possible origins of islam (higher criticism scholars/ history nuts welcome)
June 25, 2015 at 8:11 am
(This post was last modified: June 25, 2015 at 8:21 am by Psychonaut.)
Greetings,
I've been mulling over a theory lately, could it be that Islam has it's origins what would now be considered Syria/Lebanon?
This piqued my interest when I had heard of historians discussing other possible areas for Mecca (which is refered to as both Makkah and Bakkah in the Quran), as the traditional site Isn't suitable for agriculture, but an area with the same name is (which is ultimately what got my brain ticking).
Within the Beqaa valley in Lebanon, A place called Bakka seemed reasonable, this area was also mentioned in the bible (psalm 84:6) as הַ֭בָּכָא. A lot of early islamic history has it's place in Syria, with an unusually silent bunch of Christian and Jewish historians on the word "Islam", plenty of stuff about the Saracens, and the Hagarenes, and some references to Mamed (Mohammed) never too much on something specifically called Islam, not until later (around the period after Abd al Malik).
I would expect someone like John of Damascus (who was a supposed chief administrator for a caliph) to mention something about the word Islam, but he doesn't (at least nothing that I'm aware of, please correct me if I'm wrong) . In conjunction, I've tried tying together the other areas to see if it would fit, and it seemed to. Iram of the pillars (Iram is mentioned as a son of Edom in the bible [A region that would refer to modern day Jordan] Possibly as Wadi Rum), and among other areas.
I can't really find much on Yathrib (apparently called Iatribu in the Nabonidus chronicle, and Iathrippa by Ptolemy, but this may not be accurate)
So that's basically it, I consider the Mecca of the Quran, as traditionally located in Saudi Arabia untenable in light of geographic evidence, and suggest a fertile area of the same name in the Levant, among other bits of evidence. This post was more a jumbled mess of ideas, than a thesis of some kind, which I thought I'd put out there for an interesting discussion.
I'd like your thoughts on this, as I'm an amateur, and would like to hear some feedback.
Cheers
I've been mulling over a theory lately, could it be that Islam has it's origins what would now be considered Syria/Lebanon?
This piqued my interest when I had heard of historians discussing other possible areas for Mecca (which is refered to as both Makkah and Bakkah in the Quran), as the traditional site Isn't suitable for agriculture, but an area with the same name is (which is ultimately what got my brain ticking).
Within the Beqaa valley in Lebanon, A place called Bakka seemed reasonable, this area was also mentioned in the bible (psalm 84:6) as הַ֭בָּכָא. A lot of early islamic history has it's place in Syria, with an unusually silent bunch of Christian and Jewish historians on the word "Islam", plenty of stuff about the Saracens, and the Hagarenes, and some references to Mamed (Mohammed) never too much on something specifically called Islam, not until later (around the period after Abd al Malik).
I would expect someone like John of Damascus (who was a supposed chief administrator for a caliph) to mention something about the word Islam, but he doesn't (at least nothing that I'm aware of, please correct me if I'm wrong) . In conjunction, I've tried tying together the other areas to see if it would fit, and it seemed to. Iram of the pillars (Iram is mentioned as a son of Edom in the bible [A region that would refer to modern day Jordan] Possibly as Wadi Rum), and among other areas.
I can't really find much on Yathrib (apparently called Iatribu in the Nabonidus chronicle, and Iathrippa by Ptolemy, but this may not be accurate)
So that's basically it, I consider the Mecca of the Quran, as traditionally located in Saudi Arabia untenable in light of geographic evidence, and suggest a fertile area of the same name in the Levant, among other bits of evidence. This post was more a jumbled mess of ideas, than a thesis of some kind, which I thought I'd put out there for an interesting discussion.
I'd like your thoughts on this, as I'm an amateur, and would like to hear some feedback.
Cheers
