Seeing Islam as Others Saw It

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This seminal work continues to shape the thought of specialists studying the Late Antique crossroads at which Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, and Islamic histories met, by offering the field a new approach to the vexing question of how to write the early history of Islam. The new edition of the study produces the original text with the addition of a substantial forward in which Hoyland discusses how the field has developed over the two decades that proceeded the book's first publication. Hoyland also shares some person reflections on how his thinking has since developed and the potential impact of this on the findings of the original study. The book also includes new appendices that detail the later publications of the author. The first part of the book discusses the nature of the Muslim and non-Muslim source material for the seventh and eighth century Middle East, arguing that by lessening the divide between these two traditions, which has largely been erected by modern scholarship, we can come to a better appreciation of this crucial period. The second part provides a detailed survey of sources and an analysis of some 120 non-Muslim texts, all of which provide information about the first century and a half of Islam (roughly A.D. 620-780). The third part furnishes examples, according to the approach suggested in the first part and with the material presented in the second part, of how one might write the history of this time. The fourth part takes the form of excurses on various topics, such as the process of Islamization, the phenomenon of conversion to Islam, the development of techniques for determining the direction of prayer, and the conquest of Egypt. Because this work views Islamic history with the aid of non-Muslim texts and assesses the latter in the light of Muslim writings, it will be essential reading for historians of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, or Zoroastrianism - indeed, for all those with an interest in cultures of the eastern Mediterranean in its traditional phase from Late Antiquity to medieval times.