Crossroads to Islam: The Origins of the Arab Religion and the Arab State

In this controversial exploration of the early history of Islam, archaeologist Yehuda D. Nevo and researcher Judith Koren present a revolutionary theory of the origins and development of the Islamic state and religion. Whereas most works on this subject derive their view of the history of this period from the Muslim literature, Crossroads to Islam also examines important types of evidence hitherto neglected: the literature of the local (Christian) population, archaeological excavations, numismatics, and especially rock inscriptions. These analyses lay the foundation for a radical view of the development of Islam.
According to Nevo and Koren, the evidence suggests that the Arabs were in fact pagan when they assumed power in the regions formerly ruled by the Byzantine Empire. They contend that the Arabs took control almost without a struggle, because Byzantium had effectively withdrawn from the area long before. After establishing control, the new Arab elite adopted a simple monotheism influenced by Judaeo-Christianity, which they encountered in their newly acquired territories, and gradually developed it into the Arab religion. Not until the mid-8th century was this process completed.
This interpretation of the evidence corroborates the view of other scholars, who on different grounds propose that Islam and the canonized version of the Koran were preceded by a long period of development. This new view turns on its head the traditional history of the rise of Islam, which claims that Islam began with Muhammad in Mecca and Medina around 622; then spread throughout Arabia under his charismatic leadership; and finally, after Muhammad's death (632), inspired his followers to conquer widespread territories both in the East and West. By contrast, Nevo and Koren suggest that the rise of the Arab state created a need for a state religion, eventually called Islam.
This absorbing and controversial rethinking of Islam's early history is must reading for students and scholars of Islamic history and anyone interested in the origins of the world's second largest religion.

Archaeologist Nevo (1932-92) and Koren, an information specialist in Haifa, Israel, join other western scholars in claiming that Muslim sources for the origins and spread of the religion must be radically reinterpreted or discarded as historical evidence. The main problem, they say, is not bias, but the fact that the earliest material was written two centuries after events they describe. They rely on contemporary literary sources and on material remains such as archaeological findings, epigraphy, and coins. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Publishers Weekly

In the consensus view of early Muslim history, the Arab tribes, united and inspired by Muhammad's teachings, embarked on a military jihad that wrested Syria and Palestine from a weakened Byzantine Empire in the years after 630 A. D. But according to this radical revisionist treatise by the late Israeli archaeologist Nevo and Koren, an "information specialist," every particular of this orthodoxy is wrong. Basing their arguments on a detailed examination of archaeology, contemporary texts, linguistic analyses and evidence from coins, the authors arrive at a thesis that will surely be incendiary to Islamic believers. The authors argue that Byzantium voluntarily transferred her eastern provinces to Arab client states in continuance of an imperial policy stretching back for centuries. The Arabs who took over the region after 630 A.D. were not Muslims, but a mixture of pagans and adherents of a Judeo-Christian "indeterminate monotheism" from which Islam evolved over succeeding decades. Muhammad was not a historical person, they argue, but a mythical figure who became, starting in the 690s, a "National Arab Prophet" of a new official religion for the consolidating Arab state. In addition to the Muslim ire that the authors' religious debunking will raise, specialists in the field may have objections to their treatment as well. Especially unconvincing is their rational-actor account of Byzantine policy towards the eastern provinces, where, they assert, the Byzantine government deliberately fomented and then persecuted heresies, stoked hatred of the emperor himself and left its territories open to military incursions by rival powers, all in order to reconcile the inhabitants to their long-planned abandonment by the empire. (July) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.