By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 27 August 2026
Podcast: What Do We Know About Islam’s Origins?
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Category Archives: History of Islam
Arculf and Jerusalem: A Snapshot of the Arab Empire Before Islam
Roman Eastern Foederati and Arab Monotheism Before Islam
Assessing the Historicity of Abu Bakr, Islam’s First Caliph
John Wansbrough’s Review of ‘Hagarism’
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 27 June 2025
In 1978, shortly after Patricia Crone and Michael Cook published their book challenging the traditional story of Islam’s origins, Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World, it was reviewed for the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies by John Wansbrough, their mentor and the most important figure in the “Revisionist” movement that arose in Islamic Studies in the 1970s. Wansbrough’s review is reproduced below.
Continue readingReview: “The Sacred City” (2016)
Was Islam’s Ka’ba Always in Mecca?
A Note on the Problems of the “Constitution of Medina” for the Islamic Tradition
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 9 June 2025
The “Constitution of Medina” or “Medina Document” (Sahifat al-Medina) is recorded in the Islamic Tradition literature, which post-dates the ninth century, i.e., two-hundred years after the Prophet Muhammad died, but most modern historians accept the Tradition’s claim that the Sahifa is the authentic record of a covenant between the early Muhammadan community and the Jews of Yathrib to establish governance in the city, dating from around 622 AD. This view is taken because the Sahifa is linguistically distinct from the surrounding material and, crucially, it contains elements that are theologically awkward from the perspective of “final form” Islam that stabilises after 800 AD.
Continue readingA Note on the Mu’tazilites and the Office of the Caliph
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 4 June 2025
Muslim belief is that the Qur’an is “uncreated” (ghayr makhluq). While the Qur’an was revealed to Muhammad over twenty-three years (610-32 AD), the “speech of God” (kalam Allah) in these revelations had existed co-eternally with God. This was once a point of serious dispute in Islamic theology, and the outcome of that debate was an important waymarker in the development of Islam.
Gerald Hawting on the Mystery of the Ka’ba
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 1 June 2025
Below is a reproduction of an academic book chapter by G.R. Hawting, “The Origins of the Sanctuary at Mecca”, in G.H.A. Juynboll [ed.] (1982), Studies on the First Century of Islamic Society, pp. 23-47.
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