Prophet Muhammad

Matt Lewis is joined by Dr. John Tolan to explore the profound impact of the appearance of the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century. Who was he? And what were the events that attended the birth of a new religion and a new empire? Together Matt and Dr Tolan explore the life of Muhammad, his revelations, and the enduring legacy of the Islamic faith. More Ibn Fadlan: An Arab Among Vikings https://open.spotify.com/episode/1X4N8QhHQuOFObGmBZ3M5Q Medieval Jerusalem https://open.spotify.com/episode/3g3JTtYt3iIJ68fovcg22x Gone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis. It was edited by Amy Haddow, the producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds. Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK: https://uk.surveymonkey.com/r/6FFT7MK Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 2:27Matt Lewis?

  Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research, from the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the crusades. We cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots and murders, to find the stories, big and small, that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were with Gone Medieval.

• 3:09Matt Lewis?

  Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. In the 7th century, a leader emerged who would establish a new empire, but who would also begin a new religion. The Prophet Muhammad changed the religious landscape of the Near East in ways that have emanated around the world and have endured to this day. So, who was he? What do we know about his life? And just what did Muhammad believe he was doing when he began to preach his revelations from God? To help answer these questions and more, I'm joined by John Tolan, whose new book, Islam: A New History from Muhammad to the Present, chronicles the emergence and development of the Islamic faith.

• 3:55Matt Lewis?

  Welcome to Gone Medieval, John. It's fantastic to have you with us.

• 3:58Speaker 04

  Thank you, Matt.

• 3:59Matt Lewis?

  I'm very much looking forward to getting into this topic. When we think about Prophet Muhammad and trying to tell his story, what are the main source materials that we have to look at his early story?

• 4:12Speaker 04

  The main source materials we have are two. One, there's the Hadith, or the oral traditions, which were transmitted orally for the first couple of centuries in Islam, and were put down in writing mostly in the Abbasid period. So, in the early 9th century for us, so about two centuries after the death of Muhammad. And these were closely related with another source, also composed of orally transmitted material, and that's the Syerah, or Life of Muhammad. We have a version composed first by Ibn Is-hak.

• 4:48Speaker 04

  At the end of the 8th century, but we don't have his version. We have a version reworked by Ibn Hisham in the Abbasid period. So again, about 200 years after the death of Muhammad. And what Ibn Hisham has done is compile all sorts of traditions about Muhammad. And some of them are even contradictory. But he's said, well, you know, he prefers to record them all and give them to posterity. So that is the main source for the life of Muhammad, which of course is problematic because it's orally transmitted to someone who is quite clearly legendary. Some of it is quite clearly inspired by rivalry with Christians or Jews, et cetera.

• 5:32Speaker 04

  And it's in that way, it's a little similar to material about Jesus. I mean, what we have is the Gospels, which were written probably 40 to 70 years after Jesus's death, and are very partisan documents. So besides this material, the Hadith and the Sira, which are derived from the Hadith, we have, of course, the Quran, which is the earliest written document of Islam, and which was compiled, again, the specialists don't all agree, but probably within about a generation after Muhammad's death. And it no doubt reflects, at least in part, the revelations that Muhammad preached to the people around him.

• 6:12Speaker 04

  But unlike the Gospels, the Quran does not give a biography of Muhammad. The Gospels, of course, tell the story of Jesus's life, whereas the Quran was revealed by Muhammad to the people around him. So there was no need to give a narrative of Muhammad's life. But there are little bits and pieces of Muhammad's biography that can be gleaned from the Quran.

• 6:39Matt Lewis?

  I guess that makes it quite frustrating to try and piece together because you've got that earlier source material in the Quran, which doesn't give you as much detail as you would want. And then you've got detail, but that's spent a couple of centuries as an oral tradition and may well have morphed and changed. And as you say, some of it's contradictory. That must create problems for trying to piece together what we think is the true story of Muhammad's life.

• 7:04Speaker 04

  Absolutely. And we know very little about the basic facts of his life. There is even some disagreement about the date of his death, which is traditionally dated to 632, but some sources suggest that he was alive a few years after that. So there's a lot we don't know. And some historians have said it's really impossible to give a reliable biography of Muhammad.

• 7:31Matt Lewis?

  Okay, well, we're going to try. We're going to see how close we can get to some of this. I'm going to see if I can drag some of this out of you. How close can we get then to understanding about his background and upbringing? Do we know, for example, when and where Muhammad is born?

• 7:44Speaker 04

  So again, we have to rely on the Hadith. The traditional sources say that it's about 570 in Mecca. And that he was, again, the traditions say that he had been orphaned quite early on. His father died actually before he was born. There are stories about how his mother then later died and he was brought up by his uncle Abu Talib, who was part of the Quraysh, who were the tribe that were sort of the elite of the city of Mecca.

• 8:23Speaker 04

  He would have been a merchant alongside his uncle, helping out his uncle. Other sources suggest that he had been a sheep herder or goat herder. The two are both possible and not incompatible. And the legend has it that he then, when he was about 25, he was working for a widow named Khadijah.

• 8:47Speaker 04

  She then proposed marriage to him, so he became married at 25 to Khadijah, who is a rich, independent woman who is 40 years old, and lived with her until her death. And it's around between the years 619 and 621 that Khadijah dies, and then also his uncle Abu Talib dies. Now, one of the things we also have is a tradition of exegesis, of interpretation of the Quran, which, you know, starting again in the Abbasid period, so two centuries after Muhammad's death, has divided the Quran into revelations, Meccan and Medinan revelations.

• 9:30Speaker 04

  Because, of course, the big event that marks the first year of the Muslim calendar is the Hijra, or Hijra, when, literally, flight, when Muhammad and his companions left Mecca to go to Medina, to go to the town of Yathrim, which later became Madinat al-Nabi, literally, the city of the Prophet, and now we know as Medina. So as I said, the Quran has been divided by a specialist since the Abbasid period into two different periods of revelation. The Meccan period, between roughly 610 and 622,

• 10:12Speaker 04

  and the Medinan period, roughly 622 to 632. And if we look at the Meccan period, what we see is that Muhammad is a preacher who is revealing what he affirms are messages from God that later tradition attributes to Gabriel, the archangel Gabriel in Muslim tradition, reveals these Surahs to Muhammad, or chapters of the Quran to Muhammad, who then transmits them to those around him. And if you look at the Meccan Surahs, the message is very coherent. It's all about monotheism.

• 10:57Speaker 04

  You should worship only God. And you shouldn't worship anyone or anything next to God. That means not worshiping human representatives of God, not worshiping statues, not worshiping idols. The other message that we see in these Meccan Surahs is that the end is coming and you need to repent. You need to worship the only God. You need to show solidarity and sympathy, particularly with the weak and the poor. And to get into heaven, one needs to recognize God and follow his law. And there are a lot of echoes in these Surahs to earlier prophets, because the Quran doesn't affirm that Muhammad is bringing a new religion.

• 11:42Speaker 04

  But on the contrary, then he's a prophet in the tradition of earlier prophets, from Adam to Noah to David and Solomon to Jesus. All of these are prophets who all, according to the Quran, had the same message that Muhammad has. One of monotheism, worshiping only God. One of submission to God's will, which is what Islam means. And this was popular with some of Muhammad's contemporaries, but also provoked the hostility of the elite, the Quraysh elite in Mecca, because it was an implicit criticism of their wealth, of their power, of their traditional religion.

• 12:26Speaker 04

  So he faced criticism and persecution, and so did his followers. So some of his followers, according to tradition, went to Ethiopia, where they were received by the Christian king of Ethiopia, the Ethiopian king in Aksum. And then in 622. So Between the 619 and 621, his uncle Abu Talib, who also was sort of his protector, died. His wife Khadijah died. There were rumors that the Quresh wanted to kill Muhammad. So he left. Some of the sources suggested he had been expelled from Mecca, others that

• 13:06Speaker 04

  he fled fearing violence. But at any rate, he went to Yathrib or Medina, and there he had negotiated with the rulers of Medina to become the ruler. There had been two rival factions in the city of Medina. They both agreed to submit to Muhammad's rule. So now we get a very different situation, obviously, for Muhammad and his followers, where he's no longer part of a persecuted minority, but he's the leader of this new community.

• 13:41Matt Lewis?

  Fascinating. Just before we get into kind of Muhammad's career as a prophet, or life as a prophet, I wonder if we could just talk a little bit about, I'm curious, and maybe this is showing my ignorance, but I'm curious about what religion Muhammad might have considered himself to have been raised in. You know, he seems very aware, or the Quran seems very aware of Jewish and Christian teachings, talks about Jews and Christians being people of the book. What would Muhammad have considered his religion to be before he became a prophet?

• 14:13Speaker 04

  That's an interesting question. It's hard to answer. Clearly, at this point in the Quran, you find the word Islam, literally submission or accepting God's will. But there's no sense in which this word Islam corresponds to a religion per se. He sees himself, and the one word that appears much more often than the word Islam or Muslim is the word believer. And this is the historian Fred Donner at the University of Chicago has a book, Muhammad and the Believers, where he sees Muhammad as basically in continuity,

• 14:56Speaker 04

  as the Quran again presents him, as in continuity with the earlier messengers who we consider Jewish and Christian. And he sees himself as a believer.

• 15:07Speaker 04

  So I don't think he would have said, "I'm Jewish," or "I'm Christian," certainly. He wouldn't have said, "I'm Muslim," either. But he saw himself as a true believer and as a messenger from God. And as you said, the Quran is striking not only how much the Quran integrates of stories from the Bible, both from the Torah and from the Christian, the Gospels. What is also interesting is how the Quran often alludes to these stories of the prophets, whether it's Noah or Abraham. And there's no passage in the Quran that narrates the whole story of Noah or of Abraham.

• 15:50Speaker 04

  But the Quran alludes to these figures as if the people listening to Muhammad were already familiar with these stories. There's no need to tell the whole story of Noah, but to allude to it in order to say, "Look, Noah's people rejected him. What happens? They got the flood. Now Muhammad's people are rejecting him. Watch out, because God is going to punish them too." So there's a lot of this brief allusion to the stories of the prophets of the past and the stories from the Bible. So clearly, the people that Muhammad is talking to were familiar with these stories.

• 16:26Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, it's interesting, the knowledge that they're assuming. They're assuming that people already know all of these things. So you only have to mention Noah, and people already know the story, which implies that they're very familiar with those teachings of the Jewish tradition.

• 16:37Speaker 04

  That's right, which calls into question, because often, according to Muslim traditional sources, the Arabs in Mecca at the time of Muhammad were pagans who worshiped pagan idols. But there is little archaeological evidence of that. And there's also this familiarity with the Bible will suggest, not necessarily that everyone is Jewish or Christian, but at least that they're imbued with this knowledge of these traditions.

• 17:08Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, fascinating. And so, kind of when does Muhammad begin to receive the word of God? How does this take place?

• 17:17Speaker 04

  So again, here we have to look to the Hadith and the Sira for this. And the story is that it's around the year 610, he's about 40 years old. He's been a successful merchant. He's been married to Khadijah for about 15 years. And he starts to take these sort of spiritual retreats where he goes to this cave called Hira near Mecca, and he meditates and he prays. And it's at this point that he receives a visit from the archangel Gabriel. And the story is that Gabriel puts his

• 17:56Speaker 04

  arm around him and squeezes him and says, "Ikra," recite, or which can be translated as recite or read. And he says, "I don't know how to read." And Gabriel then squeezes him again, and tighter, so he thinks he's going to die. And he says, "Read." And then finally, he says, "Read," you know, this gives the first revelation, which is now in Surah 97, I think. And it's the first revelation is then so given by Gabriel in this cave. Muhammad is confused, he's sweating, he doesn't know what to do. He goes back home. His wife Khadijah puts a blanket around him. He says, "You know, I had this experience. I don't know what to think. I don't know if it's the devil or if

• 18:41Speaker 04

  it's a message from God." And she convinces, says, "You're a good man. You give honour to people. You're generous to the poor. God would not fool you. So this must be a message from God." And so she convinces him that this is a real message. So she becomes the first Muslim, according to tradition. So this is how it starts. And then there are a series of revelations throughout this Mecca period. And then, as I said, it's the Medina period.

• 19:10Matt Lewis?

  And how does Muhammad respond to those? Presumably, he begins to preach his revelations to people. He begins to share his revelations with people?

• 19:19Speaker 04

  Yes. Yes, and the story is that he first shares it with Khadijah and other close members of his family, and then gets revelations, you know, telling him that he has to, you know, he's sort of afraid to be, go public with these. And then he gets revelations on the, yeah, he's, he's has to go public with this. And he has to preach to a wider audience. So he preaches and, and again, the stories are that he gets a bigger following, but he also provokes hostility of some of the Meccan elites.

• 19:51Matt Lewis?

  And do we get a sense at this early stage of what Mohammed perhaps believed he was doing? It sounds like he didn't necessarily think he was starting a new religion, you know, hindsight will tell us he's creating a, a new religion ultimately. But it sounds like he would have believed himself to be continuing the work of others around reinforcing monotheism in the region.

• 20:11Speaker 04

  Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, there's no sense that he thought of himself as creating a new religion. And when you look at the difference, you know, as I mentioned, there's the Meccan and the Medinan revelations. If you look at the Medinan revelations, you have continuity with the Meccan ones because there's still the spiritual message, the idea that you need to be generous to the poor, that you need to worship only God and so forth. But there's a new element because now, as I said, Mohammed is the leader of this city, of this community. And so there are legislative elements. There are rules

• 20:49Speaker 04

  about a marriage, about divorce, about inheritance, about how to treat slaves, about battle and booty and so forth. So these Medinan revolutions show how this community around Mohammed in Medina is organizing.

• 21:11Matt Lewis?

  It sounds very much like he becomes a political and a military and a religious leader sort of all at once. Is it fair to see him wearing those three different roles?

• 21:21Speaker 04

  Yes, yes. So yeah, he's, he's very much in the, you know, the Muslim tradition sees no contradiction between these, these roles, which are seen as complementary.

• 21:32Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah. And I guess that plays in with older Testament prophets and things like that who tended to be political leaders as well, but is slightly in contrast with Jesus, who very much sets himself aside from the political military leadership role, whereas Muhammad is willing to step into that.

• 21:47Speaker 04

  That's right, that's right. And this is a point of criticism of many Christians, from the earliest times until today, is that there's such a difference between the two, and Jesus' rejection of the political role and the rejection of the world, very different from Muhammad. But one of the things, and to get back to how he thought his relations between with Christians and Jews, there are a number of passages of the Quran that deal with Jews and Christians, and there's some ambiguity, let's say. I mean, in some points,

• 22:29Speaker 04

  he's presenting Jews and Christians as models for the Meccans. You should do what they do. You should worship only God. He presents the great figures of Judaism and Christianity as prophets, and very much, as I said, he's in continuity with these prophets. But there are other passages in which he criticizes Jews for not believing their prophets, for killing their prophets. He criticizes Christians for worshiping Jesus, who for the Quran is only a prophet and only a holy human, born miraculously from the Virgin Mary, but not the Son of God, not God. And so Christians are wrong to preach the Trinity, they're

• 23:13Speaker 04

  wrong to worship Jesus as if he were God. So there are criticisms of Judaism and Christianity, at the same time, an acknowledgement of the essential truths, as the Quran sees it, of Judaism and Christianity. But the idea is that Muhammad is in continuity of these traditions. And one of the figures who's most frequently mentioned in the Quran is Abraham. And the Quran affirms that Abraham was not Christian, he was not Jewish, he was what's called a Hanif, a pure monotheist. And both the Jews and the Christians tried to claim Abraham, but he was neither a Jew nor a Christian, according to the Quran.

• 24:08Speaker 05

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• 26:34Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah. And how does Muhammad's military career take off? Because he gets involved in quite a few battles, doesn't he during this period?

• 26:43Speaker 04

  That's right. The Sinian Medina is attacked by Mecca on several occasions. And the Medina is attacked. Now Medina is north of Mecca. So when caravans went from Mecca north into Syria, they were easy targets for Medina's to go and raid and attack. So there are a series of battles between the Meccans and Medina's, one of which the Medina's lose and the others of which they win. So he quickly becomes a war leader. There are expeditions against other towns and other tribes in Arabia. And by the year 630, so eight years after the Hijra,

• 27:27Speaker 04

  Muhammad has become the dominant power in the Arabian Peninsula. And that's when they marched towards Mecca and Mecca surrenders. And Muhammad and his army can enter into Mecca and take control of the city. And according to legend, that's when they destroy the idols at the Kaaba and return the Kaaba to monotheism.

• 27:51Matt Lewis?

  And I guess that military and political success must have helped to reinforce Muhammad's preaching as well. You know, he's not just a preacher with a voice. He's also a serious political leader and a major military leader in the region too. That must have helped to embed his religious teachings as well.

• 28:10Speaker 04

  That's right, because we see in the Quran and we see in other early Muslim writings, the idea that the victories are signs that God is on the Muslim side. And so his role as successful military and political leader reinforces his status as prophet.

• 28:30Matt Lewis?

  And where is Muhammad at as we get closer to the time of his death? What kind of a political and military force is he in the region? And how far are we progressing towards something that we might recognise as Islam today by the early 630s?

• 28:46Speaker 04

  By the early 630s, he dominates much of the Arabian Peninsula. There are conflicting stories saying that during Muhammad's lifetime, he may have already started raiding north into Syria, but probably that only took place after his death. But one of the things that's interesting is there's no sense that Muhammad actually sought to imagine further conquests beyond the Arabian Peninsula. And indeed, there's no sense that he had clearly thought about the future beyond his life. And one of the hypotheses that a certain number of historians have put forward is

• 29:30Speaker 04

  that Muhammad was a prophet of the last times. In other words, you see in the Quran, a lot of references to the end of the world, which is coming soon. And this is both a hope and a threat, a threat for those who are on the wrong side of history, so to speak, who don't follow Muhammad and don't embrace monotheism, but a hope for those who do follow Muhammad, that a better world is upon us. And so the same hypothesis had been made about Jesus too, that Jesus predicted the end was near.

• 30:11Speaker 04

  And again, there are a number of passages in the Gospels and in other parts of the New Testament where the feeling is the end of time is near and it's probably going to happen during this generation. And of course, then it doesn't happen. So what do you do? You reinterpret. And one of the reasons that people think that this may be true about Muhammad is why he doesn't seem to have planned his succession after his death, which created conflict. Now, again, there are conflicting traditions. Some say, and particularly the Shiites, firm that it was Ali, who was both his cousin and his son-in-law, who was supposed to become leader after Muhammad's death.

• 30:56Speaker 04

  And that Ali was pushed aside by Abu Bakr, who became the first caliph, and by Umar, who became caliph after him. And the story is, one of the stories you find in the Hadith is that when Muhammad died, people were... Consternated and Umar, the future caliph, refused to believe that Muhammad had died. He said, "No, that's not possible. And if any one of you says that Muhammad has died, I'll run you through with my sword." And then Abu Bakr retorted, saying, "No, Muhammad has died. Muhammad is dead, but God, whom he preached, is still alive. So we need to

• 31:39Speaker 04

  follow God." If Umar and others wouldn't believe that Muhammad had died, it's perhaps because they expected, and perhaps Muhammad himself expected, that the world would come to an end while he was still alive. And that may be true for Jesus and his followers as well. And then, of course, one readjusts when that doesn't happen.

• 32:01Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. What do we know about the circumstances of Muhammad's death? You mentioned earlier that there's a little bit of doubt about precisely when he dies. Some sources suggesting he was alive after the traditional date that's given for his death. But do we know, so presumably by this point, he's around about 60. Do we know the circumstances of his death?

• 32:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, the traditional date is 632, so he would have been about 60, 62. He becomes ill. It's not clear what the illness is, but he realizes he's going to die. He's in the house of his wife Aisha, and he dies with his head on her lap. And what's curious is that he's not buried right away. It's a few days. His body is left in Aisha's room, on Aisha's bed, for several days while there's an argument over who succeeds him. And then finally, several days later, he's buried. And there's an argument about how

• 33:02Speaker 04

  and where to bury him. And Abu Bakr affirms that the tradition is that prophets should be buried on the spot where they die. So they move aside Aisha's bed, and they dig a grave right there where her bed had been. And that's where he is buried until this day.

• 33:21Matt Lewis?

  Fascinating. I thought when you said he was left there for several days that this was going to be out of concern that he might not really be dead, or that he might return in a similar way that Jesus had, but maybe it's not that?

• 33:31Speaker 04

  It could be that. There are some, again, these Hadith or oral traditions are varied and contradictory, and there are several that suggested that some people thought he wasn't dead, or that he was dead and he would resurrect the way Jesus had. And those sources suggest that it was because they realised after three days that he was not going to rise, that they then buried him.

• 33:58Matt Lewis?

  And so I guess at this point, Muhammad's death is significant in a number of ways, because he is the leading political figure on the Arabian Peninsula. He's a significant military figure, and he is also considered to be a prophet. So kind of, all of those things disappearing at once must have created political instability in the region. And it sounds like there was a bit of squabbling over what should come next. What does that mean for early Islam, that kind of fight over who should succeed Muhammad?

• 34:24Speaker 04

  In the immediate case, Ali finally accepted, some of Ali's followers were very unhappy about this, but Ali finally accepted to recognise Abu Bakr as caliph, because he didn't want to divide the Muslims. There were rebellions, because some of the Arab tribes who had allied themselves with Muhammad, considered that at his death, there was no need to continue their allegiance. So Abu Bakr, according to tradition, had several expeditions to force people back into allegiance. And then it's during the caliphate of Abu Bakr, which is

• 35:03Speaker 04

  very short, just 632 to 634, and then in particular, under the leadership of Umar, who becomes caliph after him, that there's an expansion into north, into parts of what's now, at the time is the Roman Byzantine Empire, particularly in what's now Syria, and also into the Persian Empire. And then suddenly, within 10, 20 years after the death of the prophet, his successors are governing a huge empire.

• 35:54Speaker 06

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• 36:28Speaker 02

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• 37:16Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. And when do we see the developments of the Sunni Shia split in Islam? How does that come about?

• 37:23Speaker 04

  So that comes about in the... So you have this tremendous expansion under Umar. And then, under his successor, the third caliph, Uthman, there's division among the Muslims. Uthman is unpopular. He promotes his members of his own family and clan to important positions. And there's revolt of soldiers, particularly in Egypt, who then come to Medina and kill Uthman.

• 37:56Speaker 04

  And then there's a, after Uthman's death, there's a council that meets and elects Ali as his successor. But not everyone accepts Ali because some suspect him of having been behind Uthman's death and behind this rebellion. So there's a civil war, what Muslim tradition is called the first Fitnah. And it pitches Ali against other members of the elites, in particular against Aisha, one of Muhammad's wives, who leads the opponents of Ali into battle, defeated at what's called the Battle of the Camel.

• 38:36Speaker 04

  So this creates a split, which you can't yet, at this point, talk about Shiism as a distinct form of Islam. But that's the sort of the beginning and the basis of the split. Because after Ali's defeat and death, so Ali is, becomes caliph, is originally victorious, and then he's assassinated. And after his death, there's a new civil war that brings the beginning of the Umayyad dynasty, where Muawiyah, who was a cousin of the former caliph Uthman and had been governor

• 39:16Speaker 04

  of Damascus, wins against the successors of Ali and establishes the Umayyad dynasty. This Umayyad dynasty, based in Syria, capital of Damascus, was never recognized by the followers of Ali, who put forward two of Ali's sons and then affirmed that only a descendant of Ali and Fatima, Ali was married to Muhammad's daughter Fatima, only descendants of Ali and Fatima could be legitimately imams or caliphs.

• 39:56Speaker 04

  So this eventually created this split based on political difference, but one also based on traumatic events in this series of civil wars. And in particular, when Ali's and Fatima's son, Hussain, was slain by the Umayyads in the Battle of Karbala in 680. Hussain was considered a martyr. And his tomb at Karbala is still considered by many the holiest site of Shiism.

• 40:30Matt Lewis?

  Throughout all of these civil wars, political struggles that are going on, dynastic concerns, empire building still, how does Islam develop? How does it become a separate religion, given that Muhammad, it sounds like he hadn't intended it to become something of its own religion. It was meant to be a continuation of monotheism. How does it break away and become something separate?

• 40:53Speaker 04

  So it's really during the Umayyad period that Islam becomes a separate religion per se, and in a way, an imperial religion. Because, of course, we have to remember when we talk about the world of Islam in this period, the Umayyad period, and then the Abbasid period. Muslims are a small ruling minority amongst a majority of Christians, Zoroastrians in the former Persian Empire, of Jews and others. Islam becomes a way to justify the superiority of Islam over other religions, becomes a justification for the rule of this elite minority of Muslims over this huge empire.

• 41:38Speaker 04

  So we see this notably during the reign of Abdul Malik, who's caliph, Umayyad caliph, between 685 and 715. He is, among other things, he issues new coinage. Earlier caliphs had reissued traditional Byzantine and Persian coins, often with the images of Byzantine or Persian emperors. He reissued coins that had no images, but only text that affirmed that there was only one God and that Muhammad was the prophet of God. We see also, he's the one who had the Dome of the Rock built in Jerusalem.

• 42:20Speaker 04

  And in the Dome of the Rock, which is on the site of the former Jewish temple, so it's a real statement that we, the Muslims, are now the inheritors of this whole... Jewish tradition of the Jewish kings. And it's also in the inscriptions on the interior of the Dome of the Rock. There are passages from the Quran and particularly the anti-Christian passages that I mentioned earlier, where Jesus affirms that he never claimed to be God or the son of God. And there are passages against the Trinity. So this is a way of symbolically saying that we Muslims are the real successors to the Jewish

• 43:05Speaker 04

  kings and to Jesus, and the Christians and the Jews don't really follow them. The Christians and the Jews, at the same time, Muslim law is developing. And there's this idea of a distinct legal status where Jews and Christians are vimis, literally protected, which means that they are free to practice their religion, to have their synagogues and churches, to have a certain legal autonomy. But they are inferior legally and socially to Muslims. So all of this emerges during the Umayyad period. So gradually, we see emerge what we now recognize as traits of a Muslim society and Muslim religion.

• 43:48Matt Lewis?

  And so it sounds like that separation of Islam from the other monotheistic religions is almost more of a political move rather than a religious one at that point.

• 43:59Speaker 04

  Yes, yes, the two are very intertwined for Muslims at the time as they had been for Christians. Of course, the Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire was closely associated with Christianity. So it was normal to use religion as a justification for empire.

• 44:19Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah. And I wondered if you could just talk us through a little bit about how perceptions of Muhammad have changed over the centuries since his life. Do we think about him differently today than he was thought about in the seventh, eighth, ninth centuries?

• 44:34Speaker 04

  Yes, certainly. And when we say "we" think of him, it depends on who the "we" concerned is. Obviously, for Muslims, the Quran is very clear that Muhammad is only a man. He's human with his weaknesses. But over the centuries, it develops a sort of a cult of Muhammad, who is seen as a perfect model, that one should model one's own behavior, and even one's dress and so forth, on what Muhammad had done. So there are all sorts of traditions and legends about, you know, how Muhammad brushed his teeth, how he prayed, how he slept, etc. And some people consider him a model.

• 45:18Speaker 04

  And other Muslims have criticized what they see as almost a worshiping of the Prophet alongside God, which is, of course, exactly what Muhammad preached against. If you look at how non-Muslims perceived Muhammad, that also develops over time. Early on, many of the Christians, for example, had differing views about Muhammad. Some saw him as a reformer and the prophet of the Arabs, and were quite respectful towards him. Particularly, the Christians who had been persecuted under Byzantine rule, the non-Orthodox Christians, in other words,

• 46:03Speaker 04

  people who didn't have the same doctrines concerning Jesus, concerning the Trinity, as did the Byzantine emperors and who had been persecuted under the Byzantine Church, saw the arrival of Islam as a sort of liberation and a just punishment of the Byzantine oppressors. So they had a more positive image of Muhammad, at least at the beginning. Then, as I said, in the early centuries, throughout the Umayyad and Abbasid periods, so really into the 12th or 13th centuries, for most of that time, Christians were much more numerous than Muslims. But little by little, more Christians converted to Islam,

• 46:48Speaker 04

  and this, of course, worried church leaders. So then, some of them started writing polemics against Islam for their parishioners, saying, "No, no, you don't want to convert to this religion." And... In order to convince them, they would paint a negative image of Islam and a negative image of the Prophet Muhammad. And so this negative image of Muhammad as a false reformer, false prophet, sometimes a heretic, was transmitted throughout these Christian communities under Islam and then became popular in Europe during the Middle Ages, where Islam was seen as a dangerous rival and was denounced as a heresy.

• 47:30Matt Lewis?

  I mean, it's been fascinating to try, I mean, try to get a little bit closer to who the Prophet Muhammad was, but it sounds like, you know, we don't know all that much about him because the stories that we have are more about his revelations from God than they are about him. And maybe we shouldn't expect anything different from someone in that position. But it's interesting to consider, I think, what he might have thought he was doing during his lifetime and what has actually happened subsequently, because it sounds like he wasn't trying to set up this whole new separate religion that would further divide monotheism. He was trying to draw it even closer together. But in some ways, what's happened is a new separate form of monotheism that's sort of divided the monotheistic faiths.

• 48:14Speaker 04

  Well, that's right. And of course, if you look at the three monotheisms, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, they have a lot in common. You know, people sometimes talk about the Abrahamic faiths because they all trace their ancestry back to Abraham. But one of the things they have in common is, paradoxically, their divisions and the divisions among Jews and there are different groups among Jews throughout history. And of course, the divisions among Christians that, you know, I just mentioned. And then in Islam, there are divisions between Sunitis and Shiites. And then within each of those branches, there are also conflicts and divisions.

• 48:56Speaker 04

  There's a certain unity of monotheism, but there are also divisions as part of that tradition.

• 49:02Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining us, John. It's been fascinating to try and understand Muhammad's life a little bit better and I guess frustrating that we don't know a little bit more about him. But it's been wonderful to try and understand exactly what we do know and to look at the impact that he's had over the centuries since his life. So thank you very much for joining us.

• 49:21Speaker 04

  Thank you, Matt.

• 49:23Matt Lewis?

  Thank you, John. John's new book, Islam: A New History from Mohammed to the Present, is out now if you'd like to explore this topic further. There are new installments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please come back to join Eleanor and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've Gone Medieval. You can sign up to History Hit to access hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week and all of History Hit's podcasts ad-free. Head over to historyhit.com/subscribe. Go on, you know you want to. Anyway, I'd better let you go.

• 50:06Matt Lewis?

  I've been Matt Lewis and we've just Gone Medieval with History Hit.

• 50:28Speaker 05

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