The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad (35 page)
Read The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad Online
Authors: Lesley Hazleton
Tags: #Religious, #General, #Middle East, #Islam, #History, #Biography & Autobiography, #Religion
My deepest thanks to all who have listened as I wrestled these past few years with some of the toughest issues in this biography, and especially to the many Muslims open to this very different way of thinking about Muhammad.
Thanks in particular to Sanaa Joy Carey for her bemused tolerance; to Jonathan Raban, who planted the seed for this book; to TED Global Fellow Nassim Assefi, who invited me to talk on the Quran at the 2010 TEDxRainier; to Olivier D’hose, without whose brilliant IT support I’d be lost in the Inter-tubes; to the University of Washington’s Suzzallo Library, which allowed me to keep so much of their collection at home that my houseboat rode low in the water under all the weight; and to the online readers of The Accidental Theologist for their patience, encouragement, and good wishes during my extended writing hermitry.
At Riverhead Books, it’s been both a pleasure and a privilege to work with editorial director Rebecca Saletan, who “got” what I was doing instantly, and with her executive assistant, Elaine Trevorrow, who kept me gently but firmly on track with regard to time. And last but as far as it’s possible to get from least, my love and heartfelt thanks to my longtime friend and agent Gloria Loomis of the Watkins/Loomis Agency, and to her executive assistant, Julia Maznik. No writer could dream of better.
Unless otherwise indicated, all direct speech and dialogue in this book is from either ibn-Ishaq’s eighth-century biography of Muhammad, Sirat Rasul Allah, or al-Tabari’s ninth- and tenth-century history of early Islam, Tarikh al-Rasul wa’al-Muluk (see Bibliography under “Primary Sources”).
Citations of Quranic verses are numbered according to Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s translation (again, see Bibliography under “Primary Sources”). It should be noted that since early Quran manuscripts often omitted verse breaks, some translators, like A. J. Arberry, use a slightly different numbering system in the interest of poetic and thematic integrity.
epigraphs
Page 00
“Muhammad, say”:
Quran 6:14, 6:163, 39:12.
“The inner meaning of history”:
Ibn-Khaldun, The Muqaddimah. Page 00 “
I do not accept”:
Desai, Day-to-Day with Gandhi.
Page 000
He was stockily built:
details of Muhammad’s appearance in, e.g., The History of al-Tabari, vol. IX, The Last Years of the Prophet, under “The Messenger of God’s Characteristics.”
Page 000
“the first Muslim”:
Quran 6:14, 6:163, 39:12.
Page 000
“a man of no importance”:
Quran 43:31.
Page 000
the Jesus Seminar:
Shorto, Gospel Truth.
Page 000
disavowal of the miraculous:
E.g., Quran 17:90–97. Page 000
“the hero’s journey”:
Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Page 000 laylat al-qadr:Quran 97:1–5.
Page 000
Eros and Thanatos:
Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, trans. James Strachey (New York: Liveright, 1961).
Page 000
female infanticide:
Kosekenniemi, The Exposure of Infants; Piers, Infanticide; Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature.
Page 000
a practice the Quran:
Quran 6:14, 6:151, 17:31, 60:12, 81:8–9.
Page 000
wet-nursing:
Palmer, The Politics of Breastfeeding.
Page 000
life spans:
Jackson, Doctors and Diseases in the Roman Empire; Preston, “Mortality Trends.”
Page 000
oral culture:
Finnegan, Oral Poetry: Lévi-Strauss, Myth and Meaning; Niles, Homo Narrans; Whallon, Formula, Character, and Context.
Page 000
Hours-long poems:
Arberry, The Seven Odes; Hazleton, Where Mountains Roar; Stetkevych, The Mute Immortals Speak; Zwettler, Oral Tradition of Classical Arabic Poetry.
Page 000
“Tonight I take refuge”:
Suras 113 and 114 of the Quran follow the structure of this invocation.
Page 000
“high-achievement” figures:
Eisenstadt et al., Parental Loss and Achievement; Scharfstein, The Philosophers.
Page 000
“The question of morality and conscience”:
Eisenstadt, “Parental Loss and Genius.”
Page 000
“the invention of childhood”:
Ariès, Centuries of Childhood.
Page 000 arish
:
Rubin, “The Ka’ba”; Hawting, “The Origins of the Islamic Sanctuary at Mecca.” Page 000
three hundred sixty of these “idols”:
Ibn-al-Kalbi, Book of Idols.
Page 000
twelve stones for the altar:
Exodus 20:25.
Page 000
“playing the harlot”:
Isaiah 57:3; Ezekiel 16:28–29, 23:20; Jeremiah 2:23–24; Hosea
Page 000
“decrepit camels”:
Levey, Medieval Arabic Toxicology.
Page 000
“alone with the livelong night . . . the lamp of the hermit”:
Arberry, The Seven Odes. Page 000
“monasteries flourishing”:
Ward, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers.
Page 000
“like the imprint of a cupping glass”:
The History of al-Tabari, vol. IX, The Last Years of
the Prophet , under “The Seal of Prophethood Which He Had.”
Page 000
“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”:
John 8:7.
Page 000
legends like that of the seven sleepers:
Quran 18:22.
Page 000
Meccan thinkers known as
hanif
s:
Gibb, “Pre-Islamic Monotheism in Arabia”; Kister, Society and Religion from Jahiliyya to Islam; Rubin, “Hanifiyya and Ka’ba.”
“the father of all who believe”:
Romans 4:11, 4:16.
Page 000 tahannut: Kister, “Al-Tahannuth”; Shoham, Rebellion, Creativity, and Revelation; Underhill, Mysticism.
chapter 7
Page 000
“Recite in the name of thy Lord”:
Quran 96:1.
Page 000
“medical materialism”:
James, The Varieties of Religious Experience.
Page 000
“the tuft and final applause of science”:
Preface to Leaves of Grass, in Walt Whitman,
Complete Poetry and Collected Prose (New York: Library of America, 1982). Page 000
“the willing suspension of disbelief ”:
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria
(London: Oxford University Press, 1954).
Page 000
“the endeavor to express the spirit of the thing”:
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Poetry and
Imagination (Boston: Osgood, 1876).
Page 000
“In the Penal Colony”:
Franz Kafka, Kafka’s Selected Stories, trans. Stanley Corngold
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2007).
Page 000
“ just a messenger”:
E.g., Quran 9:128, 41:6.
Page 000
dark night of the soul:
The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964).
Page 000
leap of faith:
Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, ed. and trans. by Reidar Thomte with Albert B. Anderson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980).
Page 000
“By the morning light”:
Quran 93:1–8.
Page 000
“By the sun and its morning brightness”:
Quran 91:1–10.
Page 000
“Let the once-dead earth”:
Quran 36:33–36.
Page 000
“God is the light”:
Quran 24:35–36.
Page 000
“Be not hasty in your recitation”:
Quran 20:114.
Page 000
“Be patient”:
e.g., Quran 68:48, 73:10
Page 000
“neither begotten nor begetter”:
Quran 10:68.
Page 000
“Oh you shrouded in your robes”:
Quran 74:1.
Page 000
“those who amass and hoard wealth . . . not avail them when they perish”:
Quran 104:2, 89:20, 100:8, 104:3, 92:11.
Page 000
“Know that the life of this world”:
Quran 57:20.
Page 000
“righteous deeds . . . wealth you amass”:
Quran 34:37, 10:58.
Page 000
“Blessed are the meek”:
Matthew 5:5.
Page 000
“We desire to show favor”:
Quran 28:05.
Page 000
“Say: ‘We believe in God’ ”:
Quran 2:136.
Page 000
“Before this, the book of Moses was revealed”:
Quran 46:12.
Page 000
“in a clear Arabic tongue”:
E.g., Quran 20:113, 19:97, 26:195, 44:58.
Page 000
“When the sun shall be darkened”:
Quran 81:1–14.
Page 000
“ just a messenger”:
E.g., Quran 9:128, 41:6. Page 000
“the first Muslim”:
Quran 6:14, 6:163, 39:12. Page 000
“can you give a dry bone flesh again?”:
Quran 56:47. Page 000
“I am come to set a man at variance”:
Matthew 10:35. Page 000
“if your fathers, your sons”:
Quran 9:24.
[“They are
naught”: This is cited from
within the quotation in text
(which begins “Have you
thought,” which is quoted
WITHIN
another passage above), but have stetted with
specific verse citation to avoid repeating the overall citation (53:19–23)]
Page 000
“an eye for an eye”:
Exodus21:23–25; Leviticus 24:17–21.
Page 000
“whoever forgoes it out of charity”:
Quran 5:45.
Page 000
“Give me drink! Give me drink!”:
Mustafa, Religious Trends in Pre-Islamic Poetry. Page 000
“veiling their hearts”:
Quran 17:46, 18:57.
singled out by name for condemnation
: Quran 111:1–3.
Page 000
“Many messengers before you were mocked, Muhammad”:
E.g., Quran 6:10, 13:32,
15: 10,15:88,15:94–97, 21:41.
Page 000
“We are well aware that your heart . . . Do not let them discourage you”:
Quran 15:97,
10:65, 11:12, 16:127, 27:70, 36:76.
Page 000
“You cannot make the deaf hear . . . out of their error”:
Quran 27:80–81. Page 000
“Even if they saw a piece of heaven”:
Quran 52:44.
Page 000
“Will you worry yourself to death . . . a sport and a pastime”:
Quran 18:6, 6:110, 6:112,
6:70, 47:36.
Page 000
“Turn away from them and wait”:
Quran 2:109.
Page 000
“Ignore them”:
E.g., Quran 15:94, 51:54, 53:29.
Page 000
“Endure what they say”:
Quran 16:127.
Page 000
“ ‘Have you thought on Lat and Uzza’ ”:
Quran 53:19–22.
Page 000
“ ‘But God annuls what Satan does’ ”:
Quran 50:52.
Page 000
“They are naught but names”:
Quran 53:23.
Page 000
nineteenth-century Orientalist William Muir used it:
William Muir, The Life of Mahomet and History of Islam (London: Smith, Elder, 1858).
Page 000
“The idea of error is our own meta-mistake”:
Kathryn Schulz, Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margins of Error (New York: Ecco, 2010).
“wandering king”:
Arberry, The Seven Odes; Stetkevych, The Mute Immortals Speak. Page 000
dream incubation:
Covitz, Visions of the Night; Eliade, Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries;
Hopkins, A World Full of Gods.
Page 000
“If there be a prophet among you”:
Numbers 12:6.
Page 000
“During sleep the soul departs”:
Midrash, Gen. Rabbah 14:9.
Page 000
“the master of dreams”:
Covitz, Visions of the Night.
Page 000
“lift the veil of the senses”:
Ibn-Khaldun, The Muqaddimah.
Page 000
Jacob’s dream:
Genesis 28:12–14.
Page 000
It means uprooting yourself:
Luyat and Tolron, Flight from Certainty; Said, Reflections on Exile and Other Essays.
Page 000
Jewish tribes in seventh-century Arabia:
Firestone, “Jewish Culture in the Formative Period of Islam”; Gil, “The Origin of the Jews of Yathrib”; Lecker, Jews and Arabs in Pre- and Early Islamic Arabia; Lecker, Muslims, Jews and Pagans.
Page 000
dramatic but ill-fated rebellion against Roman rule:
After Bar Kokhba’s rebellion was crushed by six Roman legions in the year 136, Jews were banned from Jerusalem.
Page 000
“in your own tongue . . . in pure Arabic”:
E.g., Quran 20:113, 19:97, 26:195, 44:58.
Page 000
“have driven out the messenger”:
E.g., Quran 60:1.
Page 000
“They two were in the cave”:
Quran 9:40.
“Exile is the unhealable rift”:
Said, Reflections on Exile.
Page 000
The term “monotheism”:
Henry More, An Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness
(London: Flesher and Morden, 1660).
Page 000
“the God of this people”:
Carroll, Jerusalem, Jerusalem.
Page 000
“Fight in the way of God”:
Quran 2:190.
Page 000
“They question you with regard to warfare”:
Quran 2:217.
Page 000
“Permission is granted”:
Quran 22:40.
Page 000
“Those who have believed”:
Quran 2:218.
Page 000
“If you object to political methods”:
Berlin, Against the Current.
Page 000
“All armed prophets have conquered”:
Machiavelli, The Prince.
Page 000
“It was not you who killed”:
Quran 8:17.
Page 000
“We believe in that which has been revealed”:
Quran 2:136, 3:84. Page 000
“except fairly and politely”:
Quran 29:46.
Page 000
“People of the Book, let us come to an agreement”:
Quran 3:64. Page 000
“Believers, Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians”:
Quran 2:62.
Page 000
“We have sent down this scripture”:
Quran 39–41.
Page 000
“Why do you confound the true with the false”:
Quran 3:70–71. Page 000
“made of their religion a sport and a pastime”:
Quran 7:51. Page 000
“We are turning you in a prayer direction that pleases you”:
Quran 2:144. Page 000
“If I forget thee, oh Jerusalem”:
Psalms 137:5.
Page 000
“Other messengers have come and gone”:
Quran 3:144.
Page 000
“With God’s permission, you were routing”:
Quran 3:153.
Page 000
the Qureyz:
This tribe’s name is usually rendered as “Qurayza.” The spelling is adapted
Medina, or with the Quraysh, the ruling tribe of Mecca.
Page 000
“Whatever you believers have done”:
Quran 59:5.
Page 000
“Consider the hypocrites”:
Quran 59:11.
Page 000
“It was God who drove the unbelievers”:
Quran 59:2–3.
“There was never any subject”:
The fifth caliph Muawiya, quoted in Abbott, Aishah the
Beloved of Muhammad .
Page 000
“The slanderers are a small group”:
Quran 24:4–21.
Page 000
“the wives of your sons”:
Quran 4:23.
Page 000
“Muhammad is not the father”:
Quran 33:40.
Page 000
“This privilege is yours alone”:
Quran 33:50.
Page 000
“you will never be able to deal equitably”:
Quran 4:129.
