Christmas in the Qur
-
¯an 13
Muh
.
ammad did not live to lead the conquest of Palestine (at least according to
the traditional Muslim accounts), the traditions of the Kathisma church could
only have impacted the Qur
-
¯anic text well after Muh
.
ammad had already died.
This presents us with a very high probability that in at least this one instance
the text of the Qur
-
¯an is not Muh
.
ammad’s, but rather a later product of his
followers who drew on prior Christian traditions in composing the Qur
-
¯anic
account of Jesus’ birth. I would argue that this new evidence op e ns the door
significantly to the views of Wansbrough and his followers, many of whom have
identified similar evidence of the Qur
-
¯an’s composition in the Levant after the
death of Muh
.
ammad.
Similarly, the Qur
-
¯an’s dependence on these local, Jerusalemite traditions
adds additional weight to revisionist arguments against the origin of Islam in
the H
.
ij¯az. As many scholars have demonstrated, but perhaps none more con-
vincingly than Patricia Crone, the traditional Islamic narrative of H
.
ij¯azi origins
is both late and problematic from a historical point of view.
2
Moreover, various
peculiarities of formative Islam that have somehow escaped the censorship of
the later tradition’s “H
.
ij¯az¯ı nostalgia” point to the beginnings of Islam some-
where in the Levant, and more specifically in the southern deserts of Palestine
and Roman Arabia.
3
In addition, the archaeological record of southern Pales-
tine fits more with the traditions of early Islam than does the H
.
ij¯az.
4
Although
Early Codification of the Qur
-
¯an,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 118 (1998): 1–
14. Her arguments are not convincing: Ibn Warraq rather easily dismisses them in Ibn Warraq,
“Studies on Muh
.
ammad,” pp. 72–73. In response to the challenge to Wansbrough raised in
C. H. M. Versteegh, Arabic Grammar and Quranic Exegesis in Early Islam (Leiden: E. J.
Brill, 1993), see Andrew Rippin, “Studying Early Tafsir Texts,” Der Islam 72 (1996): 310–23;
and Andrew Rippin, “Qur
-
¯anic Studies, Part IV: Some Methodological Notes,” Method and
Theory in the Study of Religion 9 (1997): 39–46 . Regarding to the later composition of the
Qur
-
¯an, see also the early but important article, Alphonse Mingana, “The Transmission of
the Koran,” The Muslim World 7 (1917): 223–32; 402-14 and Patricia Crone, “Two Legal
Problems Bearing on the Early History of the Qur
-
¯an,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam
18 (1994): 1–37.
2
Patricia Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1987), esp. pp. 203–30.
3
Of the various studies, see in particular Wansbrough, Sectarian Milieu, esp. pp. 45, 138–
46 (although Wansbrough favors Mesop otam ia over Syro-Palestine); Patricia Crone and M.
A. Cook, Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1977), pp. 21–26; G. R. Hawting, “The Origins of the Muslim Sanctuary at Mecca,”
in Studies on the First Century of Islamic Society, G. H. A. Juynboll, ed. (Carbondale:
Southern Illinois University Press, 1982), pp. 23–47; G. R. Hawting, The Idea of Idolatry and
the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to History, Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization
(Cambridge: C ambridge University Press, 1999); G. R. Hawting, “John Wansbrough, Islam,
and Monotheism,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 9 (1997): 23–38; Herbert Berg,
“The Implications of, and Opposition to, the Methods and Theories of John Wansbrough,”
Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 9 (1997): 3–22; Moshe Sharon, “The Birth
of Islam in the Holy Land,” in Pillars of Smoke and Fire: The Holy Land in History and
Thought, Moshe Sha ron, ed. (Johannesburg: Southern Book Publishers, 1988), pp. 225–
35; Suliman Bashear, “Qur
-
¯an 2:114 and Jerusalem,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and
African Studies 52 (1989): 215–38; Judith Koren and Yehuda D. Nevo, “Methodological
Approaches to Islamic Studies,” Der Islam 68 (1991): 97–107.
4
See especially Yehuda D. Nevo and Judith Koren, “The Origins of the Muslim Descrip-
tions of the J¯ahil¯ı Meccan Sanctuary,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 49 (1990): 23–44;