Biography of the Prophet Mohammed (Muhammad) Seriously Mangles History

by Damien F. Mackey Scholars have long pointed out the historical problems associated with the life of the Prophet Mohammed and the history of Islam, with some going even so far as to cast doubt upon Mohammed’s actual existence. Biblico-historical events, normally separated the one from the other by many centuries, are re-cast as contemporaneous in the Islamic texts. Islamic author, Ahmed Osman, has waxed so bold as to squeeze, into the one Egyptian dynasty, the Eighteenth, persons supposed to span more than one and a half millennia. Now, as I intend to demonstrate in this article, biblico-historical events that occurred during the neo-Assyrian era of the C8th BC, and then later on, in the Persian era, have found their way into the biography of Mohammed supposedly of the C7th AD. Introduction Whilst I have long held the belief that the Prophet Mohammed was actually of biblical origins - a largely BC time Israelite mysteriously projected into AD time - I have had the greatest difficulty in pinning him down to a specific character or to a specific biblical period. I better realise now that there is a good reason for this. Mohammed is a composite of a number of major biblical characters, spanning a succession of eras, but masterfully woven by Islam into the one credible figure – were it not for those shocking historical anomalies. For some examples of fictitious composites based on the Bible, see e.g. my article: Apollonius of Tyana, like Philo, a fiction (4) Apollonius of Tyana, like Philo, a fiction | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu The Buddha is likewise one of these, based on e.g. Moses but also on Jesus Christ. So is ‘Socrates’, so is Solon. Credible, yes, yet also incredible. The Prophet Mohammed is a larger than life figure, inspiring, magnificent, whilst being enormously complex. He is also highly controversial. One has only to browse the website, Answering Islam (http://www.answering-islam.org/index.html), to discover this. Colourful articles such as: William Di Puccio investigates Islam and Extremism: What is Underneath. Silas rebuts an article by David Liepert published by the Huffington Post: Muhammad, Child brides, and David Liepert. Various articles on the nature and attributes of Allah: The Great Divorce: Allah and His Attributes and Allah’s Hands: More Than A Handful of Evidence by Anthony Rogers, Allah – the Best of the Inheritors? and Allah – the Heir? by Jochen Katz. Rebuttals to Bassam Zawadi: (1) Did Muhammad Contemplate Suicide?, (2) A Dawagandist Tacitly Accuses His Prophet of Being a Liar. Did You Know That Muhammad Was A Misogynist? Did Abraham Build the Kaaba? But my pressing interest in this article is not whether or not Mohammed was a paedophile, or had bad breath, or told lies, was an epileptic, or delusional. No, what fascinates me is the historical problem. And there are others out there who have confronted this issue, from popular writers such as author Robert Spencer, founder of the major website Jihad Watch, who some years ago published a book with the provocative title Did Muhammad Exist?: An Inquiry into Islam’s Obscure Origins (ISI Books, March 2012), to some genuine scholarly efforts. The Foreword to Spencer’s book, for instance, as the blurb informs us: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/fjordman/unmasking-muhammads-dubious … was written by the eminent scholar Johannes J. G. (Hans) Jansen, an Arabist and a Professor of Modern Islamic thought at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands until his retirement in 2008. Among his other accomplishments, he has translated the Koran into Dutch. Jansen points out that what sparse information and physical evidence we do have does not seem to confirm the traditional Islamic accounts of the sixth and seventh centuries. In fact, archaeological findings contradict the traditional picture. Only further archaeological work in present-day Arabia and Greater Syria can shed more light on these issues. In Saudi Arabia, such excavations are forbidden, and Wahhabi hardliners have actively destroyed some sites. Furthermore, the religious authorities may not be interested in bringing to light findings that might contradict their religious views or undermine Saudi Arabia’s central status in Islam. …. As Jansen states, “An Iraqi scholar, Ibn Ishaq (c. 760), wrote a book that is the basis of all biographies of Muhammad. No biographical sketches of Muhammad exist that do not depend on Ibn Ishaq. If an analysis of Ibn Ishaq’s book establishes that for whatever reason it cannot be seen as an historical source, all knowledge we possess about Muhammad evaporates. When Ibn Ishaq’s much-quoted and popular book turns out to be nothing but pious fiction, we will have to accept that it is not likely we will ever discover the truth about Muhammad.” Moreover, a fully developed Arabic script did not yet exist at the time when the Koran was supposedly collected for the first time, which further introduces substantial sources of error. The Koran itself was probably far less stable and collected much later than Muslims believe. Finally, the hadith collections which elaborate upon the personal example of Muhammad were developed many generations after the alleged events of his life had taken place, and are considered partially unreliable even by Muslims. It is likely that a great deal of this material was fabricated outright in a process of political and cultural struggle long after the first conquests. [End of quotes] Spencer does not claim to be an original scholar in these matters, but credits such individuals as Ignaz Goldziher, Theodor Nöldeke, Arthur Jeffery, Henri Lammens, Alphonse Mingana, Joseph Schacht, Aloys Sprenger and Julius Wellhausen, as well as more recent researchers such as Suliman Bashear, Patricia Crone, Volker Popp, Yehuda Nevo, Michael Cook, Ibn Warraq, Judith Koren, Ibn Rawandi, Günter Lüling, David S. Powers and John Wansbrough. And we continue reading here: Several contemporary critical scholars — Christoph Luxenberg, for example — have been forced to write under pseudonyms due to persistent threats against their lives. This virtually never happened to scholars in Christian Europe who critically examined the Bible or the historical Jesus during the nineteenth century, but it happens frequently to those who question Islam and its traditions. One might suspect that the main reason why many Muslims often tend to react with extreme aggression against anyone questioning their religion is because it was originally built on shaky foundations and could collapse if it is subjected to closer scrutiny. Non-Muslim chroniclers writing at the time of the early Arabian conquests made no mention of the Koran, Islam or Muslims, and scant mention of Muhammad. The Arab conquerors themselves didn’t refer to the Koran during the first decades, quite possibly because it did not then exist in a recognizable form. Modern scholars like Patricia Crone have questioned whether Mecca as an important trading city and center of pilgrimage truly existed by the year 600 [AD], as Islamic sources claim. Its location makes no sense if it was supposed to be located on the trade routes between the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Europe. No non-Muslim historian mentions it in any accounts of trade from the sixth or seventh centuries. Given the centrality of Mecca in traditional history, this casts the entire canonical story of the origins of Islam into doubt. [End of quote] On this issue of Mecca, J. Toler has asked the question: “Did Abraham Build the Kaaba?”: http://www.answering-islam.org/authors/toler/abraham_kaaba.html … Why did the Kaaba play a central role in Muhammad’s fantasies? While no historical facts support his claims, Muslims are seldom deterred. Islam is built upon the notion that Abraham was not only a Muslim [Q. 2:31] but that he was selected by Allah to build the Kaaba in Mecca [Q. 2:125-127], and that while doing so he established the rituals and beliefs which are the cornerstones of Islamic worship. The pagan origins and practices of the Kaaba will not be discussed here, only the patriarchal journeys and the Islamic corruption of the Bible’s texts. Muslims claim that Mecca and the Kaaba are the centers of worship for the entire world. Christians and Jews know that it is Jerusalem, where lays the chief cornerstone of Yahweh's kingdom [Psalm 102:16; I Peter 2:6]. The City of David [Zion] is mentioned nearly 50 times in the Bible as the home of God's people [Isaiah 10:24] and where the hosts will reign [Isaiah 24:23]. Are Muslims going to tell us that these references are corruptions in the texts and that Mecca was the intended city the whole time? Hardly even remotely plausible. The Kaaba in Mecca is without equal in veneration in Islamic tradition, and had been revered by Arab pagans long before Muhammad’s birth. The Muslim religion holds that the Kaaba was built by Abraham and Ishmael after hearing a direct revelation from Allah. This seems improbable. After all, once Allah guides a people on the right course and provides a mode of conduct for worship through a chosen Prophet, Allah does not then lead them astray into confusion or an inability to see the right course [Q. 9:115]. How is it then that such a man as Abraham would be sent to Mecca to deliver the people from polytheism and build the Kaaba only to later have them fall into apostasy and disbelief, needing yet another prophet in the 7th century A.D.? Abraham being in Mecca is just not consistent with important Islamic doctrines, and a myth. For example, in Q. 2:125 the Kaaba is being purified [Ar. 'tahara'], yet in Q. 2:127 the foundation are still being raised [Ar. Rafa'a]. Depending on the traditions being reviewed, the Kaaba was built by Allah or maybe Adam or possibly Abraham. But, is it true? …. [End of quote] Returning again to the Spencer article, we read about the problems associated with the original language: The Koran claims to be written in clear Arabic, but even educated Arabs find parts of it hard to understand. The German philologist Gerd R. Puin, whose pioneering work is quoted by Ibn Warraq in What the Koran Really Says, states that up to a fifth of it is just incomprehensible. Perhaps one of the reasons why the Koran stresses its Arabic nature may be, ironically, that portions of it were not originally written in Arabic at all, but in related Semitic languages. Christoph Luxenberg has suggested that some sections of it were originally written in Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic that had long been used as a literary language in much of the Middle East and the Fertile Crescent. He demonstrates convincingly that certain puzzling Koranic verses make more sense if you read them in Syriac. The virgins that brave Muslim men are supposed to enjoy in Paradise (Koran 44:51-57, 52:17-24, 56:27-40) may not be virgins at all, but rather white raisins, or perhaps grapes. Yes, fruit. It’s possible that some of these Christian Syriac texts were written by a heretical group that rejected the Trinity of mainstream Christianity. It’s certainly true that a few Koranic chapters as we know them are somewhat more tolerant than others, but if we believe this non-traditional reading of history, some of them were based on pre-existing Jewish or Christian texts. [End of quote] Much of them, I should argue along similar lines, were based on the Old and New Testament! I think that Spencer really gets close to hitting the nail on the head when he arrives at the conclusion that the Prophet Mohammed was, in fact, “a semi-legendary figure … whose exploits were greatly elaborated upon by later generations” - though my qualification of what he argues would be that this “semi-legendary figure” was based on real historical individuals, and not on figures as historically vague as the ones that Spencer will now propose: In the final section of the book, Spencer sums up the findings to date. He suggests that Muhammad may have existed as a semi-legendary figure, comparable to Robin Hood, King Arthur or William Tell, whose exploits were greatly elaborated upon by later generations. Yet the traditional account of him as Islam’s founder is riddled with gaps and inconsistencies. The Arab conquerors may have known some vague monotheism partly inspired by Christians and Jews, but in the generations and centuries after the conquests they abandoned this and developed a more militant creed that came to function as a vehicle for Arab nationalism and imperialism. Perhaps the conquests shaped Islam more than Islam shaped the conquests. But if someone more or less invented Muhammad, wouldn’t they want to invent a more sympathetic character than the very ruthless and brutal man we see emerge from the traditional accounts? Possibly yes, but as Spencer comments, the Arabs of this age may have thought that such a ruthless character was an inspiration for conquest and empire-building. [End of quote] Most surprising of all is the conclusion of Muslim convert, Muhammad Sven Kalisch, Germany’s first professor of Islamic theology, that ‘Mohammed probably never existed’: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122669909279629451 …. Muhammad Sven Kalisch … fasts during the Muslim holy month, doesn't like to shake hands with Muslim women and has spent years studying Islamic scripture. Islam, he says, guides his life. So it came as something of a surprise when Prof. Kalisch announced the fruit of his theological research. His conclusion: The Prophet Muhammad probably never existed. THEOLOGY WITHOUT MUHAMMAD Read a translated excerpt from "Islamic Theology Without the Historic Muhammad -- Comments on the Challenges of the Historical-Critical Method for Islamic Thinking" by Professor Kalisch. Muslims, not surprisingly, are outraged. Even Danish cartoonists who triggered global protests a couple of years ago didn't portray the Prophet as fictional. German police, worried about a violent backlash, told the professor to move his religious-studies center to more-secure premises. "We had no idea he would have ideas like this," says Thomas Bauer, a fellow academic at Münster University who sat on a committee that appointed Prof. Kalisch. "I'm a more orthodox Muslim than he is, and I'm not a Muslim." When Prof. Kalisch took up his theology chair four years ago, he was seen as proof that modern Western scholarship and Islamic ways can mingle -- and counter the influence of radical preachers in Germany. He was put in charge of a new program at Münster, one of Germany's oldest and most respected universities, to train teachers in state schools to teach Muslim pupils about their faith. Muslim leaders cheered and joined an advisory board at his Center for Religious Studies. Politicians hailed the appointment as a sign of Germany's readiness to absorb some three million Muslims into mainstream society. But, says Andreas Pinkwart, a minister responsible for higher education in this north German region, "the results are disappointing." Prof. Kalisch, who insists he's still a Muslim, says he knew he would get in trouble but wanted to subject Islam to the same scrutiny as Christianity and Judaism. German scholars of the 19th century, he notes, were among the first to raise questions about the historical accuracy of the Bible. Many scholars of Islam question the accuracy of ancient sources on Muhammad's life. The earliest biography, of which no copies survive, dated from roughly a century after the generally accepted year of his death, 632, and is known only by references to it in much later texts. But only a few scholars have doubted Muhammad's existence. Most say his life is better documented than that of Jesus. "Of course Muhammad existed," says Tilman Nagel, a scholar in Göttingen and author of a new book, "Muhammad: Life and Legend." The Prophet differed from the flawless figure of Islamic tradition, Prof. Nagel says, but "it is quite astonishing to say that thousands and thousands of pages about him were all forged" and there was no such person. All the same, Prof. Nagel has signed a petition in support of Prof. Kalisch, who has faced blistering criticism from Muslim groups and some secular German academics. "We are in Europe," Prof. Nagel says. "Education is about thinking, not just learning by heart." Prof. Kalisch's religious studies center recently removed a sign and erased its address from its Web site. The professor, a burly 42-year-old, says he has received no specific threats but has been denounced as apostate, a capital offense in some readings of Islam. "Maybe people are speculating that some idiot will come and cut off my head," he said during an interview in his study. A few minutes later, an assistant arrived in a panic to say a suspicious-looking digital clock had been found lying in the hallway. Police, called to the scene, declared the clock harmless. A convert to Islam at age 15, Prof. Kalisch says he was drawn to the faith because it seemed more rational than others. He embraced a branch of Shiite Islam noted for its skeptical bent. After working briefly as a lawyer, he began work in 2001 on a postdoctoral thesis in Islamic law in Hamburg, to go through the elaborate process required to become a professor in Germany. The Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S. that year appalled Mr. Kalisch but didn't dent his devotion. Indeed, after he arrived at Münster University in 2004, he struck some as too conservative. Sami Alrabaa, a scholar at a nearby college, recalls attending a lecture by Prof. Kalisch and being upset by his doctrinaire defense of Islamic law, known as Sharia. In private, he was moving in a different direction. He devoured works questioning the existence of Abraham, Moses and Jesus. Then "I said to myself: You've dealt with Christianity and Judaism but what about your own religion? Can you take it for granted that Muhammad existed?" He had no doubts at first, but slowly they emerged. He was struck, he says, by the fact that the first coins bearing Muhammad's name did not appear until the late 7th century -- six decades after the religion did. He traded ideas with some scholars in Saarbrücken who in recent years have been pushing the idea of Muhammad's nonexistence. They claim that "Muhammad" wasn't the name of a person but a title, and that Islam began as a Christian heresy. Prof. Kalisch didn't buy all of this. Contributing last year to a book on Islam, he weighed the odds and called Muhammad's existence "more probable than not." By early this year, though, his thinking had shifted. "The more I read, the historical person at the root of the whole thing became more and more improbable," he says. He has doubts, too, about the Quran. "God doesn't write books," Prof. Kalisch says. [End of quote] Some Shocking Anomalies in Islamic ‘History’ Whilst one could point to many of these - and Rev. Mark Durie has in his books and speeches, I just want to mention a few that have struck me as being particularly incredible and bold. Taking these in chronological order - that is, in a proper chronological order - they are: (a) Mecca’s Ka’aba, so vital to Islam, built by Abraham; (b) Egypt’s Vizier Hemiunu identified by some as Haman of the story of Queen Esther; (c) ‘Abraha (‘Abrahas) attacks Mecca in year of Mohammed’s birth (to be explained); (d) Nehemiah as a contemporary of Mohammed. (a) Mecca. Archaeological evidence suggests that the city of Mecca is late, and certainly could not have been relevant to the time of Abram (Abraham). A study from Dr. Rafat Amari (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ABakkah) shows that there is no historical record penned before the 4th century AD, that suggests that Mecca ever existed before that time, while other ancient Arabian towns are well attested in the historical record.[11] In another study, Dr. Rafat Amari found that no pre-4th century historical or archaeological record that suggests that the Kaaba existed before the early 5th century.[13] ‘Mecca’, as the centre of worship, at the centre of the world, of the nations (cf. Ezekiel 5:5), can only have been, originally, Jerusalem; the name Mecca having been derived from the Arabic Muqa (Mecca) in Bayt al-Muqaddas, referring to “Jerusalem”. For as quoted above: “Muslims claim that Mecca and the Kaaba are the centers of worship for the entire world. Christians and Jews know that it is Jerusalem, where lays the chief cornerstone of Yahweh's kingdom [Psalm 102:16; I Peter 2:6]”. The original Ka'aba, or “Cube”, could only have been the Holy of Holies in the Temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem. The Holy of Holies “was a perfect cube” (http://the-tabernacle-place.com/articles/what_is_the_tabernacle/tabernacle_holy_of): Within the Holy Place of the tabernacle, there was an inner room called the Holy of Holies, or the Most Holy Place. Judging from its name, we can see that it was a most sacred room, a place no ordinary person could enter. It was God’s special dwelling place in the midst of His people. During the Israelites’ wanderings in the wilderness, God appeared as a pillar of cloud or fire in and above the Holy of Holies. The Holy of Holies was a perfect cube — its length, width and height were all equal to 15 feet. [End of quote] Now, whilst Abraham himself never visited Mecca, he certainly did visit at least Mount Moriah, with his son, Isaac (Genesis 22:2). Not surprisingly, the story of this famous incident occurs also in the Qur’an, but differently told. There even appears to be disagreement amongst Islamic scholars as to which son of Abraham was intended for the sacrifice: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_of_Isaac Among early Muslim scholars, however, there was a dispute over the identity of the son.[12] The argument of those early scholars who believed it was Isaac rather than Ishmael (notably Ibn Ḳutayba, and al-Ṭabarī) was that "God's perfecting his mercy on Abraham and Isaac" referred to his making Abraham his friend, and to his rescuing Isaac. On the contrary, the other parties held that the promise to Sarah was of a son, Isaac, and a grandson, Jacob,[13] excluded the possibility of a premature death of Isaac.[12] [End of quote] (b) Haman. Also quite outlandish are certain attempts to merge the Vizier of Old Kingdom Egypt, Hemiunu, with Haman of the Persian era. Though this preposterous situation seems to be quite consistent with Islam’s sometime worrying lack of any historical perspective (as more recently typified by the efforts of Ahmed Osman), ranking with this absurdity associated with Mary the mother of Jesus: http://www.answering-islam.org/Responses/Menj/sister_of_aaron.htm The Quran confuses Mary, the mother of the Lord Jesus, with Miriam the sister of Moses. The Quran identifies Mary as the sister of Aaron, the daughter of Imran, whose mother was the wife of Imran: When the wife of Imran said, 'Lord, I have vowed to Thee, in dedication, what is within my womb. Receive Thou this from me; Thou hearest, and knowest.' And when she gave birth to her she said, 'Lord, I have given birth to her, a female.' (And God knew very well what she had given birth to; the male is not as the female.) 'And I have named her Mary, and commend her to Thee with her seed, to protect them from the accursed Satan.' S. 3:35-36 Arberry Then she brought the child to her folk carrying him; and they said, 'Mary, thou hast surely committed a monstrous thing! Sister of Aaron, thy father was not a wicked man, nor was thy mother a woman unchaste.' S. 19:27-28 And Mary, Imran's daughter, who guarded her virginity, so We breathed into her of Our Spirit, and she confirmed the Words of her Lord and His Books, and became one of the obedient. S. 66:12 Compare this to what the Holy Bible says: "Then Mary (Hebrew- Mariam), the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took the timbrel in her hand…" Exodus 15:20 "The name of Amram's wife was Jochebed, the daughter of Levi, who was born to Levi in Egypt; and to Amram she bore Aaron and Moses and their sister Miriam." Numbers 26:49 "The children of Amram: Aaron, Moses, and Miriam. The sons of Aaron: Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar." 1 Chronicles 6:3 "For I brought you up from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam." Micah 6:4 [End of quote] History well knows that Hemiunu was the famous Vizier of Egypt’s Fourth Dynasty, and possibly even the architect of the Great Pyramid at Giza. Conventional history would date Hemiunu to c. 2500 BC - but, according to my revision of Egyptian history, this would be about a millennium too early. See e.g. my series: Moses - May be Staring Revisionists Right in the Face (5) Moses – may be staring revisionists right in the face. Part One: Historical Moses has presented quite a challenge | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu (5) Moses – may be staring revisionists right in the face. Part Two: Moses as Vizier and Chief Judge | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu And, whether or not I am right in my identifying of Haman with king Jehoiachin (Coniah) “the Captive”, of Judah (based on Jewish legends that Haman was in fact a Jew): Haman Un-Masked (5) Haman un-masked | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu I am entirely confident, at least, that this estimate of mine is at least a millennium closer to the correct era of Haman than is the version put forward by Islamic Awareness, that would locate the evil Haman to old pharaonic Egypt. J. Katz tells of this in “The Haman Hoax”: http://www.answering-islam.org/authors/katz/haman/app_hammon_hemiunu.html The psychology of Islamic Awareness: It may be probable that it is somebody else? Just how much the IA-authors are groping in the dark can be seen in one little formulation in one of their footnotes. Before they turn to their “substantiation” and promotion of Bucaille’s claims, they present this introductory paragraph: Haman is mentioned six times in the Qur'an: Surah 28, verses 6, 8 and 38; Surah 29, verse 39; and Surah 40, verses 24 and 36. The above ayahs portray Haman as someone close to Pharaoh, who was also in charge of building projects, otherwise the Pharaoh would have directed someone else. So, who is Haman? It appears that no commentator of the Qur'an has dealt with this question on a thorough hieroglyphic basis. As previously mentioned, many authors have suggested that "Haman" in the Qur'an is reference to Haman, a counsellor of Ahasuerus who was an enemy of the Jews. Meanwhile others have been searching for consonances with the name of the Egyptian god "Amun."[58] There would not be much to comment on in this paragraph, were it not for the fact that they added the following footnote to their last sentence: [58] Syed suggests that "Haman" is a title of a person not his name, just as Pharaoh was a title and not a proper personal name. Syed proposes that the title "Haman" referred to the "high priest of Amun". Amun is also known as "Hammon" and both are normal pronunciations of the same name. Syed's identification of Haman as "the high priest of Amun" may be probable. See S. M. Syed, "Historicity Of Haman As Mentioned In The Qur'an", The Islamic Quarterly, 1980, Volume 24, No. 1 and 2, pp. 52-53; Also see a slightly modified article by him published four years later: S. M. Syed, "Haman In The Light Of The Qur'an", Hamdard Islamicus, 1984, Volume 7, No. 4, pp. 86-87. (Source; bold emphasis mine)1 On one hand, they seem to discount the suggestion of connecting the name Haman with the god Amun since that is something that was only done by “others”, and they do not come back to this idea in their article. On the other hand, they write in their footnote that this “identification of Haman as ‘the high priest of Amun’ may be probable”. What is that supposed to mean? Is it probable or is it not probable? And if this identification is probable, does that mean that Bucaille’s claims are then improbable? Why then do they dedicate most of the space in their article to propagating Bucaille’s claims? After all, two contradictory answers cannot both be probable at the same time. In normal language, “probable” means that it has a probability that is higher than 50%. And that means that all other potential solutions have a probability that is less than 50%. Despite the fact that they expanded this footnote when they revised their paper, this nonsensical formulation stayed the same. After Islamic Awareness argued their case for the Bucaille-ian Haman, they then write: It is also interesting to note that there also existed a similar sounding name called Hemon[71] (or Hemiunu / Hemionu[72] as he is also known as), a vizier to King Khnum-Khufu who is widely considered to be the architect of Khnum-Khufu's the Great Pyramid at Giza. He lived in the 4th Dynasty of the Old Kingdom Period (c. 2700 - 2190 BCE). It remains unclear, however, why Islamic Awareness considers this interesting. Do they seriously consider him a candidate for the quranic Haman, or do they not? If not, why would they introduce him in their article? Somehow, it seems to be an implicit suggestion of Hemiunu as a candidate for Haman – particularly since there are indeed a number of Muslims who are seriously propagating Hemiunu as the Haman of the Qur’an!2 In any case, we will take a closer look at Hemiunu shortly. So, all in all, Islamic Awareness offers the world three Hamans: (a) the high-priest of Amun (a speculative construct and mere hypothesis, no evidence is provided in their article, not connected to a specific date or person), (b) “hmn-h, the overseer of the stone-quarry workers of Amun” (19th or 20th dynasty, roughly 1300-1100 BC), and (c) Hemiunu the vizier of Khufu (4th dynasty, ca. 2570 BC). First the Muslims had the problem that there was no Haman in Egypt, contrary to the claims of the Qur’an, and now we have the opposite problem that there are too many. Why is that a problem? Because adding more and more “potential Hamans” to the discussion also means that the probability for each one of these to be the right one is decreasing. …. [End of quote] (c) ‘Abraha (‘Abrahas) This is the one that really grabbed my attention. It is chronologically important because it is (unlike (a) and (b)) dated contemporaneously with Mohammed. In fact, it is dated to the very year of his birth, supposedly c. 570 AD. It is the account of a potentate’s march on Mecca, with the intention of destroying the Ka'aba. The whole thing, however, is entirely fictional, though it is based upon a real event: namely, the famous march upon Jerusalem by the forces of king Sennacherib of Assyria (c. 700 BC). The reference to “elephants” is irrelevant (or irrelephant) in the neo-Assyrian era. As noted in (a), Mecca and Ka'aba ought to be re-read, in the context of Mohammed, as, respectively, Jerusalem and the Holy of Holies. The legendary account is as follows: http://www.dacb.org/stories/ethiopia/_abraha.html 'Abraha (Ge'ez: 'Abreha) also known as 'Abraha al-Asram or Abraha b. as-Saba'h, was an Aksumite Christian ruler of Yemen. …. A number of legends of popular origin have been woven around 'Abraha's name in Arab tradition which have not yet been substantiated. Of these traditions, the best-known concern the expedition against Mecca. At this period Mecca was the thriving center of the pagan cult of the Ka'aba and the pilgrim traffic was in the hands of the powerful Qurays family. Fired with Christian zeal, 'Abraha set out to build a magnificent church at Sana'a to serve as a counter-attraction to the surrounding pagan peoples. This aroused the hostility of the Qurays who feared that the pilgrim traffic with its lucrative offerings would be diverted to Sana'a. It is sometimes said that one of their adherents succeeded in defiling the church and this led 'Abraha to embark upon a campaign against Mecca. This event is associated in Islamic tradition with the year of the Prophet's birth, c. 570 A.D. 'Abraha is said to have used elephants in the campaign and the date is celebrated as the Year of the Elephant, 'am al fil.' An indirect reference to the event is found in Surah 105 of the Quran. 'Abraha's expedition probably failed due to the successful delaying tactics of the Qurays and pestilence broke out in the camp, which decimated his army and forced him to withdraw. Another tradition relates the expedition to an unsuccessful economic mission to the Qurays by 'Abraha's son. …. No reliable information exists about the date of 'Abraha's death although tradition places it immediately after his expedition to Mecca. He was succeeded on the throne by two of his sons, Yaksum and Masruq, born to him by Raihäna, a Yemenite noblewoman whom 'Abraha had abducted from her husband. [End of quote] This is just one of many later versions, more or less accurate, of the invasion of Israel by the almost 200,000-strong army of Sennacherib. E.g., Sirach refers to it accurately in 14:18-25, as did Judas Maccabeus in 2 Maccabees 8:19. Herodotus managed to mangle it and re-locate it to Pelusium in Egypt: http://www.varchive.org/tac/lastcamp.htm Herodotus (II. 141) relates this event and gives a version he heard from the Egyptians when he visited their land two and a half centuries after it happened. When Sennacherib invaded Pelusium, the priest-king Sethos went with a weak army to defend the frontier. In a single night hordes of field mice overran the Assyrian camp, devoured quivers, bowstrings and shield handles, and put the Assyrian army to flight. Another version was given by Berosus, the Chaldean priest of the third century before the present era. [End of quote] “Pestilence”, or was it “field mice”? Actually, it was neither. The real story can be read in the Hebrew Book of Judith, a simplified account of which I have provided in my article: And the Assyrian will fall ‘by the hand of a woman’ https://www.academia.edu/44521678/And_the_Assyrian_will_fall_by_the_hand_of_a_woman As with the story of Mohammed, this wonderful victory for ancient Israel has been projected into AD time, now with the (possibly Jewish) heroine, “Gudit” (read Judith), defeating the Aksumites [Axumites] (read Assyrians), the Axumites being the same nation as ‘Abraha’s: http://www.africaspeaks.com/reasoning/index.php?topic=1103.0;wap2 Historian J.A. Rogers in the early 1900s identified Gudit as one in the same with a black Hebrew Queen named Esther and associated her with the "Falasha" Jewish dynasty that reigned from 950 to 1260AD. Many Falashas today proudly claim her as one of their own. Yet it is of dispute that Gudit was of the Jewish faith. And many in fact believe she probably adhered to indigenous African-Ethiopian based religion, hence her seemingly strong resentment towards a then encroaching Judeo-Christian Axum. Whatever her origins or real name, Gudit's conquering of Axum put an end to that nation-state's reign of power. Her attack came so swift and efficiently, that the Axumite forces were scattered in her army's wake. [End of quote] That sounds like the culmination of the Book of Judith! There may be some true glimpses of Sennacherib in the account of the invasion by the forces of 'Abraha. It was actually Sennacherib’s son (the “Nadin” above) who was killed by Judith, and we read in my above article: “Another tradition relates the expedition to an unsuccessful economic mission … by 'Abraha's son”. And, as Sennacherib died shortly after his army’s demise, so: “No reliable information exists about the date of 'Abraha's death although tradition places it immediately after his expedition to Mecca”. And Sennacherib’s death occurred at the hands of two of his sons, whilst: “['Abraha] was succeeded on the throne by two of his sons …”: http://www.the-faith.com/featured/abrahas-elephant-destruction-kabah/ Moreover, Sennacherib had formerly sent up to Jerusalem his official, Rabshakeh (Isaiah 36:2): “Then the king of Assyria sent his field commander with a large army from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem”. Similarly: “From Al-Maghmas [Michmash?], Abraha sent a man named Al-Aswad ibn Maqsud to the forefront of his army”. Now, the sarcastic Rabshakeh had taunted the officials of king Hezekiah with these words (v. 8): ‘Come now, make a bargain with my master, the king of Assyria: I will give you two thousand horses—if you can put riders on them!’ In a dim reflection of this powerful incident, whilst reversing it, we find 'Abraha’s man saying: “I have come to the House that is your religion and the religion of your fathers and that is your sanctuary and protection – for the purpose of destroying it. You do not speak to me about that, yet you speak to me about (a meager) 200 camels that belong to you!” 2000 horses reduced to a tenth and becoming 200 camels. In a further connection with Assyria, with Nineveh, Mohammed is said to have encountered a young Christian from that famous city. One wonders, therefore, if Mohammed ought to be re-dated closer to c. 612 BC (when Nineveh was irrevocably destroyed), or, say (for symmetry), to c. 612 AD. The Christian servant 'Addas was greatly impressed by these words and said: "These are words which people in this land do not generally use." The prophet (s) asked: "What land are you from, and what is your religion?" 'Addas replied: "I am Christian by faith and come from Nineveh." The prophet Muhammad (s) then said: "You belong to the city of the righteous Yunus (Jonah), son of Matta." Even more worryingly, perhaps, Mohammed claimed to be the very “brother” of the prophet Jonah: “'Addas asked him anxiously if he knew anything about Jonah. The prophet (s) significantly remarked: "He is my brother. He was a prophet and so am I." Thereupon 'Addas paid homage to Muhammad (s) and kissed his head, his hands and his feet”. For my reconstruction of Jonah and Nineveh, see my article: De-coding Jonah (5) De-coding Jonah | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu (d) Nehemiah Having fairly often read about the biblical Nehemiah, I nearly fell off my chair when I read in a French publication that there was supposedly a Jewish Nehemiah contemporaneous with the Prophet Mohammed, that Nehemiah doing the same sorts of things that the biblical version of the name had done. I have written about this in: Two Supposed Nehemiahs: BC time and AD time https://www.academia.edu/12429764/Two_Supposed_Nehemiahs_BC_time_and_AD_time Anachronistic ‘Contemporaries’, Heraclius, Khosrau, Nehemiah, Shahrbaraz “I am not saying that this “Nehemiah” and his supposed C7th AD contemporaries, “Khosrau”, “Heraclius”, and “Mohammed” [and Shahrbaraz], have no historical basis whatsoever, but rather that “they all” are non-historical composites based on real ancient (BC) historical notables”. That is what I wrote in a previous article. What! The Byzantine emperor, Heraclius (reign, 610 to 641 AD), fighting a “Battle of Nineveh” in 627 AD! And here I am mistakenly under the impression that the city of Nineveh was completely destroyed in c. 612 BC, and that it lay hopelessly dead and buried until it was archaeologically resurrected by Layard in the mid-C19th AD. But perhaps I am not alone in thinking this. For, according to: http://www.bible-history.com/assyria_archaeology/archaeology_of_ancient_assyria_nineveh.html Nineveh was the famous capital of ancient [Assyria] and one of the mightiest cities of all antiquity. It is situated on the east bank of the Tigris River just opposite modern Mosul. According to the Scriptures Nimrod was the founder of Nineveh. Genesis 10:11 11 "From that land he (Nimrod) went to Assyria and built Nineveh." The ancient Hebrew prophets foretold of Nineveh’s destruction and utter desolation: Nahum 2:8-10 "Though Nineveh of old was like a pool of water, Now they flee away. 'Halt! Halt!" they cry; But no one turns back. Take spoil of silver! Take spoil of gold! There is no end of treasure, Or wealth of every desirable prize. She is empty, desolate, and waste! The heart melts, and the knees shake; Much pain is in every side, And all their faces are drained of color." In fact Nineveh was so laid waste that it was considered a total myth of the Bible throughout most of the recent centuries, that is until it was discovered by Sir Austen Layard in the nineteenth century. The site of ancient Nineveh was extensively excavated and its occupational levels reach far back to the beginning of civilization. [End of quotes] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “The importance of Heraclius' reign as a historical watershed was recognized by Gibbon two hundred years ago”. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ That there is something quite rotten about our historical perception of this so-called “Dark Age” era is apparent from the research of German scholars, Heribert Illig and Dr. Hans-Ulrich Niemitz, the latter of whom has written, in “Did the Early Middle Ages Really Exist?” http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/volatile/Niemitz-1997.pdf The easiest way to understand doubts about the accepted chronology and ‘well-known’ history is to seriously systematize the problems of medieval research. This will lead us to detect a pattern which proves my thesis and gives reason to assume that a phantom period of approximately 300 years has been inserted between 600 AD to 900 AD, either by accident, by misinterpretation of documents or by deliberate falsification (Illig 1991). This period and all events that are supposed to have happened therein never existed. Buildings and artifacts ascribed to this period really belong to other periods. To prove this the Carolingian Chapel at Aachen will serve as the first example. …. [End of quote] Revisionist historians are well aware of the so-called “Dark Ages” period (c. 1200-700 BC) that has been artificially imposed upon, say, ancient Hittite and Greek history, and well exposed by Peter James et al. in Centuries of Darkness. In the same year that this book was first published, in 1991, German historian Heribert Illig wrote his “Phantom Time Hypothesis”. Just as Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky had pioneered a revision of BC history, so have these German writers, Illig and Niemitz, done the same for AD history. And I believe that both efforts were necessary, though I am far from accepting, in either case (the BC or the AD revision), all of the details of these pioneering works. And this last comment leads me to mention another enthusiastic reviser of ancient history, Emmet Scott, who has now also become vitally interested and well-informed about the AD revision. I neither accept all of Scott’s efforts in BC or AD, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading his helpful A Guide to the Phantom Dark Age, at: https://books.google.com.au/books?id=lIpYAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA6&lpg=PA6&dq=emmet+s For an English speaker, such as I, it is easier reading than the above-mentioned German efforts, and Emmet manages to fill in some areas that they may have left untouched. I thoroughly recommend the reading of this book, though with those reservations to be kept in mind. Nineveh But, getting back to Nineveh, it figures again in the biography of the prophet Mohammed, whose period of floruit, from his first supposed revelation until his death (610-632 AD), is practically identical to that conventionally assigned to emperor Heraclius (610 to 641 AD). Strangely, then, we are finding that the ancient city of Nineveh, destroyed in the late C7th BC, and not uncovered again until the mid-C19th AD - a period of approximately two and a half millennia, according to conventional estimates - experienced an eerie phase of ‘resurgence’ in the C7th AD, roughly halfway between these two cut-off points. This is clearly a pseudo-history. Again, Mohammed supposedly was contemporaneous with a Jew, one Nehemiah, who is like the BC biblical governor of that name strangely resuscitated in ‘another Persian era’. It all makes us have to worry, then, about Heraclius himself. We read in a review of Walter E. Kaegi’s Heraclius, Emperor of Byzantium (Cambridge University Press), that this Byzantine emperor was a ‘most strange and incoherent figure’ http://www.historytoday.com/charles-freeman/heraclius-emperor-byzantium Heraclius still appears to be one of the strangest and most incoherent figures that history has recorded. His reign is still considered as alternations of wondrous actions and inaction. It is this inadequate conclusion from a biography of 1905 that Professor Kaegi seeks to confront in this full and detailed life of the Byzantine emperor, Heraclius. It is a major challenge. The sources for Heraclius’ life are diverse and discordant and remain virtually silent on his personality. He offended as many as he impressed and his defeats were every bit as spectacular as his victories. …. [End of quote] The intrigue continues. The advent of Heraclius upon the ‘historical’ scene coincided perfectly with that of Illig’s “phantom time”, as Scott has well observed: It was Heraclius, of course, who first came into military conflict with the Arabs, and it was in his reign that Constantinople lost Jerusalem to the Arabs, and it was in his reign that Constantinople lost Jerusalem to the Persians, in 614, a date which, according to Heribert Illig, marks the commencement of the phantom time. …. The importance of Heraclius' reign as a historical watershed was recognized by Gibbon two hundred years ago. In Chapter 48 of the Decline and Fall he wrote: “From the time of Heraclius, the Byzantine theatre is contracted and darkened: the line of empire, which had been defined by the laws of Justinian and the arms of Belisarius, recedes on all sides from our view; the Roman name, the proper subject of our inquiries, is reduced to a narrow corner of Europe, to the lonely suburbs of Constantinople”. Darkened and contracted indeed. Gibbon relied only upon written history, but that picture of contraction and darkening has been fully confirmed by archeology, which, in the past half century, has been unable to cast any fresh light upon the next three centuries of Byzantine history. On the contrary, excavators have been astonished by almost the complete absence of almost all signs of life during the latter seventh, eighth, ninth, and early tenth centuries. The same darkness manifests itself in the West. [End of quote] See also my article: Something almost miraculous about our emperor Heraclius https://www.academia.edu/108372158/Something_almost_miraculous_about_our_emperor_Heraclius?uc-sb-sw=64584975 We may need to do some unlearning “Unlearning the Dark Ages” is the title of this review of another book by Emmet Scott, Mohammed and Charlemagne Revisited: The History of a Controversy. Once again, whilst I accept the basic thrust of this, I would not necessarily espouse every single idea presented here: https://didactsreach.blogspot.com.au/2015/09/unlearning-dark-ages.html Unlearning the Dark Ages The best thing about reading iconoclastic, revisionist historians is that, in the process of reading and understanding their works and their ideas, you learn just how badly your schooling has let you down. Such was certainly the case when I read the truth about the Great Depression through the work of Amity Shlaes and her outstanding The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression. Such was true of Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism, which proved to be a thorough demolition job of the "standard" understanding of the (minimal) differences between fascism and communism. Such was the result of reading Thomas DiLorenzo's The Real Lincoln. And now, to that distinguished list, I must add a new book: Emmett Scott's superb precis analysis of one of the most controversial theories in the field of classical and post-Roman history, Mohammed and Charlemagne Revisited: The History of a Controversy. The book looks at the groundbreaking work and analysis of French historian Henri Pirenne, who came up with what was at the time the most radical rethinking of the history of the Dark Ages ever proposed. And to understand just why his proposal was so strange and so difficult for mainstream historians to digest, we need to briefly look at the "accepted" view of the way that the Dark Ages came about, how they led to the Middle Ages, and finally how the Renaissance came about. The "Received Wisdom" If your schooling was anything like mine, you were taught that the period following the fall of the Roman Empire, up until the advent of the Carolingian Age (i.e. the age of Charlemagne and his descendants) was a true "Dark Age", in which the wisdom, literacy, and artistic accomplishments of the Roman Empire decayed and disappeared as civilisation itself retreated and, at certain points, was in danger of dying out completely. You were taught that the 6th through to the 9th centuries were a time of backwardness and decay, and that during this time the great cities of antiquity withered and died as the empire that the Romans had spent centuries to build up, crumbled into dust in the West and was tenuously guarded in the East by Byzantium. You were taught that the Church became an instrument of terror and repression, suppressing knowledge and condemning those who pursued forbidden topics as witches and heretics. You were even perhaps taught that the Islamic world flourished into a true Golden Age as Europe retreated into backwardness and squalor. You were told that it was the Islamic world's preservation of ancient Greek and Latin texts that saved European civilisation; when Arabic and Persian scholars took those same books, translated centuries earlier into Arabic, back to Europe to be translated right back into European languages, the resulting transfer of knowledge kicked off the great rebirth of the Renaissance and eventually culminated in the Enlightenment. All told, you were taught to think that the period from about 550AD (or thereabouts) to very roughly 850AD or 900AD was a three-century-long period of barbarism and backwardness so terrible that it very nearly destroyed what was left of Europe. An Easily Believed Yarn Obviously, I am skipping over certain key details here, but that is very broadly the historical consensus that existed before Henri Pirenne walked onto the scene. Both Edward Gibbon and J.B. Bury, perhaps the greatest historians the world has seen since Herodotus and Plutarch, argued convincingly, based on the evidence available to them at the time, that the disappearance of Roman civilisation from Western Europe resulted in a truly terrible Dark Age, and that it was Islam that saved the West. And that meme has persisted down to the present day, to the point where it is taught as near-Gospel in high schools and universities the world over. There is just one problem with the entire theory: it is complete and arrant nonsense. So said Henri Pirenne, who attacked the consensus understanding of the history of the period on every front. Drawing on the most up-to-date archaeological discoveries made up to that point, and looking carefully at geological, climatological, and contemporary source data, his conclusions were starkly at odds with the prevailing wisdom: • Contrary to popular belief, the barbarians who settled the territories once occupied by Roman legions rapidly became Christians and Romanised all on their own, and quickly re-established a civilisation that was in many ways even more advanced than the one it had replaced; • Trade between Europe, Britain, North Africa, and the Eastern Roman Empire flourished between 476AD and 650AD, creating massive prosperity and economic growth; • The population of Europe did NOT shrink gradually but in fact entered a boom period, which abruptly cut off when the true Dark Age descended upon Europe; • Most crucially, the specific reason why a Dark Age hit Europe was Islam itself That last conclusion is by far the most unsettling. Henri Pirenne did not deny that a Dark Age did indeed descend across Europe; what he contested was the specific dates which were accorded to the period. And his analysis showed that the true Dark Ages corresponded virtually perfectly with the first great wave of Islamic expansion. A Controversy Revisited As can be imagined, such a radical revision of accepted historical narrative was a huge shock to most of Pirenne's contemporaries. In his analysis of and expansion upon Pirenne's work, Emmett Scott notes that even today, most historians find Pirenne's conclusions so difficult to swallow that they force themselves through all sorts of contortions of logic, evidence, and fact to avoid the extremely uncomfortable realities that those ideas would lead to. Yet the evidence itself is beyond dispute. And Mr. Scott presents that evidence in a book that is a true pleasure to read. He starts with the decline and fall of the Roman Empire itself, and carries on with his analysis all the way through to the latter 11th Century, when the Middle Ages were well and truly established. And his analysis, presented calmly, clearly, and in considerable yet fascinating detail, is extraordinary. The history in this book reads like a detective story- and what a fascinating story it is. His tale is the forgotten history of a Europe that we are only now beginning to see and understand. As Mr. Scott points out, the fall of the Roman Empire was not in fact quite the rupture that we are taught it was in school. It was actually basically a simple transition; the last Roman emperor simply stepped off the throne and handed the crown to the Germanic chieftain Odoacer. At that point in time, the population of the Roman Empire had indeed been in long-term decline; the stock of "ethnic Romans" had dwindled significantly, hence the reason why barbarian Germanic and Gothic tribes were allowed to settle within Roman territories in exchange for their service to the Empire. And that downward trend in population did continue into the early 6th Century. But then something remarkable happened. The "barbarians" began to civilise. And they did so at a truly astonishing pace. The Visigothic kingdoms of Spain emerged into a true Golden Age. In Gaul, the Merovingians consolidated and united the Gaulish tribes into a true nation and began building upon the centuries of accumulated wisdom of the Romans and the Greeks. England, a frontier outpost long abandoned by the Romans at that point, rebuilt a true Christian civilisation; Caledonia (Scotland) and Hibernia (Ireland), dreary and miserable islands that they were, also began to experience rapid social, technological, and spiritual progress, thanks in no small part to the introduction and rapid uptake of the Christian faith to those benighted lands. From Spain in the west to Carthage in the south to Byzantium in the East, a true Mediterranean civilisation began to take shape. The existence of expensive and expertly crafted African Red Slip pottery was proven well into the 7th Century in the northern reaches of former Roman territories, including Britain. In the East, the Byzantines held the line against the Persians, but were strong and flourishing in their own right. Mr. Scott presents a true mountain of evidence showing that there was no Dark Age in Europe, right up to the middle of the 7th Century. In its place was an advanced culture in which art, science, and literature flourished at a rate not since since the days of the Rome of Marcus Aurelius. Not even the great plague of the Emperor Justinian's time, in the mid-6th Century, could put a stop to Europe's rapid pace of development. Within and through it all, the Holy Church spearheaded the revival and revolution. The Benedictine order of monks proved instrumental in preserving, recording, and building upon the knowledge of the ancients. As Mr. Scott points out, there is no other group in all of human history that has done more to advance the knowledge and happiness of our species, and there is no institution in history that has ever done more for Mankind than the Church of Christ. And then, suddenly, it all went horribly wrong. Rupture From the second half of the 7th Century, the evidence tells us that something happened which irrevocably changed Europe's fate. The advances of the previous two hundred years came to a screeching halt. Thriving metropolises were wiped out almost overnight, never to be resettled. Population growth crashed; trade across the Mediterranean collapsed; the fortunes of the Byzantines lurched from disaster to catastrophe with almost monotonous regularity for the better part of three hundred years. And so the situation remained, until the Carolingian Age was well and truly established, and mediaeval Europe came into existence. We know what the Middle Ages were like- or at least, we think we do. In reality, what we were taught in school about the Middle Ages is also basically wrong- in reality, the Middle Ages saw the advent of another advanced civilisation which was brought to its knees by the Plague. But that is not the era with which Pirenne or Scott concerned themselves. They were interested in the reason why an age of progress and expansion collapsed so quickly. The answer can be summed up in one word: Islam. The archaeological and historical evidence that Mr. Scott presents shows beyond a doubt that the extremely sudden reversal in Europe's fortunes coincides perfectly with the beginnings of the first wave of Islamic expansion, following the "prophet" Mohammed's establishment of a power base in Medina as a warlord. In the latter quarter of the book, Mr. Scott presents a powerful analysis of the Islamic doctrine of war and shows that the canonical origin story of Islam, already highly suspect, is basically garbage. He further points out that the reason why the Arabs were able to expand so rapidly is not because of any great military skill on their part; the Arabs, a nomadic and squabbling people, were hugely outnumbered and outclassed in every way by the Byzantine Empire. Instead, it is far more likely that they made an alliance with the Sassanid Persians, and that the early victories of "Arab" Islam were in fact backed and financed by the vast wealth and power of the Persian empire in the East. And anyone who knows anything about Islamic doctrines regarding warfare, piracy, the taking of slaves, and the division of the world into dar al-Harb and dar al-Islam will know that Mr. Scott is talking perfect sense when he points out that it was the rapid expansion of Islam that caused Mediterranean commerce and prosperity to come to a crashing halt almost overnight. A Myth Debunked Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Mr. Scott's work is his analysis of the much-ballyhoed "Islamic golden age". This is another standard trope that we are all taught in school. We are taught to believe the politically correct lie that Islam was an enlightened religion of peace, which fostered scientific advancement, mathematics, medicine, physics, optics, and literature at a pace never seen in the West. This is almost all complete BS. In reality, whatever advances that the Islamic world made during the Dark Ages, which it created, were due to the works of far greater philosophers and authors from the Roman and Byzantine eras. In fact, the greatest findings attributed to "Arab" mathematicians and philosophers were actually Persian in origin. Indeed, the great advances in mathematics, such as the "Arabic" numbering system and the "Arabic" concept of zero and the "Arabic" method of algebra, are all Indian and Greek discoveries given a fresh coat of paint by Persian philosophers. The true face of the Arabic Islamic empire of the time was in fact remarkably similar to what we see happening with ISIS today. It was backward, intolerant, abusive of Jews and Christians alike, utterly ruthless in dealing with pagans, violent, intolerant, and totally incapable of responsible governance over the territories that it conquered- which were once the wealthiest and most advanced creations of the children of the Roman Empire. There is far, far more to this remarkable book than I can possibly do justice to here. But I cannot recommend it highly enough to anyone interested in the history of Islam's interactions with the West. It is a scholarly work of the first order that is as readable as any best-selling thriller, and as thought-provoking as anything that Thomas DiLorenzo has ever written. It will make you sit up and think; it will shock and amaze you; and you will very likely walk away from it with your entire understanding of the post-Roman era of history turned upside-down. Biblically, Heraclius has been compared with such luminaries as Noah, Moses, David, Solomon, Daniel, and even with Jesus Christ. And no wonder in the case of David! For we read in Steven H. Wander’s article for JSTOR, “The Cyprus Plates and the “Chronicle” of Fredegar” (pp. 345-346): https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1291381.pdf …. there is one episode from the military career of Heraclius that bears a striking similarity to the story of David and Goliath. Byzantine chroniclers record that during his campaign against the Emperor Chosroes in 627, Heraclius fought the Persian general Razatis in single combat, beheading his opponent like the Israelite hero.6 George of Pisidia, the court poet, may have even connected this contemporary event with the life of David. In his epic panegyrics on Heraclius' Persian wars, he compared the Emperor to such Old Testament figures as Noah, Moses, and Daniel; unfortunately the verses of his Heraclias that, in all likelihood, dealt in detail with the combat are lost.6 [End of quote] That fateful year 627 AD again, the year also of the supposed Battle of Nineveh said to have been fought and won by Heraclius! According to Shaun Tougher, The Reign of Leo VI (886-912): Politics and People: “Heraclius … appears to have been intent on establishing himself as a new David …”. Likewise, in the case of Charlemagne, as I noted in my article: Solomon and Charlemagne. Part One: Life of Charlemagne (6) Solomon and Charlemagne. Part One: Life of Charlemagne | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu …. Charlemagne has indeed been likened to King Solomon of old, e.g. by H. Daniel-Rops (The Church in the Dark Ages, p. 395), who calls him a “witness of God, after the style of Solomon …”, and he has been spoken of in terms of the ancient kings of Israel; whilst Charlemagne’s father, Pepin the Short, was hailed as “the new king David'. [End of quote] So it appears that Heraclius may have some strong competition from the West in his ‘aspiring’ to be either the new King David or the new King Solomon! Kaegi continues: He and his writers sought to associate his name with famous names from antiquity: Alexander, Scipio and Constantine I, and with the Biblical Moses and David. Yet he will have to compete with a new name: Muhammad. Mackey’s comment: He is up there with Scipio and Hannibal (another most dubious ‘historical’ character as well). Thus we read at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclius “Edward Gibbon in his work The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire wrote: Of the characters conspicuous in history, that of Heraclius is one of the most extraordinary and inconsistent. In the first and last years of a long reign, the emperor appears to be the slave of sloth, of pleasure, or of superstition, the careless and impotent spectator of the public calamities. But the languid mists of the morning and evening are separated by the brightness of the meridian sun; the Arcadius of the palace arose the Caesar of the camp; and the honor of Rome and Heraclius was gloriously retrieved by the exploits and trophies of six adventurous campaigns. [...] Since the days of Scipio and Hannibal, no bolder enterprise has been attempted than that which Heraclius achieved for the deliverance of the empire.[52] [End of quote] As for “Muhammad” (Mohammed), we have found him out to be a massive biblical composite. Given all the biblico-historical baggage with which emperor Heraclius has been fitted down through the centuries, it is little wonder then that, according to Kaegi: No preceding or subsequent Byzantine emperor saw so much: the Araxes, the Khabur, Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Sea of Galilee (Lake Tiberias). …. Heraclius was controversial while living and is controversial today. …. Mackey’s comment: That last is putting it mildly. But how can one such as Kaegi possibly (and all credit to him for trying) write a biography of Heraclius when, according to Kaegi’s own testimony: Lacunae exist in our knowledge of Heraclius. First of all there are doubts about basic chronology, sometimes due to conflicting reports in the sources, at other times due to omissions of information about certain of his activities. Heraclius and his advisers left no diaries, memoirs, or personal letters. There are no archives of original documents. It is impossible to know biographical details about him that might be standard for nineteenth- and twentieth-century figures. The chronology is inexact for some important events. Mackey’s comment: Phew! Yet, despite that horrific sequence of negatives: … it is not the worst-documented period of the Byzantine Empire, for there is more documentation than for some other reigns of the seventh century, and for many of those of the fifth century. Mackey’s comment: God help us! Kaegi again: Mysteries abound. The ultimate goals of Heraclius remain obscure. What did Heraclius really want? .... I don’t think that we shall ever know. Mohammed and Nineveh Nineveh, which was destroyed by the Medes in c. 612 BC, and not re-discovered until the C19th AD – “Before that, Nineveh, unlike the clearly visible remains of other well-known sites such as Palmyra, Persepolis, and Thebes, was invisible, hidden beneath unexplored mounds” - strangely figures in the biography of the Prophet Mohammed of, allegedly, the C7th AD. The true story of the ancient city of Nineveh goes something like, as according to this article: http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/june-2011/article/saving-ancient-nineveh Saving Ancient Nineveh By Dan McLerran Mon, Aug 22, 2011 For a time, about 2,700 years ago, the ancient city of Nineveh ruled the Middle East. Today, it is among the world's most endangered archaeological sites, in need of an urgent rescue plan. After 2,700 years, the walls and gates of ancient Nineveh can still be seen near the banks of the Tigris river just opposite the modern city of Mosul in Iraq. In ancient times, it was the capital of the great Assyrian empire, a city of more than 100,000 people, and it was a subject of a supreme being's attention throughout the books of the Old and New Testaments in the biblical account. "Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Ammittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me."[1] The prophet Jonah's efforts there were rewarded. Nineveh, at least for a time, was saved from destruction. But the city of Nineveh today will require a different kind of saving. There are comparatively few people living there now. It features mostly ruins. Even the ruins, however, will disappear unless, according to the Global Heritage Network's early warning system, urgent steps are taken to arrest the elements that endanger it and to restore and protect what is left. Not an easy thing to do these days in a war-torn country. War has distracted and preoccupied the energies of a people who otherwise could be identifying and procuring the necessary resources needed to save and protect the city. But long before war, it has been plagued by looting and vandalism. Artifacts have appeared on international markets for sale, reliefs have been marred by vandalism, and chamber floors have seen holes dug into them by looters hoping to find anything that will yield cash for their needs. The expanding suburbs of adjacent Mosul, too, threaten it with encroachment, with sewer and water lines having already been dug and new settlements already established within the area once occupied by the ancient city. Even without looting, vandalism and suburban encroachment, however, Nineveh will crumble and succumb to the natural elements. Reports the Global Heritage Fund (GHF)*, a non-profit organization that specializes in saving and restoring archaeological sites, "without proper roofing for protection, Nineveh’s ancient walls and reliefs are becoming more and more damaged by natural elements every day. Exploration of the city is an important objective at this time, but preservation measures would go a long way as well".[2] Historically, the site of ancient Nineveh, which consists of two large mounds, Kouyunjik and Nabī Yūnus ("Prophet Jonah"), has been the subject of numerous excavations and exploratory expeditions since the mid-19th century. Beginning with French Consul General at Mosul, Paul-Émile Botta in 1842, and most notably through the excavations of famous British archaeologist Austen Henry Layard …. and many others thereafter, the remains of Nineveh became one of the sensational archaeological revelations of modern times. Before that, Nineveh, unlike the clearly visible remains of other well-known sites such as Palmyra, Persepolis, and Thebes, was invisible, hidden beneath unexplored mounds. Even historical knowledge of the Assyrian Empire and its capital city was sparse in the beginning, changed primarily by the great archaeological discoveries that followed Botta's initial attempts. One palace after another was discovered, including the lost palace of Sennacherib with its 71 rooms and enormous bas-reliefs, the palace and library of Ashurbanipal, which included 22,000 cuneiform tablets. Fragments of prisms were discovered, recording the annals of Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Ashurbanipal, including one almost complete prism of Esarhaddon. Massive gates and mudbrick ramparts and walls were unearthed. The walls encompassed an area within a 12-kilometer circumference. Many unburied skeletons were found, evidencing violent deaths and attesting to the final battle and siege of Nineveh that destroyed the city and soon brought an end to the Assyrian Empire. [End of quote] Yet we have found in the course of this series, and in related “Heraclius and the Battle of Nineveh” articles (Heraclius supposedly having been a contemporary of Mohammed’s), that it is as if Mohammed had lived during the time of the powerful C8th BC neo-Assyrian kings. This would be in favour of my view that much of the life of the Prophet Mohammed was based on Tobias, son of Tobit, which family did actually live in ancient Nineveh: The prophet Jonah, who had predicted the actual destruction of ancient Nineveh, and who was contemporaneously known to Tobit and Tobias (Tobit 14:4; cf. 14:8): ‘Go to Media, my son, for I fully believe what Jonah the prophet said about Nineveh, that it will be overthrown’, is incongruous as the “brother” of Mohammed, as the latter is supposed to have said of Jonah when speaking to a Christian slave supposedly from the town of Nineveh. To make matters even worse, the Qur’an has those converted by Jonah as being Jonah’s own people: http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Contra/jonah.html The Quran and the Islamic traditions agree on Jonah being sent to Nineveh: If only there had been a single township (among those We warned), which believed - so its faith should have profited it,- except the People of Jonah? When they believed, We removed from them the Chastisement of Ignominy in the life of the present, and permitted them to enjoy (their life) for a while. S. 10:98 And remember Zunnün, when he departed in wrath: He imagined that We had no power over him! But he cried through the depths of darkness, "There is no god but Thou: glory to Thee: I was indeed wrong!" So We listened to him: and delivered him from distress: and thus do We deliver those who have faith. S. 21:87-88 So also was Jonah among those sent (by Us). When he ran away (like a slave from captivity) to the ship (fully) laden, He (agreed to) cast lots, and he was of the rebutted: Then the big Fish did swallow him, and he had done acts worthy of blame. Had it not been that he (repented and) glorified Allah, He would certainly have remained inside the Fish till the Day of Resurrection. But We cast him forth on the naked shore in a state of sickness, And We caused to grow, over him, a spreading plant of the gourd kind. And We sent him (on a mission) to a hundred thousand (men) or more. And they believed; so We permitted them to enjoy (their life) for a while. S. 37:139-148 Here is Ibn Kathir on S. 10:98: "... The point is that between Musa and Yunus, there was no nation in its entirety that believed except the people of Yunus, the people of Naynawa (Nineveh). And they only believed because they feared that the torment from which their Messenger warned them, might strike them. They actually witnessed its signs. So they cried to Allah and asked for help. They engaged in humility in invoking Him. They brought their children and cattle and asked Allah to lift the torment from which their Prophet had warned them. As a result, Allah sent down His mercy and removed the scourge from them and gave them respite. ... In interpreting this Ayah, Qatadah said: ‘No town has denied the truth and then believed when they saw the scourge, and then their belief benefited them, with the exception of the people of Yunus. When they lost their prophet and they thought that the scourge was close upon them, Allah sent through their hearts the desire to repent. So they wore woolen fabrics and they separated each animal from its offspring. They then cried out to Allah for forty nights. When Allah saw the truth in their hearts and that they were sincere in their repentance and regrets, He removed the scourge from them.’ Qatadah said: ‘It is mentioned that the people of Yunus were in Naynawa, the land of Mosul.’ This was also reported from Ibn Mas'ud, Mujahid, Sai'd bin Jubayr and others from the Salaf." …. Abu Lahab and his wife Further possible confirmation that the Prophet Mohammed, a non-historical character, is a biblical composite. The biography of the Prophet Mohammed has borrowed so many of its bits and pieces from the Bible (Old and New Testaments) that it is no wonder that Mohammed has been portrayed as a most remarkable kind of man (verging on a superman), having such a breathtaking career. The real miracle is that scholars down through the ages have been able to compile a coherent life of the man. The downside of it is - apart from religious implications - that it is historically a complete shambles. Better to view the whole thing as a marvellous work of fiction. Now, a Turkish writer, Ercan Celik, believes that he has traced the so-called “uncle” of Mohammed, to the biblical king Omri of Israel: https://iqsaweb.wordpress.com/2015/05/26/celik_abu-lahab-jezebel/ Who were Abu Lahab and His Wife? A View from the Hebrew Bible by Ercan Celik* In The Qur’an and Its Biblical Subtext, G. S. Reynolds observes that …scholars of the Qur’an accept the basic premise of the medieval Islamic sources that the Qur’an is to be explained in light of the life of the Prophet Muhammad… However, he proposes that critical Qur’anic scholarship not depend on prophetic biography (sīrah) or traditional Qur’anic exegesis (tafsīr), but rather, … the Qur’an should be appreciated in light of its conversation with earlier literature, in particular Biblical literature…This argument necessarily involves an examination of both the relationship of Muslim exegetical literature to the Qur’an and the relationship of the Qur’an to Biblical literature. Sūrat al-Masad (Q 111) offers a valuable example for how a Biblical perspective can augment our understanding of the Qur’anic text. The text of the sūrah names its main character Abu Lahab, and mentions that he has a wife, but does not provide any further identifying information. Only extra-Qur’anic literature can give us more details about who he was. In this blog post, I compare how he may be identified through the Islamic literary sources and through the Hebrew Bible. Abu Lahab In Islamic Literature …. Abu Lahab, meaning “the father of flame,” is identified as the uncle of the prophet Muhammad, ʿAbd al-ʿUzza ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, nicknamed Abu Lahab on account of his reddish complexion. He is said to have been a rich and proud man, and he and his wife Umm Jamil, sister of Abu Sufyan, are depicted as fierce enemies of Muhammad and the early Muslim community. There are many anecdotes in the Islamic literary sources about their verbal and physical attacks on the prophet. Some Qur’an commentators say that Umm Jamil used to litter Muhammad’s path with harmful thorns of twisted palm leaf fibres, and that this is the historical context for the final verse of Sūrat al-Masad: “Will have upon her neck a halter of palm-fibre” (Q 111:5). Abu’l-Ahab in Biblical Literature In searching the Hebrew Bible for a wicked man whose name resembles Abu Lahab, one finds Ahab (Hebrew: אַחְאָב), the seventh kings of ancient Israel (r. ca. 885-874 BCE), son of King Omri and husband of Jezebel of Sidon. We could read “Abu Lahab” alternatively, and without substantial change, as “Abu’l-Ahab,” father of Ahab. According to the Hebrew Bible, the father of Ahab is Omri, who is described in 1 Kings 16:25 as having acted “more wickedly than all who were before him.” His son Ahab, in his own time, “married Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and went to serve Baal and worshiped him . . . Thus Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel than all the kings of Israel who were before him” (1 Kings 16:31-33). …. As for Jezebel, it is said that she ordered the killing of prophets (1 Kings 18:4). The prophet Elijah escaped her persecution and with God’s command confronted Ahab with a challenge to the priests of Baal: “You call on the name of your god and I will call on the name of the Lord; the god who answers by fire is indeed God” (18:24). The supporters of Baal called upon their god to send fire to consume their sacrifice, but nothing happened. When Elijah called upon the name of the Lord, fire came down from heaven immediately and consumed their offering. Eventually Ahab in killed in battle, and when Elisha, successor to the prophet Elijah, anoints Jehu king of Israel, the latter had the house of Ahab killed. Jezebel was captured by her enemies, thrown out of a window, trampled by a horse, and her flesh eaten by dogs. A Comparison of the Qur’anic and Biblical Characters There are some significant parallels between the qur’anic character of Abu Lahab and the biblical character of Abu’l-Ahab. To illustrate these, let us evaluate Sūrat al-Masad in light of the biblical account:  May the hands of Abu Lahab [Abu’l-Ahab] be ruined and ruined is he. The biblical story of Ahab fits well with this verse, in both linguistic and narrative/thematic terms. The father is invoked for ruin. Omri was the first person to introduce the worship of Baal in Israel, for which his progeny are to be ruined. In Qur’anic Arabic terminology, hands (here, yadā) are symbolic of power and of progeny. The fate of Omri’s progeny is pronounced not so much in the tafsir literature as in the biblical texts.  His wealth will not avail him or that which he gained. The Ahab of the Bible seems to have had greater wealth than the Abu Lahab of Islamic tradition; his great wealth failed to prevent his demise by God’s command.  He will [enter to] burn in a Fire of [blazing] flame. Hellfire is an eschatalogical concept associated with unbelief, especially with the sort of idolatry instituted by Omri and Ahab.  And his wife [as well]—the carrier of firewood. The feature of firewood (ḥaṭab) is key. The challenge at Mount Carmel consisted of sacrificing bulls on firewood in order. We can imagine Jezebel supporting the Baalist priests by collecting the best woods to burn the sacrifice easily. The image of Jezebel carrying firewood makes more sense of this verse than that of Umm Jamil dumping thorns.  Around her neck is a rope of [twisted] fiber. Traditional exegetes struggle to explain the meaning of the rope of palm-fiber (masad). It may be better understood in light of the Jezebel story. The term masad appears to be a hapax legomenon in the Qur’an that might have a Hebrew root and be related to Jezebel’s violent death. This term begs for further examination along these lines. See also my article on this: Abu Lahab, Lab'ayu, Ahab (7) Abu Lahab, Lab'ayu, Ahab | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu Mohammed from Birth to Marriage The ‘life’ of Mohammed will be shown to consist of, to a large extent, a string of biblical episodes (relating to, for instance, Moses; David; Job/Tobias; Jeremiah; Jesus Christ), but altered and/or greatly embellished, and re-cast into an Arabian context. This has been achieved with the greatest of skill, conflating all of these disparate sources, and re-arranging them into a thrilling epic of literary magnificence. THE NEO-ASSYRIAN FACTOR Whilst it is not to be commonly expected for ancient Assyria to be discussed in the context of the Prophet Mohammed, given that the Assyrian empire had dissolved in the C7th BC, and here is Mohammed supposedly in the C7th AD, I have found compelling reason to raise this issue. Why? Because an event that is said to have taken place in the very year that the Prophet Mohammed was born, c. 570 AD, the invasion of Mecca by ‘Abraha[s] of the kingdom of Axum [Aksum], has all the earmarks, I thought, of the disastrous campaign of Sennacherib of Assyria against Israel. Not 570 AD, but closer to 700 BC! Lacking to this Qur’anic account is the [Book of] Judith element that (I have argued in various places) was the catalyst for the defeat of the Assyrian army. But that feminine detail is picked up, I believe, in the story of the supposedly AD heroine, Gudit (possibly Jewish), who routed the Axumites. Hence read: Gudit = Judith; and Axum can substitute for Assyria: Judith the Simeonite and Judith the Semienite https://www.academia.edu/24416713/Judith_the_Simeonite_and_Judith_the_Semienite If that famous biblical incident involving neo-Assyria is some sort of chronological marker for the very beginning of those “biblical episodes” pertaining to Mohammed (as mentioned above), then the era of king Sennacherib of Assyria must be our (revised) starting point. And, indeed, it is there that we find one who displays some striking resemblances to Mohammed: he is Tobias, the son of Tobit, who was born at this time, and whom I have identified with the prophet Job: Prophet Job not an enlightened Gentile (7) Prophet Job not an enlightened Gentile | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu His father Tobit tells us about this arduous time for his family, continuing on into the reign of Sennacherib’s successor, Esarhaddon (Tobit 1:18-22): I [Tobit] also buried any whom King Sennacherib put to death when he came fleeing from Judea in those days of judgment that the king of heaven executed upon him because of his blasphemies. For in his anger he put to death many Israelites; but I would secretly remove the bodies and bury them. So when Sennacherib looked for them he could not find them. Then one of the Ninevites went and informed the king about me, that I was burying them; so I hid myself. But when I realized that the king knew about me and that I was being searched for to be put to death, I was afraid and ran away. Then all my property was confiscated; nothing was left to me that was not taken into the royal treasury except my wife Anna and my son Tobias. But not forty days passed before two of Sennacherib’s sons killed him, and they fled to the mountains of Ararat, and his son Esarhaddon reigned after him. He appointed Ahikar, the son of my brother Hanael over all the accounts of his kingdom, and he had authority over the entire administration. Ahikar interceded for me, and I returned to Nineveh. Now Ahikar was chief cupbearer, keeper of the signet, and in charge of administration of the accounts under King Sennacherib of Assyria; so Esarhaddon reappointed him. He was my nephew and so a close relative. Ahikar and Luqman More needs to be said about the immensely important Ahikar, too, because his wisdom - for much of which he would have been indebted to his uncle Tobit - has been drawn upon in the Qur’an: http://archive.org/stream/TheStoryOfAhikar/Ahikar_djvu.txt …. ON THE USE OF THE LEGEND OF AHIKAR IN THE KORAN AND ELSEWHERE. We pass on, in the next place, to point out that the legend of Ahikar was known to Mohammed, and that he has used it in a certain Sura of the Koran. There is nothing a priori improbable in this, for the Koran is full of Jewish Haggada and Christian legends, and where such sources are not expressly mentioned, they may often be detected by consulting the commentaries upon the Koran in obscure passages. For example, the story of Abimelech and the basket of figs, which appears in the Last Words of Baruch, is carried over into the Koran, as we have shown in our preface to the Apocryphon in question. It will be interesting if we can add another volume to Mohammed’s library, or to the library of the teacher from whom he derived so many of his legends. The 31st Sura of the Koran is entitled Lokman (Luqman) and it contains the following account of a sage of that name. * We heretofore bestowed wisdom on Lokman and commanded him, saying, Be thou thankful unto God: for whoever is thankful, shall be thankful to the advantage of his own soul: and if any shall be unthankful, verily God is self-sufficient and worthy to be praised. And remember when Lokman said unto his son, as he admonished him. …. O my son, Give not a partner unto God, for polytheism is a great impiety. ♦ ♦♦♦♦♦ O my son, verily every matter, whether good or bad, though it be of the weight of a grain of mustard-seed, and be hidden in a rock, or in the heavens, God will bring the same to light: for God is clear-sighted and knowing. O my son, be constant at prayer, and command that which is just, and forbid that which is evil, and be patient under the afflictions that shall befall thee: for this is a duty absolutely incumbent upon all men. ♦ ♦♦#♦♦ And be moderate in thy pace, and lower thy voice, for the most ungrateful of all voices surely is the voice of asses.’ ♦ ♦♦#♦♦ Now concerning this Lokman, the commentators and the critics have diligently thrown their brains about. The former have disputed whether Lokman was an inspired prophet or merely a philosopher and have decided against his inspiration: and they have given him a noble lineage, some saying that he was sister’s son to Job, and others that he was nephew to Abraham, and lived until the time of Jonah. Others have said that he was an African: slave. It will not escape the reader’s notice that the term sister’s son to Job, to which should be added nephew of Abraham, is the proper equivalent of the ἐξάδελφος by which Nadan and Ahikar are described in the Tobit legends. Job, moreover, is singularly like Tobit. A few comments are due here. Concerning the last statement “Job … is singularly like Tobit”, that is because, I believe, that Job was Tobias, the very son of Tobit. Most interesting, too, that “Lokman … was a sister’s son to Job”. Now, returning ‘Ahikar in the Koran’: That [Lokman] lived till the time of Jonah reminds one of the destruction of Nineveh as described in the book of Tobit, in accordance with Jonah’s prophecy. Finally the African slave is singularly like Aesop … who is a black man and a slave in the Aesop legends. From all of which it appears as if the Arabic Commentators were identifying Lokman with Ahikar on the one hand and with Aesop on the other; i.e. with two characters whom we have already shown to be identical. The identification with Aesop is confirmed by the fact that many of the fables ascribed to Aesop in the west are referred to Lokman in the east: thus Sale says: — ‘The Commentators mention several quick repartees of Luqman which agree so well with what Maximus Planudes has written of Aesop, that from thence and from the fables attributed to Luqman by the Orientals, the latter has been generally thought to be no other than the Aesop of the Greeks. However that may be (for I think the matter may bear a dispute) I am of opinion that Planudes borrowed a great part of his life of Aesop from the traditions he met with in the east concerning Luqman, concluding them to have been the same person, etc. …’. * These remarks of Sale are confirmed by our observation that the Aesop story is largely a modification of the Ahikar legend, taken with the suggestion which we derive from the Mohammedan commentators, who seem to connect Lokman with Tobit on the one hand and with Aesop on the other. …. Comment: In all of this we find ourselves firmly grounded in the neo-Assyria era of the C8th BC. The article now focusses upon the relevant Qur’anic text: Now let us turn to the Sura of the Koran which bears the name Lokman, and examine it internally: we remark (i) that he bears the name of sage, precisely as Ahikar does: (ii) that he is a teacher of ethics to his son, using Ahikar’s formula ‘ ya bani ‘ in teaching him: (iii) although at first sight the matter quoted by Mohammed does not appear to be taken from Ahikar, there are curious traces of dependence. We may especially compare the following from Ahikar: ‘O my son, bend thy head low and soften thy voice and be courteous and walk in the straight path and be not foolish And raise not thy voice when thou laughest, for were it by a loud voice that a house was built, the ass would build many houses every day.’ Clearly Mohammed has been using Ahikar, and apparently from memory, unless we like to assume that the passage in the Koran is the primitive form for Ahikar, rather than the very forcible figure in our published texts. Mohammed has also mixed up Ahikar’s teaching with his own, for some of the sentences which he attributes to Lokman appear elsewhere in the Koran. But this does not disturb the argument. From all sides tradition advises us to equate Lokman with Aesop and Ahikar, and the Koran confirms the equation. The real difficulty is to determine the derivation of the names of Lokman and Aesop from Ahikar …. Some of the Moslem traditions referred to above may be found in Al Masudi c. 4 : ‘ There was in the country of Ailah and Midian a sage named Lokman, who was the son of Auka, the son of Mezid, the son of Sar. …. Comment: The mention of “Midian” in association with Lokman is also most significant in my context, because as I have argued in: A Common Sense Geography of the Book of Tobit https://www.academia.edu/8675202/A_Common_Sense_Geography_of_the_Book_of_Tobit it was from Midian (wrongly given as “Media”) that the Naphtalian clan of Tobit and some of his relatives hailed. Continuing with the article: Another curious point in connexion with the Moslem traditions is the discussion whether Loqman was or was not a prophet. This discussion cannot have been borrowed from a Greek source, for the idea which is involved in the debate is a Semitic idea. But it is a discussion which was almost certain to arise, whether Lokman of whom Mohammed writes so approvingly had any special … as a prophet, because Mohammed is the seal of the prophets. And it seems from what Sale says on the subject, that the Moslem doctors decided the question in the negative; Lokman * received from God wisdom and eloquence in a high degree, which some pretend were given him in a vision, on his making choice of wisdom preferably to the gift of prophecy, either of which was offered him.’ Thus the Moslem verdict was that Lokman was a sage and not a prophet. On the other hand it should be noticed that there are reasons for believing that he was regarded in some circles and probably from the earliest times as a prophet. The fact of his teaching in aphorisms is of no weight against this classification: for the Hebrew Bible has two striking instances of exactly similar character, in both of which the sage appears as prophet. Thus Prov. XXX. begins : * The words of Agur the son of Jakeh, even the prophecy* and Prov. xxxi begins : *The words of king Lemuel, the prophecy that his mother taught him.’ Both of these collections appear to be taken from popular tales*, and they are strikingly like to the sentences of Ahikar. …. At the conclusion of the Syntipas legends, when the young man is solving all the hard ethical problems that his father proposes to him, we again find a trace of Ahikar, for he speaks of the ‘ insatiate eye which as long as it sees wealth is so ardent after it that he regards not God, until in death the earth covers his eyes.’ And amongst the sayings of Ahikar we find one to the effect that * the eye of man is as a fountain, and it will never be satisfied with wealth until it is filled with dust.’ Dr Dillon points out that this is one of the famous sayings of Mohammed, and if that be so, we have one more loan from Ahikar in the Koran. Cf Sura 102, ‘The emulous desire of multiplying [riches and children] employeth you, until ye visit the graves.’ …. [End of quotes] Mecca, Nineveh Earlier, “Mecca”, which archaeologically could not have any bearing upon Abraham, I re-cast as “Jerusalem; the name Mecca having been derived, it was suggested, from the Arabic Muqa (Mecca) in Bayt al-Muqaddas …”. And the Ka’aba (meaning “Cube”) was identified as the “Holy of Holies”, the most sacred place in the Temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem. Thus it is not entirely surprising to find the “Meccans” having their own Levite-like custodians of the holy place: http://sheikyermami.com/2014/01/global-warming-is-a-fraud-the-mohammedan-winter-is-here-to-stay/ “Mohammed … was descended from the noble but impoverished family of Hashim, of the priestly tribe of Koreish, who were the chiefs and keepers of the national sanctuary of the Kaaba”. Even the name, Hashim, looks like the Hebrew, Ha Shem (“The Name”, it being a term for God). We also learned previously that Mohammed had encountered a young man from Nineveh – quite an anomaly. And the pair discussed the prophet Jonah whom Mohammed called his “brother”. Tobit, for his part, well knew of the prophet Jonah, having warned his son, Tobias (14:4): “Go into Media [sic], my son, for I surely believe those things which Jonah the prophet spoke about Nineveh, that it shall be overthrown”. I would re-set the childhood of Mohammed, therefore, to the reign of king Sennacherib of Assyria, and have Tobias/Job as a major biblical matrix for it. Tobias’s/Job’s long life in fact, which extends - according to my revision - from Sennacherib to beyond the Fall of Nineveh, will suffice to encompass “biblical episodes” attached to Mohammed from his birth to his marriage to Khadijah bint Khuwaylid. My primary source here, serving as a biography of Mohammed, will be Yahiya Emerick’s Muhammad (Critical Lives), Alpha, 2002: Birth of Mohammed Given as c. 570 AD, the “Year of the Elephant”. But revised here to the reign of Sennacherib. Mohammed’s parents are traditionally given as ‘Abdullah and Aminah, or Amna. Now, this information is what really confirms me in my view that Tobias is a major influence in the biography of Mohammed, because the names of Tobias’s parents boil down to very much the same as those of Mohammed. Tobit is a Greek version of the name ‘Obad-iah, the Hebrew yod having been replaced by a ‘T’. And ‘Obadiah, or ‘Abdiel, is, in Arabic ‘Abdullah, the name of Mohammed’s father. And Amna is as close a name as one could get to Anna, the wife of Tobit (as we read above). Tobias (my Job) is the biblico-historical foundation for the young Mohammed! In articles of mine such as: Similarities to The Odyssey of the Books of Job and Tobit https://www.academia.edu/8914220/Similarities_to_The_Odyssey_of_the_Books_of_Job_and_Tobit I have drawn many parallels between the Hebrew and Greek tales, showing how Odysseus and his son, Telemachus, can sometimes resemble, respectively, Tobit and his son, Tobias; the goddess Athena can sometimes assume the part played by the angel, Raphael {In the ‘life’ of Mohammed, we are going to find one “Maysara” performing a service akin to that of the angel Raphael in the Book of Tobit}; the cruel Poseidon is the demon, Asmodeus; there are the many suitors, as with Penelope, with Sarah; and then there is the common factor of the dog, given the name of “Argos” in The Odyssey. These extremely popular and much copied books of Tobit and Job have also influenced Mesopotamian literature. Egypt - according to the Testament of Job, the prophet Job had been a “king of Egypt”. We are finding the Prophet Mohammed to have been no more real a person (though less obviously mythical) than was Odysseus, or Telemachus. Now, as explained in my “Odyssey” article, it can happen that events associated with the biblical original, for example, the father, can be, in the mythological version, attributed to someone else, say, the son. And we now find that to be the very case in the biography of Mohammed. For, whereas Mohammed is thought to have been orphaned and to have been raised by his grandfather and uncle, in the Book of Tobit the father was orphaned (Tobit 1:8): “I [Tobit] would bring it and give it to them in the third year, and we would eat it according to the ordinance decreed concerning it in the law of Moses and according to the instructions of Deborah, the mother of my father Tobiel, for my father had died and left me an orphan”. {“Deborah” here may be a distant ancestor, possibly even the famous Deborah of the Book of Judges, given her close association with the tribe of Naphtali (e.g., Judges 4:10; 5:18), Tobit’s tribe (Tobit 1:1)}. Now poor ‘Abdullah, the father of Mohammed, in an episode that harkens back to the era of the Judges, to Jephthah’s terrible vow (Judges 11:30): ‘… whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the LORD’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering’, was elected by his father, ‘Abdel Muttalib, as the one of his ten sons to be sacrificed to God in thanksgiving. Ultimately ‘Abdullah was spared that grim fate, due to an encounter between ‘Abdel Muttalib and the shamaness, Shiya - Emerick tells about this Shiya on p. 19. Here we may have a reminiscence of king Saul of Israel’s clandestine visit to the witch of Endor (I Samuel 28:7). Indeed, a further facet of the Jephthah story will recur again, later, in the quite different context of who will have the honour of placing the fabled Black Stone of the Ka’aba back on the eastern wall after repairs. (This whole wall building episode is like that of Nehemiah). Emerick recounts it on p. 48. Abu Umayyah will advise the assembled crowd to wait for the next person who will come through a nearby gate in the courtyard of the Ka’aba. That person was, as fate would have it, Mohammed himself. The situation of Mohammed, born into a Qureish environment of universal idol worship, and with the Jews as a separate entity, is very much the situation of Tobit and his little family, whose the tribe of Naphtali (separate from the Jews) had completely apostatised (Tobit 1:4): ‘When I was in my own country, in the land of Israel, while I was still a young man, the whole tribe of my ancestor Naphtali deserted the house of David and Jerusalem’. Again, ‘Abdullah’s involvement in caravan trading into Syria is entirely compatible with what Tobit tells us about himself in 1:12-14: ‘Because I was mindful of God with all my heart, the Most High gave me favor and good standing with Shalmaneser, and I used to buy everything he needed. Until his death I used to go into Media, and buy for him there’ – compatible especially given my identification (in my “Geography of Tobit”) of “Media” as Midian, including Bashan, “a part of the province of Damascus”: As with Tobit’s genealogy, with the repetition of names of the same root (Tobit 1:1): ‘I am Tobit and this is the story of my life. My father was Tobiel …’, so was the case with Mohammed’s grandfather, ‘Abdel Muttalib, and his son, Abu Talib. The account of the pregnancy of Mohammed’s mother is predictably extraordinary, and one might be inclined to think of, for example, the pregnancy of Elizabeth with John the Baptist, and of the Virgin Mary with Jesus. If so, it would be only one of many borrowings from the Gospels, in this case Luke’s. Emerick tells of it (pp. 21-22): About two months after her husband left [having joined a caravan trade to Syria], Aminah called her servant … “I’ve had a strange dream! I saw lights coming from my womb, lighting up the mountains, the hills, and the valleys all around Mecca”. Her servant then predicted: “You will give birth to a blessed child who will bring goodness”. In Luke 1:11-17, we read about the miraculous encounter of the Baptist’s father, Zechariah, the Aaronite priest, with an angel who will be identified in v. 19 as “Gabriel”: Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” Common to the ‘life’ of Mohammed here are the visitation by the angel Gabriel (who also figures in the Book of Daniel); the avoidance of alcohol; and the exaltation of the child. Further on in Luke’s Gospel it will be the Virgin Mary whom the angel Gabriel will address (Luke 1:30-32): ‘You [Mary] have found favor with God. You will become pregnant, give birth to a son … He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High’. Luke 1:28 is sometimes translated as [Mary’s being] “Highly Favoured”. Now, according to Emerick (p. 29): “Highly Praised is the translation of the Arabic name Muhammad, which was an unusual name in Arabia at that time”. This name was given to the child by his grandfather, who had, in the ancient Israelite fashion of going around Jericho “seven times” (Joshua 6:15), walked with the new born baby “seven times around the Ka‘bah”. It was then that ‘Abdel Muttalib named the child, connecting him with an ancient House - as with the angel Gabriel’s (Luke 1:32-33): ‘The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end’. The joyful ‘Abdel Muttalib exclaimed: “Blessed child, I shall call you Highly Praised. The birth of this child coincided with the glory and triumph of the Ancient House, blessed be he?” As in the story of Moses (Exodus 2:7-9), a wet nurse is provided for the child. “Aminah, frail from her depression and weakened by the arduous childbirth, engaged a wet nurse in the city …”. And also as with Moses (v. 10), “Muhammad would be raised by a foster mother …”. Whereas both Moses and Jesus had to be saved from the wrath of a monarch, the situation baby Mohammed was faced with was (p. 30): “An epidemic … going around the city …”. When it was safe to return, after some years had elapsed, exactly as with the young Jesus (Matthew 2:19-21), Mohammed came home. Youth of Mohammed When the aged ‘Abdel Muttalib died, Mohammed was taken in by his uncle, Abu Talib, who, more than Mohammed’s short-lived father, ‘Abdullah (despite the common name), represents Tobit and his wise and kindly mentoring of the young Tobias. Emerick (p. 33): “Abu Talib took Muhammad in and treated him with great affection. Although Abu Talib was poor, he and his wife …”. Cf. Tobit 4:21: ‘We’re poor now, but don’t worry. If you obey God and avoid sin, he will be pleased with you and make you prosperous’. In a famous story, an old priest, in the fashion of Samuel choosing to anoint the young David from amongst the sons of Jesse, will pick out the 12-year old Mohammed amongst many. Emerick tells of it (pp. 34-35): Around the year 582, Abu Talib decided to join the great caravan going to Syria in order to boost his finances. …. After a couple of weeks of long, hard travel, the caravan and its attendants decided to make camp in a region called Bostra, just short of Syria. Just ahead on the road was a small Christian monastery where a solitary monk by the name of Bahira lived. …. He sent an invitation to the men of the caravan to come to the monastery for a banquet, asking that everyone attend. When the merchants arrived, the priest looked them over and found nothing special about any of them. He asked if everyone from the caravan was present and was told that everyone was there except a small boy who was left behind to watch the animals. Bahira requested that he also be invited, so someone went to fetch young Muhammad. Compare (the strikingly similar) I Samuel 16:10-11: Jesse had seven of his sons pass before Samuel, but Samuel said to him, “The LORD has not chosen these.” So he asked Jesse, “Are these all the sons you have?” “There is still the youngest,” Jesse answered. “He is tending the sheep.” Samuel said, “Send for him; we will not sit down until he arrives.” Like David, too, Mohammed (later) tended sheep (Emerick, p. 40): “Muhammad’s humble occupation as a shepherd impressed upon him the value of hard, honest work”. But there is also a recorded incident in the otherwise unknown boyhood of Jesus (the Good Shepherd) at the age of twelve – and it, too, involves travellers (Luke 2:41-42): “Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom.” Emerick continues with the story of Bahira, with the boy Mohammed now present (p. 35): “After Muhammad joined the gathering, Bahira watched the boy carefully and noted his physical features and behaviour. He seemed to have an otherworldy look in his eyes, a strength in his bearing”. David also had fine eyes and a good appearance (I Samuel 16:12): “Now [David] was ruddy and had beautiful eyes and was handsome”. On pp. 56-57 Emerick, still in connection with the Bahira story which is here accepted as being quite “historically tenable”, will make this notable admission: A fair amount of literature exists on the portents and signs prior to the rise of Muhammad as a religious leader. These writings may be based more on retrospective idealism than proven facts. One can logically assume that Muhammad had no knowledge of his future significance and that premonitions and recognition of his greatness by his contemporaries were greatly exaggerated. Beyond the episode with the monk Bahira when he was twelve, which was related not only by Abu Talib but also by several of his associates and thus gains more credibility, little except the predictions of a man named Waraqah seem historically tenable. The abruptness and unexpectedness of Muhammad’s rise may be simply inexplicable. [End of quote] Why I think that it might be very important for Islam to defend the veracity of the Bahira incident is because he is the one who would proclaim Mohammed as “the last prophet” in God’s great scheme of things. Thus Emerick (p. 35): …. Muhammad boldly told the monk that he hated the idols. This statement impressed the aged Christian further. Then he asked for the boy to lift his shirt, and the monk found a birthmark on his back, just between the shoulder blades. Bahira looked at the spot, which was about the size of a small egg, and declared, “Now I am most certain that this is the last prophet for whom the Jews and Christians [sic] await …”. It is interesting that both Bahira and the Waraqah referred to above, seemingly lone individuals, non-Jews, but monotheists, are either Christian (Bahira) or, like Waraqah (Emerick, p. 31): “… [an] unaffiliated monotheist who also had some knowledge of Christianity”. Marriage of Mohammed The golden thread in the ‘life’ of Mohammed of the Book of Tobit (combined with Job) continues on, I believe, into the account of his marriage to the widowed beauty, Khadijah, also given as ‘Siti Khadijah’: http://kelantan.attractionsinmalaysia.com/SitiKhadijahMarket “Siti Khadijah Market (Pasar besar Siti Khadijah), as its name implies, is a local wet market. Its name after Prophet Muhammad’s wife, [who] is known for her entrepreneurial skill, as this market is mostly run by women”. In the Testament of Job the prophet’s wife is similarly called “Sitis”: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2010/jul/26/judaism-job-philosoph “Job’s first wife is Sitidos (Sitis). Her name may have the same root as the word Satan in Hebrew or Sotah (unfaithful wife). She is a princess and Job a tribal leader”. She is, I have argued, the same as the wife of Tobias, Sarah, meaning “princess”, “lady”. Sarah was apparently, then, just like Khadijah, a woman of high status. She was likewise beautiful and full of quality, as described by the angel Raphael (Tobit 5:12): “She is sensible, brave, and very beautiful; and her father is a good man”. Just as with Khadijah, whose former husbands had died (Emerick, p. 41): “… Khadijah … married not once but twice …. Each husband died in turn, leaving her with a huge personal fortune”, likewise (though rather more spectacularly) Sarah (Tobit 3:8): “Sarah had been married seven times, but the evil demon, Asmodeus, killed each husband before the marriage could be consummated”. The poor and rather insignificant Muhammad got his big break in life when that lowly life of his would - like with the young Tobias - converge with that of his future wife. And it similarly involved a journey to Syria for business purposes. When (as Emerick tells, p. 42): “In about the year 595, Khadijah announced that she would hire a local man to lead a particularly important caravan to go to Syria”, Abu Talib suggested to Muhammad that he should apply. “Abu Talib, always on the lookout for opportunities for his own or any family member’s advancement, suggested to his nephew Muhammad that he try to get a job with Khadijah’s caravan”. The part played by Abu Talib in this situation reminds one of Tobit, who instructed his son (Tobit 4:20-21): ‘Tobias, I want you to know that I once left a large sum of money with Gabrias' son, Gabael, at Rages in Media. We're poor now, but don't worry. If you obey God and avoid sin, he will be pleased with you and make you prosperous’. In my “Geography of Tobit” I have proposed that “Rages” here equates geographically with the city of Damascus. Tobias was now a young man of marriageable age, and Muhammad was “twenty-five years old and still living with his uncle …” (Emerick, p. 42). Muhammad, similarly as with Tobit, “saw this caravan as an excellent opportunity to earn money …”. “Abu Talib confidently told his nephew that he could get him double the salary of the man already hired … two camels”. And he duly informed Khadijah of it, “… we won’t accept less than four”. Tobias, on the other hand, wants to give the disguised angel, who had guided him on the way, not “double the salary”, but “half of everything we brought back with us” (Tobit 12:2). And whilst that “two camels” can be found also in Tobit 9:1-2: “Then Tobias called Raphael and said to him: “Brother Azariah, take along with you four servants and two camels and travel to Rages”,” we see from this text that those “four servants” have been ‘reincarnated’ in the Islamic version as “four [camels]”. Khadijah here refers to Muhammad as “a close relative”. We find the identical description in Tobit 6:10-11, where the angel tells Tobias: ‘Tonight we will stay at the home of your relative Raguel. He has only one child, a daughter named Sarah, and since you are her closest relative, you have the right to marry her’. Just as Tobit had looked out for a suitable travelling companion for his son, and had found in the angel-disguised-as-Azariah a good character (Tobit 5:13): ‘… you are from a good family and a relative at that! …. Your relatives are fine people, and you come from good stock. Have a safe journey’, so, in Maysara - whose name is phonetically compatible with Azariah - does Abu Talib perceive a good character and worthy travelling companion (Emerick, p. 43): “Abu Talib knew of Maysara’s good character and encouraged his presence on the journey”. Khadijah, who “was known for rejecting all suitors” (p. 44), though for reasons less dramatic than in the case of Sarah’s loss of all suitors, now married the younger Muhammad, whose fortunes had just increased exponentially (p. 45): “not only was he suddenly getting married, his fortunes were also taking a dramatic turn for the better”. So had the angel informed Tobias about Sarah (6:11): “… you have the right to marry her. You also have the right to inherit all her father's property”. “Muhammad and Khadijah would have six children together, two boys and four girls”. Tragically, the life of the sons would be cut off early, just as with Tobias/Job.