Muhammad & the Empires of Faith (Review)

  

 

 

Too late, too tendentious, and too monolithic. Mine it as you please for insights into how 8th and 9th century Muslims remembered their Prophet, but as a source for the historical Muhammad himself? Forget it.

Stylised and simplistic a presentation as this may be, it nevertheless captures how many Islamicists view the sira-maghazi literature. Few of course deny that the corpus does contain early material — the so-called Constitution of Medina is a case in point. Yet for many researchers the latter is a (glaring) exception to the rule. Indeed, for the vast majority of the sira-maghazi corpus we instead cannot but despair at the prospect of being able to separate fact from fiction with any degree of certainty.

Our quest for the historical Muhammad thus culminates in the vague yet recognizable picture obtained from 7th century evidence: that of an activist, law-giving, prophet who formed a West Arabian community that came to conquer the Near East. No matter that, according to Chase Robinson, for example, this picture is "familiar to us from the Islamic tradition itself" — the sources are problematic enough that it is still best we "refuse to go much beyond those essentials."

Yet this is not the only view of things, for a range of scholars believe that the sources are not so problematic, that the sira-maghazi corpus can be engaged. The work of Michael Lecker -- endorsed by an authority no less than Michael Cook -- is worth mention here, as is the isnad-cum-matn method popularised by Harald Motzki and Gregor Schoeler. Even accounting for the (well-documented) shortcomings of each approach, it is hard to deny that they have chipped away ever so slightly at the corpus' supposed intractability.

To be clear, no scholar advocates for a return to the uncritically positivist approaches of old. Lecker speaks of mere "pearls in a vast sea", while Schoeler suggests we "reconcile ourselves to the fact that only few historical facts about the life of Muhammad can be determined with certainty or high probability." Gullible optimists they clearly are not. Instead, their attitude to the corpus is one of nuanced skepticism, and a progression away from all-or-nothing binaries to genuinely critical engagement. They and others like them recognise that extreme, utter, pessimism regarding the sources is simply not justified right now. One day it might — but not yet.

The work of Sean W. Anthony could fairly be located in this genre. Over the last few years, his line of research has demonstrated increasingly nuanced reading strategies with which to tackle the sira-maghazi corpus, both as an independent genre and in how it relates to other corpora of evidence. Muhammad and the Empires of Faith (henceforth MEF) is, then, a natural outcome of such attentive readings of the sira-maghazi literature, and a full-throated rendition of arguments that have been implicit in Anthony’s work for a while now. It is a veritable manifesto for reasoned scholarly optimism regarding research into the historical Muhammad, and a convincing demonstration of why the sira-maghazi corpus can be worked with.

Anthony goes about this task not merely by showing off new tricks with which to unlock parts of the sira-maghazi literature — though he does that too. The book instead touches on all major types of evidence scholars have long wrangled with, and provides a holistic framework within which to integrate them. It is to this theoretical scaffolding -- essentially a contextualisation of the sira-maghazi literature -- that I shall devote most time to, even though it forms only a minority of the book proper. This is due to both reasons of personal interest, and because I believe the book's overarching message will rise and fall based on how convincing the larger interpretive framework is found to be.

In a rather terse and schematic way, the general framework could be summarised as follows:

1. We have four classes of evidence:

1. The Quran (7th c.)

2. Early Non-Muslim Accounts (7th c.)

3. Material Evidence (7th c.)

4. Arabic literary sources (~ 8th c. +)

2. Due to their earliness, (i) The Quran, (ii) Early Non-Muslim Accounts, and (iii) the Material Evidence, are first-order sources. They predate the rise of the sira-maghazi literature.

3. When read together carefully, these first-order sources provide us with a low-resolution baseline picture of the historical Muhammad.

4. The sira-maghazi literature is a second-order source. It must be read, with appropriate caution, in light of the Quran in particular, as well as the general historical-baseline obtained from a careful reading of the first-order sources.

5. Reading strategies for the sira-maghazi literature include "vertical" approaches of reading "within a tradition", and "lateral" approaches of reading "across traditions". The latter involves reading the sira-maghazi literature in dialogue with other late antique traditions, such as hagiography.

The book itself is divided into three parts: the first deals with pre-sira-maghazi evidence in varying degrees of detail, while the latter two tackle the sira-maghazi corpus itself by employing the aforementioned vertical and lateral reading strategies. Chapters usually investigate specific items of evidence or research questions -- e.g. the Doctrina Iacobi, Muhammad's occupation, the Iqra narrative, the vision of Heraclius, etc. -- with the aim of both "solving" the problem at hand and making a case for the general possibility of such engagement with the sira-maghazi literature. Anthony also presents a prosopographical analysis of the key figures involved in the sira-maghazi literature's genesis (Urwah ibn al-Zubayr, Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri, Ibn Ishaq), as well as a translation of Urwah's letters (about whose authenticity he is not excessively skeptical). The introduction and conclusion frame the text as a whole and make explicit the interpretive framework summarised above.

Anthony’s dating and division of the source material into first and second order sources is uncontroversial. His deduction of a baseline “low-resolution” Muhammad from the first-order, 7th century, evidence is likewise not new (though the terminology perhaps is). The already quoted Chase Robinson — a scholar whose views are, as Anthony implies, a useful foil to those espoused in MEF — also believes that the 7th century evidence does give us a picture of the historical Muhammad. Where differences begin to emerge is on the ultimate contents of this low-resolution baseline view, and how it relates to later evidence.

Compare Robinson's low resolution picture:

No historian familiar with the relevant evidence doubts that in the early seventh century many Arabs acknowledged a man named Muḥammad as a law-giving prophet in a line of monotheist prophets, that he formed and led a community of some kind in Arabia, and, finally, that this community-building functioned, in one way or another, to trigger conquests that established Islamic rule across much of the Mediterranean and Near East in the middle third of the seventh century.

To Anthony's:

When viewed as overlapping layers of evidence, rather than mutually exclusive antagonists, these three “first-order” sources offer what one might call a “low-resolution view” of the historical Muḥammad to guide us in approaching the sīrah-maghāzī literature, and against which its narratives can be measured. Based on these early cardinal sources, it seems beyond doubt that in the first half of the seventh century there emerged a law-giving claimant to prophecy from Arabia, a Saracen/Ishmaelite merchant from an Arabic-speaking tribe named Muḥammad, who claimed to culminate a long line of monotheistic Abrahamic prophets gifted with divine revelation. Furthermore, we can deduce on a well-sourced evidentiary basis that this prophetic claimant, whose earliest followers regarded themselves as descendants of the biblical patriarch Abraham, formed a community in Western Arabia and became a ruler in Yathrib. This community coalesced around the prophet’s teachings, instantiated in a revelation called the Qurʾan. Inspired by this prophet’s teachings, the new community embarked on wide-reaching campaigns of conquest, which from the mid-seventh century on swiftly engulfed much of [the] Near East, including Sasanid Persia and much of the Eastern Roman Empire.

Anthony’s more detailed low-resolution picture and his views on its use in checking later evidence all emerge from a fascinating synthesis and interpretation of recent scholarship, both his own and that of others. Here it is worth dwelling on his handling of the Quran and the early non-Muslim accounts in particular.

The Quran

The Quran forms a central plank in Anthony's reading of both the 7th century evidence itself, and in how it may be used to engage the sira-maghazi literature. He considers the text early, though just how early is unclear -- in a previous paper he expressed that it is "highly unlikely to post-date the earliest phases of the conquests." He is also open to chronological approaches to the text, and is optimistic about diachronic, historical readings of the sort attempted in recent works by Patricia Crone and Walid Saleh.

There are of course scholars who disagree on any number of these points: to some a chronological approach to the Quran is hopelessly arbitrary, for others the Quran cannot be read historically, and for yet others the Quran was early to be sure, but simply not important to the formative community. Anthony is explicitly aware of all this, and cognisant of the fact that he is drawing not on a rock-solid ijma in Quranic Studies, but the views of one (very well represented) tendency among many. The coming years may wholly vindicate this approach, but for now it is worth keeping in mind Nicolai Sinai's recognition of the fact that "Western students of the Quran ... perceive themselves as divided into camps defined by incompatible historical assumptions: whether the Quran is a text originating from seventh-century Arabia, whether it may be legitimately linked with the figure of Muhammad, whether it is possible to make diachronic distinctions within the Quranic corpus, etc."

To be clear, even a field as divided as Quranic Studies does have outer limits -- few, for instance, would dispute the Quran's status as a basically 7th century text. One can also discern which way the wind is blowing: evidence for a mid-7th century standardisation date only continues to mount. Other questions, though, are still quite contested. Issues of chronology, composition, geography, number and type of redactional stages, orality, etc., are not yet settled. Anthony's approach is not affected by all or even most of these questions, but some of them do impact how precisely the Quran can function as a first-order source. One could even craft a story of Quranic origins that makes its position in Anthony's scheme basically untenable. Yet this is tremendously unlikely, for the basic location of the Quran as a pre-sira-maghazi source is almost indisputable, and that alone is methodologically useful. Anthony shows awareness of this point, recognising that one need not accede to his larger interpretive scheme to recognise that the Quran provides much information on the early community:

Even if interpreting the Qurʾan historically is a formidable task, the qurʾanic text fills out the outlines of a “mere Muḥammad” that is much in accord with what one can infer from the earliest non-Muslim accounts of his life. As Fred Donner has masterfully shown, the Qurʾan conveys a great deal to us about the fundamental beliefs espoused by Muḥammad and his early community: his espousal of prophetic monotheism and rejection of Arabian syncretism (shirk); his embrace and reinterpretation of the prophetic and scriptural legacy of the Christians and Jews; his belief in eschatological punishments for the wicked and rewards for the righteous; the imminent arrival of the Day of Judgment; his structuring of his community around monotheistic laws and rituals, which are simultaneously familiar to late antique religiosity yet also particular to this community (liturgical prayers, alms, fasting, observance of a sacred calendar, pilgrimage and ritual sacrifice, etc.); his militancy and the sacred struggle (jihād) of his community in pursuit of God’s path to expand their (and God’s) dominion, to establish justice, and to conquer sites they hold sacred; and Muḥammad’s own status in the revelation as God’s prophet, messenger, and lawgiver. Although this amounts to what I call a “low-resolution” view of Muḥammad, it turns out to offer us quite a lot of information.”

Anthony is wholly correct in recognising that regardless of interpretive approach, the Quranic data on early Islam is not trivial. While perhaps a straightforward point, this seems to have gone both under-recognised and under-used in recent historical research on early Islam. Quranic Studies has of course understandably moved on to the next big question, but for those of us interested in the larger picture a stock-taking reveals that much progress has indisputably been made.

Anthony's contention that the Quranic "mere Muhammad" is "much in accord what one can infer from the earliest non-Muslim accounts of his life", though, may be more controversial. This topic is best addressed by considering his views on the non-Muslim accounts themselves.

Early Non-Muslim Accounts

Approaches to the early Non-Muslim accounts have varied tremendously over the years. One line of thinking considers them too external, sparse, and contradictory to be of much use. Though they corroborate the existence of a conquering community of Arabian origin that to some extent held dear a prophetic figure named Muhammad, they may not do much else. In Orientalist days, such disregard put to bed suspicions that early Islam may have diverged in significant respects from the sira-maghazi literature's portrayal. When the tenor of the field changed and the sira-maghazi literature was itself discarded, scholars either (1) shifted to a profound agnosticism on the details of Islamic origins, or (2) produced all manner of highly "revisionist" reconstructions of early Islam, most of which usually took their cue from one or another item of early non-Muslim evidence.

Progress was made via Robert Hoyland's 1998 Seeing Islam, the bulk of which collected and translated a range of early non-Muslim sources. Under-appreciated in this massively useful text was Hoyland's own interpretation of the 7th century material, a reading which has much in common with Anthony's. Both stress that while early non-Muslim sources cannot by themselves produce a detailed account of the historical Muhammad, they do not permit a 7th century blank-slate either. Both also point out the more-than-occasional detailed and non-trivial convergences between some early non-Muslim sources and the Quran, as well as later tradition, while still accepting the presence of clear divergences.

Anthony takes things forward by providing updated readings of the earliest evidence, and, more importantly, investigating some of the aforementioned divergences. This is done by measuring the latter against data from all the other major categories of sources.

The first such investigation is into the Doctrina Iacobi. As Anthony's discussion on the topic largely repeats his 2014 paper on the same issue, all I shall say here is that the findings (1) further emphasise the eschatologically-infused nature of early Islam, (2) advocate for a re-dating of the Doctrina to the 670s, and (3) demonstrate that one can glean genuine insights ("real data about early Muslim belief") by reading together early non-Muslim accounts, epigraphic sources, and supposedly marginal parts of the hadith corpus.

More novel is Anthony's dive into the question of Muhammad's occupation. His discussion of the evidence on this topic is extensive and cannot be done justice to here, but in short he suggests we take seriously Jacob of Edessa’s depiction of a well-travelled, trading, Muhammad. Unlike the sira-maghazi corpus’ largely Hijaz-circumscribed shepherd Prophet, Jacob presents a merchant Muhammad, one who engaged in trade trips to the Levant as late as 619 CE. In Anthony's words: "Jacob's depiction of Muḥammad’s journeys should be accepted as more plausible, and likely more historical, than the depiction of Muḥammad as a man scarcely acquainted with trade or travel found in the sīrah-maghāzī literature." The significance of this will not be lost on readers: the notion that the historical Muhammad was likely familiar with extra-Hijazi contexts is of huge import, and would immediately imply his having a much-wider religio-cultural context than is traditionally assumed. The chronology of said trading trips carries huge significance too -- they continue well after the Call. Provided one accepts at least some connection between the historical Muhammad and the Quran (Anthony does), this can redound to the scripture as well. Anthony touches on this in pointing to many of the "Meccan" Quran’s geographic features, features that largely fit the travels and trade routes of long-distance Qurayshi merchants. Crone -- appropriately cited on this issue -- remarked on these aspects previously, and though she by the end of her life preferred a concrete North Arabian settlement supplementing the Mecca and Medina of tradition, a solution centred around such trade travels seems preferable. Juan Cole provided one possible reconstruction assimilating these facts in his recent Prophet of Peace (a generally fascinating work whose reception will, I fear, be derailed by a subset of its conclusions), but of course many other permutations are possible.

 

MEF's Reception

 

The preceding discussions should give a taste of how Anthony approaches first and second order sources. In the case of Muhammad’s occupation, it is the second-order sources that decisively give way in favour of the first, while with respect to the Doctrina a curious reference in a first-order source ends up becoming coherent in the light of late antique literature, epigraphy, and an under-utilised part of the second-order literature.

Instead of continuing such discussions for every chapter of the book, in the interests of space I'll cut right to the chase -- how will the book be received? What will the field make of Anthony's general approach?

Well, the more granular research questions (e.g. the vision of Heraclius) will be addressed by the relevant authorities in due course; only a tiny subset of scholars possess the grounding to truly evaluate Anthony's arguments on those fronts anyway. The big-ticket issue, then, is the general framework. It is both targeted towards and intelligible by a larger audience -- at the very least all researchers on Early Islam -- and one can more easily speculate how things will shake out there. For starters there will be those who gladly agree, and for whom MEF's approach will reinforce long standing arguments. Many such scholars are -- implicitly or explicitly -- already operating within frameworks like Anthony’s, and will applaud his eloquent formalisation and holistic marshalling of evidence. Others may disagree with Anthony here or there while accepting that he's essentially on the right track. In this more general category I would place folks like N. Sinai, A. Neuwirth, probably R. Hoyland, M. Lecker, G. Schoeler, A. Gorke, M. Shaddel, M. Cook, and more. This is of course a very eclectic set of scholars, and they do not form a coherent "camp" at all. They also may disagree with Anthony on important points -- e.g. Lecker has far less esteem for the Quran as a source than does Anthony -- but they will still likely accept the basic utility of his approach, or at least some recognisable variety of it. Their differences will also rest on relatively marginal -- as opposed to foundational -- issues.

New converts will also definitely be won. Some devotees of an essentially "blank slate" view of 7th century Islam will be very discomfited by MEF, and may indeed reevaluate their views on the range of possibilities for "what really happened." Others already convinced on this issue, but suspicious of the connection between first-order sources and the (second-order) sira-maghazi literature, will now take the plunge on that topic too.

Yet some will not be convinced. Just as agreement with Anthony need not be an either/or thing, on disagreement too there are degrees. In the interests of space one must be laconic here, and it seems best to simply point out major alternative opinions at various points of the framework. Note that I exclude from this discussion devotees of pie-in-the-sky theories along the lines of "Muhammad didn't exist", sharing here Robert Hoyland's contention that the evidence no longer permits "historical scenarios that require for their acceptance a total discontinuity in the historical memory of the Muslim community." This analysis is neither exhaustive nor overly specific:

1. On the first-order sources opponents could argue the following: "I disagree on basic points of your reading of the first-order sources, and as some form of agreement there is seemingly a prerequisite for the rest of the framework, I disagree with the framework as a whole". Possible "basic points" of disagreement w.r.t. the first-order sources include:

1. The Quran: Question the text's connection, or degree of connection, to the historical Muhammad. Question whether it is an early -- as opposed to late -- 1st century AH corpus. Question whether it can be read historically and chronologically.

2. Material evidence: Grave disagreements here are frankly a reach in my opinion, but one could play spoilsport by opting for the most inconvenient and unlikely interpretations  -- e.g. by choosing the latest possible dates, by labelling every other inscription a forgery, by interpreting the obviously genuine in the most minimalist or counterintuitive of fashions, etc.

3. Non-Muslim accounts: One could argue that they can't be read together at all, that they are too sparse anyway, that they say the exact opposite of what Anthony argues they say, etc. Stress the points of divergence rather than convergence, or perhaps exaggerate divergences, using them to discredit the whole enterprise. For an example of serious -- as opposed to almost troll-ish -- disagreement on this issue see the great Gerald Hawting's 2017 IQSA Presidential Address and Anthony's pre-scheduled response. Though I believe Anthony got the better of Hawting there, the latter is as fair a scholar as they come.

2. Even if one agrees with Anthony's first-order picture, the connection between these sources and second-order ones can be questioned by opponents. That is, yes, we have a low resolution picture, but we can't make the jump to a high resolution one -- think here of Chase Robinson, quoted at the start of this piece. To folks of his ilk (H. Berg, sometimes S. Shoemaker, etc.), even the earliest stratum of the sira-maghazi corpus has been through too many tendentious filters to be of much use. Any convergences between them and the first-order sources are, even if plausible, impossible to assign a high probability to. We have many reasonable interpretations, but few ways of achieving high levels of confidence -- the difference between saying "a battle happened", "the battle of Badr could have happened", and "the battle of Badr almost certainly happened". Even the authenticity of Urwah's letters -- something Anthony does not explicitly argue for, to be clear -- would not assuage the worries of Robinson et al. In all frankness, for such scholars nothing short of explicit multiple attestation from unambiguous early sources will do. This of course leads back to differences of opinion on the first-order sources: Anthony wants to use a 7th century low resolution picture, and in particular the Quran, as somewhat of a control on later sources, but for opponents the Quran is so allusive it may as well not exist. And round and round we go!

Reasonable as some of these possible criticisms may be, I believe the tendencies represented by Anthony -- if not his arguments in all their minutiae -- represent the future of research on early Islam. This definitely holds for his general goal of wishing that readers come away sharing Crone's optimism on research into the historical Muhammad, about which he mentions her 2008 statement that "We probably know more about Mohammed than we do about Jesus (let alone Moses or the Buddha), and we certainly have the potential to know a great deal more."

More significantly, he seems correct in arguing that the sira-maghazi literature can be worked with. Attitudes towards it redolent of the 1980s are indeed not justified in our era -- much has been accomplished and much more can reasonably be considered possible. Crone -- justifiably considered the spark for Islamic Studies' wider skeptical turn -- has already been quoted on this issue, and there are many more one could count among her number. These days Michael Cook, for instance, freely works in the tradition of Lecker while explicitly citing Crone's changing views: "To use the analogy of two of Patricia Crone’s works, I take my cue from her Slaves on horses rather than her Meccan trade and the rise of Islam." He also politely critiques a sceptic of the sira-maghazi literature, Stephen Shoemaker, for not showing "much awareness of Lecker’s work or of the range of primary sources on which it is based."

Yet even the likes of Shoemaker can be made to budge in all sorts of fascinating ways. The well-known back and forth between him and Gorke/Schoeler/Motzki is instructive here. Reading through their discussions one is astounded at how much ground Shoemaker readily gives. He admits, for example, that “the Aisha scandal does indeed appear to be an especially early tradition, attesting that ... in certain instances it may be possible to isolate some basic details that have a rather high level of historical credibility.” Schoeler rightly takes note of this statement, pointing out that such an admission "hasn’t been expressed by any sceptic at all up until now!", and one might build on his comment by suggesting that such an admission is in fact mostly what supposed “optimists” ask for!

Not all disagreements will be resolved in so pleasing a manner of course. Yet the tide is clearly turning. Already in 2017 Michael Pregill commented on "a certain impulse towards rapprochement ... a swinging of the pendulum back from an extreme rejection of tradition towards a sanguine embrace of more conventional ideas, or at least some synthesis with them, balancing revisionist insights with a more constructive positivist agenda." What Holger Zellentin termed the "Piñata Principle" ("the harder you hit the tradition, the more sweets you get") seems to increasingly be a thing of the past. As Anthony points out, this does not entail a blasé return to past confidence in the existence of an eventually accessible, “authentic core of material” on the historical Muhammad. In his words, such a perspective "is not only historiographically naïve, it is epistemologically unsound and a betrayal of the philological method.” Our endeavours could therefore culminate in recognising that the historical Muhammad is “as historically as unknowable as, say, the King Arthur of the Arthurian legends or the patriarch Abraham of biblical lore.” That too is possible. Yet what Anthony demonstrates in this book, again and again, is that right now we are nowhere near that point, and scholars consequently have no excuse to wallow in pessimism. As a matter of fact, the question is currently at a far more advanced stage: while we already know quite a bit about the historical Muhammad -- as Crone says -- how much more do we have the potential to ascertain? In this book, Anthony answers that question resoundingly: scholars have vast corpora at their disposal, and a variety of tools with which to attack them. It is best they get to work.

 

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Miscellaneous

More opinionated stuff that didn't make the main piece but is still noteworthy: 

1. MEF is fabulously well-written, matching substance with a prose style that can be best described as grand. This is no surprise: in his 2011 review of the Analysing Muslim Traditions volume, Jonathan Brown (himself a great writer!) pointed specifically to Anthony's entry when saying that "I must add that this chapter is well written - unusual for hadith studies."

2. What does Anthony believe the end-state of research into the historical Muhammad will look like? While MEF does not answer this question, Anthony gave a hint in his recent interview with Ahab Bdaiwi, speaking of how "there's a difference between what we can know of Muhammad's life in Medina, versus Mecca, and what we can know of his life in Mecca is probably very, very, very, slim." This is complimentary to a viewpoint that is, in private, quickly gaining ground among scholars: the leader-legislator-warrior Muhammad of the Medinese period is likely historical. Michael Lecker's work has been instrumental on this front, as is the obvious authenticity of the Constitution of Medina. Of course much about the Medinese period will still remain forever unknowable, but the tradition is probably right at least about its broadest contours. It is the "Meccan" period that is genuinely murkier, and for which a historical reading of the Quran achieves paramount significance. The sira-maghazi literature is surely not worthless there — far from it — but one need only look at the interminable debates on topics such as the hanifs (see Rubin, Rippin, Hawting) and the Satanic Verses (see Anthony himself) to realise that great care is required. In short, simplistic applications of the criterion of embarrassment -- step forward Tilman Nagel -- are definitely not the order of the day. Historically minded readings of the Quran may instead show the way forward, with a good example being Daniel Beck's recent efforts at getting a handle on the early Quran. While he may not be right in all the details, I feel he's getting at something real.

3. MEF is thankfully bereft or polemical or apologetic intent. It also avoids musing on contemporary politics. Both are tests that most works on early Islam still fail. Even those that complain about the politicisation of the field do so in terms so explicitly political that their protestations ring hollow. 

4. A criticism: I wish Anthony had touched at greater length on some smaller divergences between the early non-Muslim sources and the Quran, as this has huge implications for our understanding of the first-order sources. Two specific examples I had in mind are messianism, and the issue of Ishmaelite patrimony. The messianism question is easiest to explain, and involves reconciling the following difficult facts: (1) the Doctrina and the early hadith corpus make messianism central to their accounts of Muhammad and earliest Islam, while (2) the Quran is remarkably silent on the issue. Anthony puts forward an alternative reading of Q 43:61, but the sparseness of evidence generates further questions. Possible solutions seem to be that either (1) Muhammad's preaching was messianic but for one reason or another this was not articulated through Quranic proclamations repeatedly; (2) messianism was indeed Quranic, but the relevant passages were cast aside during the text's transmission or redaction; (3) early Muslims picked up messianic views only after the closing of the Quran, most probably after conquering central Near Eastern territory, and hence both the early hadith corpus and Doctrina reflect beliefs in that phase. Each solution has certain implications for how we view the Quran, the historical Muhammad, early non-Muslim accounts, the evolution of early Muslim belief, and the relationship between all of the above. Anthony's re-dating of the Doctrina to the 670s is significant here, and seems to heighten the probability of option (3). It should also be mentioned that conquering ideologies were likely far from uniform and centralised -- we might just be picking up noise.

5. Patricia Crone is mentioned in the book often, and Anthony's thinking is clearly influenced by her late-career scholarship. Here I will highlight that the discerning and optimistic skepticism of works like MEF is in my opinion the "true" heir to her oeuvre. This is in contrast to the comfortable agnosticism of scholars like Chase Robinson and Herb Berg, who in their different ways embody an approach which is in fact the farthest thing from that of Crone. It is worth pointing out that both scholars have shown awareness of this when commenting on Crone's work. 

6. It would be great to know which scholars or scholarly trends Anthony has in mind here: "There seems to be a persistent misconception that all hopes of future insights rely on our field’s ability to purloin the methods and tools of biblical studies. Not so—truth be told, current scholarship shows an unwelcome emergent trend of neglecting the centuries-long philological tradition of Muslim scholarship or else traducing what this tradition actually contains. The field will have to develop its own tools, better suited to the corpora with which we work.".

7. I applaud Anthony for citing Donner's Believers without fuming at the book for arguing that early Islam was ecumenical. I cannot have been the only one to feel dismay at the below-the-belt style of hostility some self-identifying "revisionists" showed to Donner's idea. For what it's worth, I too think Donner's more wrong than right on the ecumenicism question. I just won't smear him as a politically-motivated liberal apologist, etc. Another issue was how Donner's larger arguments were overshadowed by the ecumenicism point -- another trap Anthony does not fall into.

8. Caveat: Though Lecker's research has focused especially on materials outside the formal sira-maghazi literature, I included him anyway as it's all part of the later Arabic sources. His work on non-sira-maghazi materials also increases the plausibility of parts of the sira-maghazi literature (e.g. see his work on Medinan Jewry).