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Rating: 
Summary: An Excellent Resource
Review: Hoyland provides an invaluable resource for student of early islam. Cataloguing and summarising all the early non-Muslim sources referring to Islam, he has created a text that not only lists hard-to-find references, but lucidly summarises them as well.
Rating: 
Summary: Truth is the first Victim
Review: The book is quick on conclusions. It avoids any analysis of archeological finds that do not accord with such conclusions. The fact of the matter is that much evidence support the 'traditional' story of Islam, in particular in the Fertile Crescent where archeological finds have not contradicted the 'traditional' story.The fact that no such digs where ever conducted in the birthplace of the entire movement is regrettable. Incidently, Mecca should prove a veritabley exciting site, given the fact that it had been on a trade route for probably hundred of years before Mohammed's time. The search for answers to these questions, without theological or (much worse) political motives seems hard to expect in the present time. As usual, "Truth is the first victim" of the current tragic events.
Rating:
Summary: Read the book, please!
Review: Two of the reviews posted here suggest that the we might title them "Seeing 'Seeing Islam. . .' as Others Saw it." The New York reader's propoganda for Hagarism and other far-fetched perspectives is explicitly taken on and refuted in Hoyland's Chapter 13. Chapter 14 begins, saying "... it is a strong argument in favor of [Muslim witnesses] that they do frequently coincide with what is said by [non-Muslim witnesses]."
This book is mostly a sober, almost 19th-century style translated collection of all the sources refering to Muslims and Islam in the first (roughly) two centuries of Islam. These sources are organized (a bit frustratingly for this reader) by the language of their origin (rather than chronologically). Execurses collect early Muslim sources, and various chapters meticulously discuss the sources, how they can be used, and other methodological issues. The author then carefully, soberly, and very persuasively draws conclusions about the original Muslim self-identity, the cultus, the nature of the early community's religiosity (or religiosities) etc. It is a tour de force work, invaluable for those interested in Early Islam and it puts paid to speculative, thinly evidenced, and frankly hostile works like that of Nevo and Koren. It's a pity that it is so difficult to find, however.
Rating:
Summary: Introduction to the "other" history!
Review: When Patricia Crone wrote her outstanding book ( and sad enough it is out of print at present): "Hagarism", she was able to challenge the Islamic tradition's monopoly on our understanding of Islam and its early history. She followed the path set by John Wansbrough who convinced us that the whole Islamic tradition ( the sira, the Hadith, the Maghazi etc..) was late and tendentious; it was nothing but salvation history and much of it is pious fiction; that Islam is a complex phenomenon; and that religions do not spring out of the heads of prophets just like that. Crone did the unthinkable, she used the tetimony of, as the late Suliman Bashear called them: The others!, the Syriac sources, the Coptic sources etc...that have been long neglected by historians who felt more at ease by believing the Islamic tradition's view of its own history. Everyone rushed to check her references, including reading the writings available by "infidels", AKA non-Muslims that witnessed the invasion by al-Muhajirun, later to be known as, yes you guessed it: Arabs/Mulims, of their homelands in the Middle East. Some of these references are very hard to find. This book provides us with access to these writings, and this is indeed a great task. As much as Patricia Crone follows a long and distinguished line of scholars of Islam that radically changed our understanding of Islam and its history, and this list includes: Ignaz Goldziher, Joseph Schacht, Henri Lammens, the great John Wansbrough, Micheal Cook, Yehuda Nevo..I'm sure I missed a few names. One should not be naive enough, as John Wansbrough have noted in his review of her book, and blindely believe the sources of the "others", because they can be just as tainted as Muslim sources. Therefore, these sources can help us in understanding "what really happened" only to a certain degree. The reader will be surprised that : 1. Those invaders called themselves: Al-Muhajirun, and not Arabs or Muslims for this matter, and continued to be called so until the first quarter of the 8th. century. 2. The name of Muhhamad does not appear until 72 A.H. 3. The Quran does not appear until appear until the turn of the 8th. century, and only as logia and pericopes, and not the whole text. Which makes one wonder that the whole story about the 'Uthmanic recension of the Quran is nothing but late pious fraud. 4. The "infidels" seemed to be aware that a significant event took place in 622 C.E, but no one seemed to be aware of what it was, and not even the early Muslim sources themselves. But wait a minute...do not assume that it is the year of Muhammad's so called hijra. So what is it? Well, read this book. This is the great fun about reading this book. It will shatter some of your believes. If you like this book, I would urge you to read the late Suliman Bashear's book: " Introduction to the other history."
Rating:
Summary: Introduction to the "other" history!
Review: When Patricia Crone wrote her outstanding book ( and sad enough it is out of print at present): "Hagarism", she was able to challenge the Islamic tradition's monopoly on our understanding of Islam and its early history. She followed the path set by John Wansbrough who convinced us that the whole Islamic tradition ( the sira, the Hadith, the Maghazi etc..) was late and tendentious; it was nothing but salvation history and much of it is pious fiction; that Islam is a complex phenomenon; and that religions do not spring out of the heads of prophets just like that. Crone did the unthinkable, she used the tetimony of, as the late Suliman Bashear called them: The others!, the Syriac sources, the Coptic sources etc...that have been long neglected by historians who felt more at ease by believing the Islamic tradition's view of its own history. Everyone rushed to check her references, including reading the writings available by "infidels", AKA non-Muslims that witnessed the invasion by al-Muhajirun, later to be known as, yes you guessed it: Arabs/Mulims, of their homelands in the Middle East. Some of these references are very hard to find. This book provides us with access to these writings, and this is indeed a great task. As much as Patricia Crone follows a long and distinguished line of scholars of Islam that radically changed our understanding of Islam and its history, and this list includes: Ignaz Goldziher, Joseph Schacht, Henri Lammens, the great John Wansbrough, Micheal Cook, Yehuda Nevo..I'm sure I missed a few names. One should not be naive enough, as John Wansbrough have noted in his review of her book, and blindely believe the sources of the "others", because they can be just as tainted as Muslim sources. Therefore, these sources can help us in understanding "what really happened" only to a certain degree. The reader will be surprised that : 1. Those invaders called themselves: Al-Muhajirun, and not Arabs or Muslims for this matter, and continued to be called so until the first quarter of the 8th. century. 2. The name of Muhhamad does not appear until 72 A.H. 3. The Quran does not appear until appear until the turn of the 8th. century, and only as logia and pericopes, and not the whole text. Which makes one wonder that the whole story about the 'Uthmanic recension of the Quran is nothing but late pious fraud. 4. The "infidels" seemed to be aware that a significant event took place in 622 C.E, but no one seemed to be aware of what it was, and not even the early Muslim sources themselves. But wait a minute...do not assume that it is the year of Muhammad's so called hijra. So what is it? Well, read this book. This is the great fun about reading this book. It will shatter some of your believes. If you like this book, I would urge you to read the late Suliman Bashear's book: " Introduction to the other history."
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