The Prophet’s Treaty with the Christians of Najran

An Analytical Study to Determine the Authenticity of the Covenants

Datos Bibliográficos

ID12237253
AutoresAhmed El-Wakil (0000-0002-7689-0447, Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies, autor de correspondencia)
Año2016
Volumen27
Número3
Páginas273-354
Fecha de publicación2016-07-20
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Islamic Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0955-2340 • E-ISSN: 1471-6917
EditorialOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/jis/etw027
OpenAlexW2479431407
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas16

The covenants established by the Prophet with the various Christian communities of his time have recently been documented by Dr. John Andrew Morrow in his book The Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of the World . Morrow brought these covenants together from obscure monasteries, collections and out of print books, arguing against the accepted understanding that these are forgeries. The Prophet’s interaction with the Christians of Najr a ̄ n is well documented in the Islamic sources, as well as in The Chronicle of Seert , an ecclesiastical history of the Assyrian Church of the East. Yet, no close study of the similarities and differences of the Prophet’s encounter with them has been done, nor comparison of the Islamic sources with what has been related in the Covenant with the Christians of Najran and its Exordium. Doing so provides greater clarity not only in determining the authenticity and authority of the covenants but also in assessing the reliability of the Islamic historical source material. In this paper, a cross-comparison of all the covenants now available is undertaken using source-critical methods. Thereafter, it is argued that categorical dismissal of the covenants as forgeries is no longer tenable. We may then join Charles Upton who, in the Foreword to Morrow’s book, remarked that ‘we may in fact be witnessing—unexpectedly, miraculously, at this extremely late date—the emergence of a third foundational source for Islam’† after the Qur&rhring; a ̄ n and the had i ̄ th

Covenant · Political science · Treaty · Archaeology and Historical Studies · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Historical and Linguistic Studies · Law