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Historical Errors in the Quran: Difference between revisions
→The Battle of Badr: Added some more academic notes on the issues with traditions relating to the battle of Badr.
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=== The Battle of Badr === | === The Battle of Badr === | ||
Muslim tradition expands upon vague mentions in the Quran to create an extremely important and detailed historical memory of the 'Battle of Badr', with 'Badr' being mentioned [https://corpus.quran.com/search.jsp?q=badr once by name] in the Quran ({{Quran|3|123}}): | Muslim tradition expands upon vague mentions in the Quran to create an extremely important and detailed historical memory of the 'Battle of Badr', with 'Badr' being mentioned [https://corpus.quran.com/search.jsp?q=badr once by name] in the Quran ({{Quran|3|123}}). | ||
{{Quote|{{Quran|3|123}}|Certainly Allah helped you at <b>Badr,</b> when you were weak [in the enemy’s eyes]. So be wary of Allah so that you may give thanks.}} | |||
According to Islamic Traditions: | |||
{{Quote|[https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Badr Battle of Badr. Islamic History. Britannica Entry]|Nearly two years after the Hijrah, in the middle of the month of Ramadan, a major raid was organized against a particularly wealthy caravan escorted by Abū Sufyān, head of the Umayyad clan of the Quraysh. According to the traditional accounts, when word of the caravan reached Muhammad, he arranged a raiding party of about 300, consisting of both muhājirūn and anṣār (Muhammad’s Medinese supporters), to be led by Muhammad himself. By filling the wells on the caravan route near Medina with sand, Muhammad’s army lured Abū Sufyān’s army into battle at Badr, near Medina. There the two parties clashed in traditional fashion: three men from each side were chosen to fight an initial skirmish, and then the armies charged toward one another for full combat. As his army charged forward, Muhammad threw a handful of dust, which flew into the eyes and noses of many of the opposing Meccans. Despite the superior numbers of the Meccan forces (about 1,000 men), Muhammad’s army scored a complete victory, and many prominent Meccans were killed.}} | {{Quote|[https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Badr Battle of Badr. Islamic History. Britannica Entry]|Nearly two years after the Hijrah, in the middle of the month of Ramadan, a major raid was organized against a particularly wealthy caravan escorted by Abū Sufyān, head of the Umayyad clan of the Quraysh. According to the traditional accounts, when word of the caravan reached Muhammad, he arranged a raiding party of about 300, consisting of both muhājirūn and anṣār (Muhammad’s Medinese supporters), to be led by Muhammad himself. By filling the wells on the caravan route near Medina with sand, Muhammad’s army lured Abū Sufyān’s army into battle at Badr, near Medina. There the two parties clashed in traditional fashion: three men from each side were chosen to fight an initial skirmish, and then the armies charged toward one another for full combat. As his army charged forward, Muhammad threw a handful of dust, which flew into the eyes and noses of many of the opposing Meccans. Despite the superior numbers of the Meccan forces (about 1,000 men), Muhammad’s army scored a complete victory, and many prominent Meccans were killed.}} | ||
Traditional exegetes commenting on this verse unanimously date the battle falling during Ramadan,<ref>''E.g. [https://quranx.com/Tafsir/Kathir/3.123 Tafsir Ibn Kathir Verse 3:123]''. Ibn Kathir d. 1373.</ref> and link it to other verses such as {{Quran|8|41}} (which it is not mentioned by name in). However, as British historian Tom Holland notes (''citation 50: refencing Crone (1987a), pp. 226–30: The papyrus fragment is Text 71 in Grohmann),'' an earlier (than the Islamic historians/exegetes) manuscript mentions the Battle of Badr, but does not lists a date in Ramadan, which raises questions on the traditional interpretation of these verses. | Traditional exegetes commenting on this verse unanimously date the battle falling during Ramadan,<ref>''E.g. [https://quranx.com/Tafsir/Kathir/3.123 Tafsir Ibn Kathir Verse 3:123]''. Ibn Kathir d. 1373.</ref> and link it to other verses such as {{Quran|8|41}} (which it is not mentioned by name in). However, as British historian Tom Holland notes (''citation 50: refencing Crone (1987a), pp. 226–30: The papyrus fragment is Text 71 in Grohmann),'' an earlier (than the Islamic historians/exegetes) manuscript mentions the Battle of Badr, but does not lists a date in Ramadan, which raises questions on the traditional interpretation of these verses. | ||
{{Quote|Holland, Tom. In The Shadow Of The Sword: The Battle for Global Empire and the End of the Ancient World (pp. 39-40). Little, Brown Book Group.|Why, when the savage Northumbrians were capable of preserving the writings of a scholar such as Bede, do we have no Muslim records from the age of Muhammad? Why not a single Arab account of his life, nor of his followers’ conquests, nor of the progress of his religion, from the whole of the near two centuries that followed his death? Even the sole exception to the rule – a tiny shred of papyrus discovered in Palestine and dated to around AD 740 – serves only to compound the puzzle. Reading it is like overhearing a game of Chinese whispers. Over the course of only eight lines, it provides something truly startling: <b>a date for the Battle of Badr that is not in the holy month of Ramadan.</b> 50 Why should this come as a surprise? Because later Muslim scholars, writing their learned and definitive commentaries on the Qur’an, confidently identified Badr with an otherwise cryptic allusion to ‘the day the two armies clashed’ – a date that fell in Ramadan.51 Perhaps, then, on this one point, the scholars were wrong? Perhaps. But if so, then why should they have been right in anything else that they wrote? What if the entire account of the victory at Badr were nothing but a fiction, a dramatic just-so story, fashioned to explain allusions within the Qur’an that would otherwise have remained beyond explanation?}} | {{Quote|Holland, Tom. In The Shadow Of The Sword: The Battle for Global Empire and the End of the Ancient World (pp. 39-40). Little, Brown Book Group.|Why, when the savage Northumbrians were capable of preserving the writings of a scholar such as Bede, do we have no Muslim records from the age of Muhammad? Why not a single Arab account of his life, nor of his followers’ conquests, nor of the progress of his religion, from the whole of the near two centuries that followed his death? Even the sole exception to the rule – a tiny shred of papyrus discovered in Palestine and dated to around AD 740 – serves only to compound the puzzle. Reading it is like overhearing a game of Chinese whispers. Over the course of only eight lines, it provides something truly startling: <b>a date for the Battle of Badr that is not in the holy month of Ramadan.</b> 50 Why should this come as a surprise? Because later Muslim scholars, writing their learned and definitive commentaries on the Qur’an, confidently identified Badr with an otherwise cryptic allusion to ‘the day the two armies clashed’ – a date that fell in Ramadan.51 Perhaps, then, on this one point, the scholars were wrong? Perhaps. But if so, then why should they have been right in anything else that they wrote? What if the entire account of the victory at Badr were nothing but a fiction, a dramatic just-so story, fashioned to explain allusions within the Qur’an that would otherwise have remained beyond explanation?}} | ||
Islamic Scholar Gerard Hawting also discusses these issues in his 2015 paper 'Qur’ān and sīra: the relationship between Sūrat al-Anfāl and muslim traditional accounts of the Battle of Badr'.<ref>Hawting, Gerald. “[https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvbtznq1.6 QUR’ĀN AND SĪRA: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SŪRAT AL-ANFĀL AND MUSLIM TRADITIONAL ACCOUNTS OF THE BATTLE OF BADR.]” In ''Les Origines Du Coran, Le Coran Des Origines'', edited by François Déroche, Christian Julien Robin, and Michel Zink, 75–92. Editions de Boccard, 2015. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvbtznq1.6</nowiki>.</ref> | Islamic Scholar Gerard Hawting also discusses these issues in his 2015 paper 'Qur’ān and sīra: the relationship between Sūrat al-Anfāl and muslim traditional accounts of the Battle of Badr'.<ref>Hawting, Gerald. “[https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvbtznq1.6 QUR’ĀN AND SĪRA: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SŪRAT AL-ANFĀL AND MUSLIM TRADITIONAL ACCOUNTS OF THE BATTLE OF BADR.]” In ''Les Origines Du Coran, Le Coran Des Origines'', edited by François Déroche, Christian Julien Robin, and Michel Zink, 75–92. Editions de Boccard, 2015. <nowiki>https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvbtznq1.6</nowiki>.</ref> | ||
Other scholars have noted parallels between the details from previous Judeo-Christians stories, e.g. Austrian orientalist Hans Mzik, notes the similarities in his 1915 paper 'The Gideon-Saul Legend and the Tradition of the Battle of Badr', which may have been used to shape the account, such as the number of fighters for Muhammad. | |||
{{Quote|<i>Original title: Hans Mzik, “Die Gideon-Saul-Legende und die überlieferung der Schlacht bei Badr. Ein Beitrag zur ältesten Geschichte des Islam, in WZKM 29 (1915): 371–83.</i> Quoted in Warraq, Ibn. Koranic Allusions: The Biblical, Qumranian, and Pre-Islamic Background to the Koran (pp 239 Hans von Mzik ). Prometheus.|The number of Muslims in the Battle of Badr in the year 2 AH as it is handed down in Arab tradition varies. The smallest figure of 300 is to be found in the poems attributed to amza, the largest emerges from Ibn Sa‘d, who puts the number of Muammad's Meccan fighters at 863 and those of the Medina fighters as 238, giving a total of 324 combatants at Badr, without counting those undecided. In general, the sources speak of 313 or 314, or “310 and several more, and also of 307, 317, or 318 fighters at Badr. The details at first create the impression that we are dealing with a genuine historical account. We know, however, a tradition according to which the number of fighters at Badr is as great as the number of people of Jālūt (Gideon-Saul). According to a variant, the prophet is supposed to have said to his people on the day of Badr: “You are the same number as the people of Tālūt on the day that he clashed with Jālūt.”}} | |||
The battle is introduced in a prophetic dream in reports with similar details and symbolism,<ref>''Original title: Hans Mzik, “Die Gideon-Saul-Legende und die überlieferung der Schlacht bei Badr. Ein Beitrag zur ältesten Geschichte des Islam, in WZKM 29 (1915): 371–83.'' | |||
Quoted in Warraq, Ibn. Koranic Allusions: The Biblical, Qumranian, and Pre-Islamic Background to the Koran (Chapter 2.1 The Gideon-Saul Legend and the Tradition of the Battle of Badr) A Contribution to Islam’s Oldest Story. Hans von Mzik. Prometheus. </ref> and other parallels are found in reports surrounding the battle. | |||
{{Quote|<i>Original title: Hans Mzik, “Die Gideon-Saul-Legende und die überlieferung der Schlacht bei Badr. Ein Beitrag zur ältesten Geschichte des Islam, in WZKM 29 (1915): 371–83.</i> Quoted in Warraq, Ibn. Koranic Allusions: The Biblical, Qumranian, and Pre-Islamic Background to the Koran (pp 241) Hans von Mzik. Prometheus.|2=Immediately before the battle, a crowd of Qurayshites approached until they came to the prophet's watering place. Among them was akīm ibn izām. Then the prophet spoke: “Let them [drink]! And no one drank at that time who would not be killed, except for akīm ibn izām, for he was not killed….”18 Wāqidī adds to this: “Twice akīm escaped ruin through God's mercy: once when Muammad, after the recitation of sura 36, threw dust at the heads of a number of Qurayshites that were hostile to him, among whom he was also to be found the second time at the Badr drinking place.” On its own, it is not possible to infer why simply “drinking” is supposed to have been wrong and entailed death. The reason originates from the ālūt legend: he who drank was an unbeliever, and the unbeliever deserved to die. In a further elaboration of this thought process, the “drinking ones” = the unbelievers, naturally had to be killed in the battle. The whole episode is nothing more than a reshaping and elaboration of Aswad ibn ‘Abd al-Asad al-Makhzūmī’s story corresponding to the prevailing mind-set, an event neutral in itself which is supposed to have taken place at the beginning of the Battle of Badr.}} | |||
=== Mismatches in law between the Quran and later Islamic texts === | === Mismatches in law between the Quran and later Islamic texts === | ||