Jose Luis Dizon

Student No.: 998869513

WATT VS. CRONE ON HISTORICAL SOURCES:

A SHORT ANALYSIS

Course No.: NMC 273

Instructor: Dr. Marta Simidchieva

Evaluator: Hamid Rezaei Yazdi

0

In Muhammad in Mecca, William Montgomery Watt provides an account of the history

of the beginning of Islam from the pre-Islamic background of Arabia, through the infancy and

early life of Muhammad up to the Hijra. He does this via an analysis of the various Islamic

historical sources. In this book, Watt uses what is described as the source-critical approach

when analyzing these sources. This is an approach that attempts to explain why different

accounts of the same historical events in Islamic sources have divergent details, as well as

identifying which of these differing accounts is the most accurate in its presentation of the facts.

It also takes into account contemporaneous non-Muslim sources such as those provided by

Syrian and Greek Christians living during that period. Behind this is the assumption that much of

the material in the accounts is generally reliable, but that some unreliable material has been

mixed in and must be sifted out.1

This is exactly what Watt does. In the introduction to his book, he mentions the different

sources that he uses. For him, the primary resource is the Qur’an. Second to this are various

historical works, of which he lists the Ibn Hisham’s Sira of Muhammad, the Annals of at-Tabari,

the Maghazi of al-Waqidi (which is about Muhammad’s campaigns), and the Tabaqat of Ibn

Sa’d (which is used primarily for its material on the companions of Muhammad).2 Regarding

these sources, he notes that much of what is known about the Meccan period is shadowy and that

the possibility that some of the details from these sources on that period were falsified must

always be kept in mind.3 In the rest of this introduction, he discusses the relative merits of some

of these sources. For example, he states that Ibn Sa’d includes much material that is historically

untenable, but that his extensive genealogical work is unlikely to have been invented, and should

1 Fred Donner, Narratives of Islamic Origins (Darwin Press, 1998), 9.2 W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad in Mecca (London: Oxford University Press, 1960), xi.3 Ibid., xiv.

1

be accepted as reliable.4 He also states that al-Waqidi is valuable for acting as a check against ibn

Ishaq since he derives information from different authorities, and provides more detailed

accounts.5 In general, Watt is quite optimistic about the reliability of these sources. For example,

while he notes that anti-Umayyad bias may have tainted the accounts of historians living under

the Abbasid caliphate, he notes that analysis of the sources “suggests that this has not happened

to any appreciable extent ... there are no grounds for supposing serious falsification or large-scale

invention.”6

After noting this, Watt spends the remainder of his book giving a chronicle of the early

Muslim period. Here, he relies extensively on piecing together parts of the various historical

sources that he mentioned, sometimes quoting entire large portions. For instance, when

discussing Muhammad’s childhood, he fills four whole pages by giving one large verbatim quote

from Ibn Ishaq.7 Although there are other accounts of Muhammad’s childhood that contain

divergent details of his childhood trading trips, Watt doesn’t really mention them. The only

analysis that he provides of the data is that they are probably not true in the sense that secular

historian would understand “reality,” on the grounds that these stories are not referenced later on

in Muhammad’s life.8

On the other hand, Watt does provide an excellent treatment of the sources surrounding

Muhammad’s call to become a prophet. One of the points that he makes is that regardless of one

believes the Qur’an to be divine revelation or not, it should not be assumed that Muhammad was

insincere. Rather, unless there is any reason to suppose otherwise, he must be regarded as being

4 Ibid., xii-xiv.5 Ibid., xii.6 Ibid., 30.7 Ibid., 34-38.8 Ibid., 33-34.

2

honestly convinced that he was receiving revelation from God.9 Having said that, he does point

out some alleged discrepancies in standard Muslim accounts, such as Muhammad receiving

messages from Gabriel during the Meccan period when Gabriel isn’t mentioned until the

Medinan period.10 This is not entirely convincing, however, since just because Gabriel isn’t

mentioned doesn’t mean the concept did not exist yet at the time. This is, for the most part, an

argument from silence.

In contrast with Watt is the approach taken by Patricia Crone in Meccan Trade and the

Rise of Islam. Her main concern in this book is to question the notion that the Arabian caravan

trade is the main factor behind the spread of Islam. But in doing so, she also questions the

Islamic historical sources that have traditionally been used to piece together this narrative.

Hence, Crone takes a sceptical approach to the historical sources, which is based on the idea that

historical fact cannot be extracted from these sources. This is either because the facts no longer

exist, or that they have become so mixed in with later fabrications that the former can no longer

be distinguished from the latter, which leads to a generally pessimistic view of the recoverability

of truth from these sources.11

This is precisely what Crone is advocating when she states, “Either a fictitious theme has

acquired reality thanks to the activities of storytellers or else a historical event has been swamped

by these activities.”12 She takes various events from the early history of Islam, such as the

childhood trip where Muhammad is recognized as a future prophet, and Amr b. Al-‘As’ trip to

Ethiopia, and points out how the sources give widely divergent accounts of the events. For

9 Ibid., 5210 Ibid., 42.11 Donner, Narratives of Islamic Origins, 20.12 Patricia Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 222.

3

example, different characters would be involved, or in the case of the childhood trip, the setting

would vary. She concludes that of all the different versions of the story, none of them are true,

since the discrepancies show that the event never took place.13

Among other points, she also argues that these events were fabricated in order to provide

context to otherwise inexplicable chapters in the Qur’an such as Surat Quraysh. Hence, the

sources are to be regarded as exegetical rather than historical, since they contain events that the

writers chose to believe rather than actual memories of what happened.14 In addition, she points

out how later development causes accounts of various events to become more detailed over time,

hence why Waqidi’s account of Muhammad’s campaign to Kharrar is four times as long as Ibn

Ishaq’s. The two accounts are separated by sixty years, and Crone argues that if that much

development can take place within those two generations, how much more in the three

generations between Ibn Ishaq and date when the events allegedly took place. For her, this is

conclusive evidence that the stories were being tampered with.15

While Crone is well acquainted with the Islamic sources, and is excellent at pointing out

the areas where there are contradictions, later developments and logical problems in the

accounts, there are serious issues with her analysis of the Islamic sources, as well as her general

attitude towards them. For one thing, it is a leap to go from pointing out that there are

discrepancies in the historical sources to saying that none of them are true, and that there is no

underlying historical event behind them. One would have to assume that the Muslims who wrote

down the sources were either uninterested in historical facts or were incapable of separating fact

from fiction. Granted, they were far from perfect (as the aforementioned problems in the

13 Ibid., 220.14 Ibid., 213-214. 15 Ibid., 223-224.

4

accounts indicate), and a critical approach should be taken to determine what is and isn’t reliable.

However, the writers of the sources should at least be given credit for making a serious effort to

report history as it has come down to them, and for being able to separate the true from the false

accounts to some extent.

That being said, there is one other criticism to be made of both Watt and Crone, and that

is their presumption of Naturalism. Both of them automatically discount any miraculous

occurrences that are present in the accounts. This betrays an anti-supernatural bias in their

historical methodology, as one would have to presuppose up front that supernatural events do not

and could not have occurred. However, Crone goes further than Watt by arguing that since the

storytellers fabricated the supernatural aspects of the accounts, they must have done the same

thing with the non-supernatural portions of the accounts as well.16 The problem is that this leads

to the presumption that the Muslim sources have been invented out of whole cloth even when

there is otherwise no evidence to indicate that this is so.

Finally, one criticism that could be made of the sceptical approach as a whole is that

while discrepancies in the accounts do exist, neither Crone nor other sceptics have an answer as

to why there is a significant area of overlap between them. As Donner points out that, there have

always been disagreements and sectarian divisions in the Islamic world, yet they agree on many

points when it comes to the historical accounts.17 It is highly unlikely that they could have all

redacted the same historical details out of existence (as Crone would put it) or mix in the exact

same fictional details. This is where Watt’s treatment is more advantageous, as his source-critical

16 Ibid., 220-221.17 Donner, Narratives of Islamic Origins, 26-27.

5

approach allows one to determine which sources have preserved specific historical details more

accurately.

Thus, while it is always good to keep a critical eye when examining any ancient historical

source (including the Islamic sources), one must take care not to become hyper-sceptical of the

reliability of the accounts. Overall, although Watt’s approach does have room for improvement

(for example, by developing a more critical view of al-Waqidi’s accounts in view of his tendency

to include extra material that has developed over time), his is a more balanced way of looking at

the sources.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Crone, Patricia. Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press,

1987.

Donner, Fred. Narratives of Islamic Origins. Darwin Press, 1998.

Watt, W. Montgomery. Muhammad in Mecca. London: Oxford University Press, 1960.00 words

6