THE DEATH OF A PROPHET:
The End of Muhammad’s Life and the
Beginnings of Islam.
By Stephen J. Shoemaker
University of Pennsylvania Press.
408 pages. £51.44
ISBN 978 0 812 243 567
Why would Christians be concerned about the date (and to a lesser extent, place) of Muhammad’s death?
Even Muslims do not claim that his death was in any way redemptive, and beyond his last statement forbidding a Jewish and Christian presence in Arabia, it had little significance, although pilgrims visit his supposed grave in Medina while on Haj. The point is, what does the evidence on this issue tell us about the historical reliability of the Islamic sources?
External sources
No serious historian denies that Jesus was crucified outside Jerusalem under Pilate, Prefect (i.e. governor) of Judaea (AD 26–36), as stated in the New Testament. Outside of the Bible, the Jewish author Josephus (c. AD 93), states that Jesus was crucified by Pilate, as does the Roman pagan writer Tacitus (c.AD116). While some scholars allege that aspects of Josephus’s comments on Jesus have been interpolated, none think his reference to the crucifixion is included in this. The external sources corroborate what the New Testament states. There are no contrary sources. Hence, the biblical record on the historicity of Jesus’s death is unquestioned; the dispute is over its significance.
It is otherwise with the death of Muhammad, as demonstrated in this excellent book by Shoemaker, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Oregon. In a reverse to the death of Jesus, the earliest sources on the death of Muhammad are the external, (largely Syriac Christian and Jewish) sources, and they contradict the Muslim sources – the Hadith, which is a canonical source of authority in Islam, (compiled two centuries after Muhammad) and the Sirah of Ibn Ishaq, the biography of Muhammad (which does not have authoritative status). Ibn Ishaq died in 761 and his work only partially survives in the edition of Ibn Hisham, who died c.833. The Sirah and the Hadith present the invasion of Palestine as led by Usama bin Zayd, and that Muhammad’s fatal illness began shortly after this, the result of poisoning by a Jewess after his capture of the supposedly Jewish oasis of Khaybar. Usually, the first raids into Palestine are dated to 629, with its conquest in 634–40. Muhammad’s death, in Medina (Yathrib), is dated to 632.
Muhammad still alive
However, Shoemaker notes (p.18): ‘At least 11 sources from the seventh and eighth centuries indicate in varied fashion that Muhammad was still alive at the time of the Palestinian conquest, leading his followers into the Holy Land some two to three years after he is supposed to have died in Medina according to traditional Islamic accounts.’
This is a serious contradiction, given the number of traditions, their geographic and demographic distribution, and above all, their early dates. Again, Shoemaker comments: ‘The unanimity of these sources, as well as the failure of any source to contradict this tradition prior to the emergence of the first Islamic biographies of Muhammad beginning in the mid-eighth century, speaks highly in their favor.’ These sources include the Doctrina Jacobi, dated c.634, by a Jew forcibly converted to Christianity, and the Khuzistan Chronicle, by a Syriac Christian, dated c.660. Muslims might suggest that these documents are confused, but they could only propose this based on an a priori commitment to their religious sources, rather than objective historical analysis, which usually favours the earliest sources for any event.
Possibly Jerusalem
If the earliest sources are correct, that Muhammad was alive during the Palestine conquest (possibly dying there), why would the later Muslim sources place his death earlier, and occurring in Yathrib, rather than in the Levant? Shoemaker suggests (p.258) local Yathribi parochialism and that the emerging cult of Yathrib as the ‘city of the Prophet’ tied to Abbasid denigration of the preceding Jerusalem-centric Marwanid caliphate (684–750) produced a new tradition of Muhammad’s martyrdom in Yathrib, allowing for his mosque to become an alternative centre of pilgrimage and devotion rather than the Temple Mount.
This may be possible, if one accepts the premise that Jerusalem under the Marwanids was meant to be the premier focus of pilgrimage. Yathrib receives only one, passing, reference in the Qur’an; it is only in the Hadith – compiled much later – that Yathrib/Medina receives the elevation of a holy city.
Earliest Muslim shrine
Shoemaker also suggests (p.226) that the earliest Muslim shrine was Jerusalem and remained so for longer than Islamic tradition suggests, noting that the niches in early mosques for the Qiblah (direction of prayer) seem to be pointing either to Jerusalem or somewhere near – some have suggested north-west Arabia, and recently Petra has been proposed. Shoemaker holds (p.160) that Palestine was vital to Muhammad because he believed that the Hour of Judgment was imminent, as suggested by the Qur’an (16.79; 40.18; 53.57, etc.) and that it would take place in Jerusalem – a common belief among Jews and Christians at the time.
Has Islam been changed?
In that case, we can understand why Muhammad would himself lead the assault on Palestine as a matter of urgency – he saw himself as bringing about the End – and also the confusion that would be caused by his death before the Hour – of which he was supposed to be the harbinger (pp. 172-173). Hence, his death was a major problem for the new faith, requiring some extensive reworking of its theology – including changing the date and possibly the place of his demise, as well as its cause.
If Shoemaker is right, then rather than the Bible being changed, as modern Islamic polemics declare, it is Islam itself which has been changed – in terms of its sacred geography, its eschatology and even with respect to the death of its founder. What Shoemaker’s hypothesis has in its favour is that the earliest sources seem to support the idea that Muhammad still lived during the conquest of Palestine. This being so, it raises questions about the reliability of the entire Hadith corpus, and thus of the emergence of the Qur’an and Islam. We only know how the Qur’an came into existence because of the Hadith, but if the latter gets something like the death of its Prophet wrong, what are the implications for its general historicity? Furthermore, the Saudi regime justifies its ban on non-Muslim religious activity because the dying words of Muhammad forbade such – but if he did not die as the Hadith states, where does that leave the regime? Happily, Christianity does not have such problems in regard to the death of its Founder.
