Reviews 573

al-Akhlāqiyya, not al-Akhlāqiya (p. xix); Yud.illu, not Yad.illu (p. 20); al-ghulāt, not al-ghulā
(p. 43); Al-Khayyāt., not Al-Khayyat. (p. 45); Yah.yā, not Yih.ya (p. 47); and Mutakhkhirı̄n,
not Mutaakhirı̄n (p. 180). In the shahādatayn Muhammad is declared God’s messenger (rasūl
Allāh), not “his [sic!] prophet” (p. 43). The Arabic term Allāh should appropriately be ren-
dered as “God” (p. 49). Allāh is not a proper name; the word designates the Supreme Being
in Arabic and, in this sense, it is used not only by Muslims but also by Arabic-speaking
Christians and Jews. Finally, the title of M. Heemskerk’s book Suffering in the Mu
tazilite
Theology:
Abd al-Jabbār’s Teaching on Pain and Divine Justice (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000)
is missing in the bibliographical entry including O. Leaman’s book review (p. 183).
More annoying in my view, however, is that important scholarly works in languages other
than English, such as the studies of the renowned German scholar Josef van Ess on Islamic
theology, are neglected in this book. As broad as the scholarly literature in English may be,
it remains an island in the wide sea of scholarship in many other languages. The happiness
felt by the inhabitants of this island is deceptive, as it implies ignorance of what is beyond.
Nevertheless, in spite of these deficiencies, the book is recommended to students of medieval
Islamic thought.

FRED M. DONNER, Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 2010). Pp. 304. $25.95 cloth, $17.95 paper.

REVIEWED BY ROBERT HOYLAND, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, Oxford,

U.K.; e-mail: [email protected]
doi:10.1017/S0020743812000566

For the most part this book is a traditional retelling of the story of the early Islamic state as
it is found in medieval Muslim sources and in numerous modern introductory works. Indeed,
the author himself tells us at the outset that “this book is meant mainly for non-specialists—
introductory students and general readers with an interest in the beginnings of Islam. It is not
intended to be a work of technical scholarship” (p. 17). Why should it be the object of an
academic review at all then? Well, into this otherwise standard narrative is woven the author’s
own theory, which he has presented elsewhere but which has not found general acceptance
among scholars. One would not, however, understand from the way the theory is put forward
in this book that it is a controversial one and not part of the general scholarly consensus, and
so it is to this aspect that I shall address my attention here.
There are two parts to Donner’s theory. First, as he states in the preface, “Islam began as a
religious movement—not as a social, economic, or ‘national’ one; in particular, it embodied an
intense concern for attaining personal salvation through righteous behaviour” (p. 12). Everyone
else, Donner claims, has got this wrong, “including L. Caetani, C. H. Becker, B. Lewis,
P. Crone, G. Bowersock, I. Lapidus, and S. Bashear”; all “have argued that the movement was
really a kind of nationalist or ‘nativist’ political adventure, in which religion was secondary
(and, by implication, merely a pretext for the real objectives).” But this is an unfair portrayal
of their views. They take it as self-evident that material interests overlap with ideological
ones. At one point Donner does acknowledge this (“it therefore seems best to conclude that
the expansion was driven by an indissoluble amalgam of religious and material motives . . .”
[p. 197]), but overwhelmingly the book pushes the message that religious concerns overrode
all else.
Second, Donner argues that we should distinguish between the earliest period of Islamic
history, when Islam was not yet a distinct confession, and a later period, when it had

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 574 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 44 (2012)

crystallized into a definable religion. In the first stage, from around 622 to 692, it was a
movement characterized by a pietistic and intense belief in God and the impending Day of
Judgment. Its adherents were simply called “believers” and could be drawn from the ranks of
Christians, Jews, or other religious persuasions as long as they accepted the cardinal tenets
of one God and an imminent Last Day. In putting forward this idea Donner is responding
to a problem in our evidence for the early decades of Islamic history that has vexed many
specialists of this period. Before 692 we have extremely few contemporary Muslim documents
that make any overt declaration of belief beyond an acknowledgement of basic monotheism,
and before 685 none mention Muhammad. One might infer from this either that Islam was
not the religion of state or that it was very different from what it later came to be.
If we go for the first option, then we need some other factor, besides religion, that served to
bind the conquest society together. The most obvious solution would be to suppose an ethnic
component—so Arab conquests rather than Islamic conquests. Donner is very hostile to this
idea, principally because he thinks it “represents the facile interpolation back in to the seventh
century CE of modern concepts of Arab nationalism” (p. 218). But this is not the case at all;
rather we would be making a comparison with conquests by other peoples in Eurasia, such as
the Avars, Huns, Goths, Vandals, Slavs, Bulgars, Khazars, Turks, and Mongols. An enormous
amount of work has been done on the nature and identity of these peoples in the last two
decades, and no one would argue that they were in any way to be equated with modern
nations. Rather, they are regarded as coalitions of various groups, often held together by a
dominant clan that provides a measure of direction and identity to the whole. Scholars such as
Glen Bowersock, Fergus Millar, Irfan Shahid, and Greg Fisher have expended much effort in
demonstrating the extent to which the tribes on the margins of Byzantium and Iran had become
increasingly integrated within the imperial system in the course of the 4th to 7th centuries and
had developed a fledgling identity. It is certainly possible, then, that the conquests began as an
Arab affair, with Islam being only one of a number of religions practiced by the Arabs (there
were certainly numerous Christian Arab tribes among the conquerors). The transformation
that took place at the end of the 7th century would then have been one from a religiously
pluralist Arab state, in which the various religions were on an equal footing, to an Islamic
state, in which other religions were demoted in favor of Islam.
The second option, that Islam was at the beginning very different from what it subsequently
came to be, is Donner’s choice and is indeed the current favorite among revisionist-minded
Islamicists. To some degree it should seem obvious: do not all religions and civilizations
evolve over time? The religion of men born in small tribal communities in west Arabia
around 600 could hardly be the same as that of men born into a far-flung, highly urbanized
empire around 800 (the first generation from whom we have extant books). But Donner is
suggesting more than just the incremental emergence of the ingredients of Islam; he wants
to say that Islam itself had no distinct confessional existence in its early stages. Its members
were “piety-minded and God-fearing monotheists, of whatever confession” (p. 74). There have
been musings along similar lines by other scholars. In particular, Yehuda Nevo speaks of a
period of “indeterminate monotheism” on the grounds that the religious message we find in
texts from this time (ca. 622–92) “is scarcely identifiable as that of a defined sect” (“Towards
a Prehistory of Islam,” Jerusalem Studies of Arabic and Islam 17 [1994]: 112). Donner
gives this idea an additional twist by differentiating between “Believers” and “Muslims” and
assigning them to successive stages in the development of the new faith. The terms may rather
be contemporaneous and reflect different facets of what it meant to belong to Muhammad’s
community (“believing”/muminūn and “submitting”/muslimūn), as is the case for credentes
(“believing”) and fideles (“being loyal”) in Roman Christianity, but the claim certainly does
merit further investigation. Unfortunately, the popular format of the book means that the
proposition is not academically presented and so cannot be reviewed here.

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 Reviews 575

Donner also follows Nevo in contrasting the nonsectarian period with the period following
692 when we witness the emergence of a Muhammad-centered confession. In the words of
Donner, “the recognition of Muhammad as prophet was the decisive marker that distinguished
Muslims from Christians, Jews, and all others” (p. 112). But what was the place of Muhammad
before 692 then? Most new religions begin with adherence to a charismatic reform-minded
leader whose adherents fall foul of traditional religious leaders and end up being ostracized
by the main community and obliged to go their own way. This was certainly the case with
Jesus, and it would seem to have been the case with Muhammad too. Thus diverse authors—
a chronicler from Armenia and another from southwest Iran, both writing around 660, the
Mesopotamian monk John bar Penkaye, writing in 687, and a Palestinian monk, apparently
writing around 640 (references in my Seeing Islam as others saw it [Princeton, N.J.: Darwin
Press, 1997], pp. 117, 129, 186, 196–97)—characterize the conquerors as followers
of Muhammad. Donner argues, nevertheless, that the prime focus of the “believers” was
God’s oneness and Muhammad came later and asserts that this is backed up by documentary
evidence: “the earliest documentary attestations of the shahada [the Muslim profession of
faith, RGH], found on coins, papyri, and inscriptions dating before about 66/685, include
only the first part of the later ‘double shahada’: ‘There is not god but God’—Muhammad
is not yet mentioned” (p. 112). Yet the reverse is true. It is the second part of the shahada,
“Muhammad is the envoy of God,” that appears first, on coins dated 685 (AH 66), whereas
the first part, “There is no god but God,” does not make its debut until 691 (see my Seeing
Islam, p. 551 and excursus F).
Because this work is intended as a book for novices, I draw attention to a few points
that might mislead. First, although Donner says that Christians were not obliged to follow the
Quran in order to belong to the Believers’ movement, they may well have been discouraged by
the Quran’s emphasis on the nondivine status of Jesus. One also wonders how Zoroastrians, as
dualists, could be fitted into the Believers’ avowedly monotheist outlook. Second, appointing
non-Muslims to positions of power and permitting them to build places of worship is not
evidence of an ecumenical attitude or the relic of a “Believerish” position but simply reflects
the usual pragmatic approach of conquerors faced with the daunting task of running a large
foreign bureaucracy and governing a numerically superior body of subjects whom they do not
wish to alienate en masse. Third, writings about the Arab conquerors, whether in a positive
or negative vein, have to be considered with caution. Donner makes much of the apparently
rosy evaluation of Isho
yahb III, head of the Dyophysite Church in Iraq and Iran, vis-à-vis
the Arabs, but in this particular text he is trying to reassure his coreligionists by claiming that
they have a special relationship with the new rulers. However, when some Christians pointed
out Isho
yahb’s considerable wealth to an Arab governor, he suffered imprisonment and torture
for refusing to part with any of it; angry at obtaining nothing, the governor pillaged several
churches in the vicinity of Kufa and Hira (Seeing Islam, pp. 151–52). Fourth, Donner’s claim
that “violent conquest” is “predicated on the mistaken notion that the ‘conquerors’ came with
the intention of imposing a new religion by force” (p. 108) is outdated and was long ago
discredited (e.g., by Bousquet in his 1956 article, selected by Donner for his edited volume,
The Expansion of the Early Islamic State [Hants, U.K.: Ashgate Press, 2008], no. 3). The
Christian Crusaders of medieval Europe are just one example from among many of invaders
who pursued conquest (violent I suppose, but can one have nonviolent conquest?) without,
for the most part, seeking to impose their religion on the conquered.
This book is well written and does do the job of making early Islamic history more
accessible. However, it suffers, to my mind, from two major flaws. First, it tends to dismiss
alternative theories, whereas for a book that is intended for beginners one would have liked
it to be more open toward different opinions and ideas. Second, it places excessive emphasis
on the role of religion. Of course medieval Muslim authors liked to project an image of early

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 576 Int. J. Middle East Stud. 44 (2012)

Islam as a time of exceptional religiosity—most emergent societies seek to sacralize their

origins. Their favorite depiction of the early Muslims is as “warriors by day and monks by
night,” and this is indeed close to Donner’s own portrayal of them. However, historians are
not meant simply to buy into a society’s mythopoeia but to deconstruct it. Third, religion
is not just about piety but also about communal affiliation, social status, economic choices,
the language employed to describe and define reality, and so on. Fourth and finally, though
I do not doubt that Muhammad’s message included a call to greater piety and a more God-
fearing attitude, this does not explain why tens of thousands of the denizens of Arabia felt
motivated to respond to his message. To understand this we would need to try and appreciate
the socioeconomic context of their lives, to treat them as ordinary humans with material
wants and needs as opposed to superhuman beings concerned only with God and Judgment
Day.
My comments may appear somewhat harsh, but in truth my frustration is not so much
directed toward this book and its author as toward a general trend in the study of the Middle
East of this period to focus excessively on religion. This in part reflects a tendency to por-
tray Late Antiquity (ca. 300s–600s) as an era stamped with an aura of holiness—of saints,
relics, pilgrims, and spirituality—and in part reflects the current obsession in the West with
the religious aspects of Islamic civilization and the popular apprehension that the Muslim
world is never more than a few steps away from religious fanaticism. Of course Donner
would not concur with this latter view; he is in the apologetic camp rather than the polemic
one. He seems to wish to add early Islam to the list of arenas of convivencia, along with
medieval Spain and early Abbasid Iraq, a time when Muslims, Jews, and Christians happily
and harmoniously coexisted with one another. I sympathize with this aim, which is a worthy
one, but it is concerned more with our modern world than with that of Muhammad and his
followers.

MARTIN GILBERT, In Ishmael’s House: A History of Jews in Muslim Lands (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 2010). Pp. 448. $35 cloth, $23 paper.

REVIEWED BY NORMAN A. STILLMAN, Department of History, University of Oklahoma,

Norman, Okla.; e-mail: [email protected]
doi:10.1017/S0020743812000578

Sir Martin Gilbert, the prodigious author of both popular and academic works on modern Eu-
ropean and Jewish history, is best known for his multivolume biography of Winston Churchill
and its numerous companion volumes and abridgments. His latest book, In Ishmael’s House,
is a cross-over work that falls between the scholarly and the popular. As with most of his
books, this one is written with clarity and felicity of style. It is well annotated with footnotes
that refer to most of the significant secondary literature and published primary sources. It is
also graced with some good illustrations and includes a superb section of maps (pp. 356–74),
most of which are drawn from his previously published, excellent historical atlases. That being
said, In Ishmael’s House is somewhat uneven, and it is my distinct impression that the final
manuscript may have been put together in haste and without sufficient editing.
The first nine chapters in particular (pp. 1–126) are peppered with careless errors that could
have been avoided with a modicum of fact checking. The very first page, for example, states
that the “Babylonian Talmud was compiled more than two thousand years ago,” whereas it
is generally dated from the first half of the third century of the Common Era. A few lines
later, mention is made of Jewish gravestone inscriptions in Carthage from 813 BCE. Although

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