging has to take a back seat.
I entirely agree that popular history and academic history are two very different enterprises, aimed at different audiences, each demanding high levels of skill to do well, rather than the first being an inferior version of the second. It may have sounded like snark, but I was wholly sincere in saying that I don’t think I’m capable of writing popular history; not in a “I have too much integrity to debase myself” sort of way, but rather that I am simply temperamentally unsuited to it in any of its usual forms – what I can do reasonably well is not what the mass audience is crying out for.
I do think there are actually two separate sets of polarities here; this isn’t just about popular versus academic, but also narrative versus analytical. A lot of what you’re talking about relates to any sort of narrative history, rather than specifically narrative history written for a popular audience. Of course narrative always rests on analysis and interpretations, just as analytical history relies on narrative frameworks; it’s never an absolute divide, and a lot of academic objections to narrative are bound up with suspicion of the power of the story to carry the reader along – the feeling that this is too close to fiction, and hence dangerous, which is of course also a means of denying that academic/analytical history has any rhetorical dimension.
I do find myself coming back to the same question: is it inevitable that popular history will be narrative history (or descriptive history, so to speak, giving an account of everyday life or of the Roman army or whatever), rather than history that foregrounds the process of discovering and interpreting the past? A major part of my commitment to popularising history is the belief that historical thought, the skills of analysis and interpretation of different stories about the past, and the skills of making sense of a mass of contradictory data with lots of gaps in it, is a necessity for engaging with the world, now more than ever. Popular history in its current forms obviously relies on these skills – but it presents the results of them, often in a seamless, problem-free and gap-free form; it doesn’t tend to engage the reader in the process of discovery and analysis itself. Is this inevitable because of the demands of the audience (meaning, I suppose, is historical thought in this sense basically an elite activity, as someone like Thucydides thought it was?), or is this rather a matter of the audience responding to what publishers think is in demand?
I will not be buying Tom’s book. End of the day, the relevant sources are in Arabic and relying on translations in this day and age just won’t do. Its not like we’re dealing with Aramaic here. Arabic is a living language. Learn the lingo before asking people to read your book mate.
There you have it: an absolute admittance that I have not, and will not be reading the book I have just referred to in this blog. I haven’t even read the whole of this blog. Tom’s mispronunciations on Channel 4 last night were so atrocious (albeit amusing) I’m afraid I switched off.
I don’t think it’s necessarily true that you can’t write a decent popular work relying on translations; there are good and less good translations out there, and there are arguments that rest on the general gist of a text as well as arguments that rely on precise words and phrases in a text (where relying on a translation, esp. a single translation, would clearly not be appropriate).
I know this is long ago now, but I wrote this to a friend who had sent me the link to Bowerstock’s review having just read all the above, and so here it is:
If, for the sake of simplicity, there are three kinds of history: the analysis of never entirely reliable sources, the overt balancing of probability, and then of a set of possible conclusions (Abahachi/Neville Morley); the examination of all sources by eminent and authoratitive men, a determination of which are reliable, and then a pronouncement of the correct conclusion (Bowerstock); and an analysis of sources with the explicit assertion that a lot of them are unreliable, plus a lively, fast moving, riveting account of the historical context, and a transparently and honestly drawn conclusion (Tom Holland). I am halfway through the last, having a grand time, and have recommended it to one of my grandsons when he has finished his GCSEs.
At the same time I can see the absolute value and necessity of Abahachi’s approach. Maybe there is too much concern that the general reader will be misinformed, get the wrong end of the stick, place in putative misreadings of history the same faith as he places in the da Vinci Code. Some will. I guess most, like me, though we are not academics, are as capable of energetic scepticism as most historians are are.
I am a (the) general reader. I was aware of the controversy surrounding Mount Holland. I am at page 47 and decided to recce the hinterland before continuing. I struck a base camp, turned on my Google GPS detoured into Holland, Bowersock, Crone, Donner et al. I thought Bowersock’s critique was a little like Nicholas Lash’s comment about Dawkins and The God Delusion, that Dawkins avoids scholarly research because ‘hes not very good at it’. Lash thought the book was ‘deplorable’ and thought that the book buying public were morons. This sort of playground back biting does very little for the general reader. I hope Abraham (above) will forgive me for not learning Arabic before I continue with the book. I know the centre of the sun is hot even though I dont have a doctorate in sun hotness. I want to know more about this subject. I trust Tom Holland in the same way I trust Karen Armstrong but I am not a slave and I have a mind of my own. On yes I do. I believe I will have an increase in wisdom after reading TL’s book. But I dont have the time or the inclination to have and continue to have an open Platonic dialectic inquiry. Anyway, we all know that religious texts and sources are bonkers, dont we?
Post Scriptum concerning Tom Holland’s book:
Meanwhile I got to know that there is a vast difference between Tom Holland’s TV documentary and his book. And yes: To my great surprise, this is true! Where the documentary suggests that there might have been no prophet at all, and the answer to all open questions most probably is “pure invention”, the book is far from such extreme suggestions. The book is reasonable, factual, open-minded, thorough, and thus it leaves even a certain space for belief: Belief in the prophet Muhammad and a certain Quranic revelation. A space for belief hedged by reason, of course!!! As everybody can see, this does apply much better to the criteria I defined above. I want to express a big Thankyou for this book to Tom Holland (and how the hell did this misleading TV documentary come into being?!)
I still think it’s funky to be discussing a book that you haven’t read. And, yeah…I know you say you’re not discussing the book, just the idea offered up from a review of it. But still would think at least skimming the text itself would inform your pontifications about the perils of popular history. You’d be informed by looking at that thar pop history book, in addition to the commentary about it. [For example, how important it is in totality.]
Reminds me of a time, when “David” on Volokh.com (one of the both dumber and more doctrinaire Zionists there) wrote two blog posts on some movie (maybe The Passion, can’t really recall…just his panties were in a bunch). Anyhow, I got out of the gate with first comment on the second one saying, “you’re publishing a SECOND blog post about a flick you haven’t seen?” Even his buds laughed. I win the Internet. 😉