The Birth of Islam in the Holy Land

The formative period of Islam and Islamic civilisation is probably one of the best-documented periods in history. The fact that Islamic history has had to be reconstructed almost solely on the basis of Islamic tradition. The attitude of modern historians of Islam oscillates between complete and almost complete rejection of Islamic tradition as an inadequate source for the reconstruction of early Islamic history, as was done by Crone and Cook in Hagarism . Already in 1916, Snouck Hurgronje, commenting on Paul Casanova’s Mohammad et la Fin du Mond , published in 1911, summarised the problems facing modern Islamic historical research. The generally accepted picture of the birth of Islam follows the lines of Islamic tradition, in that it accepts the fact that Islam was created in Arabia as a result of Muhammad’s activity in Mecca and Madinah. The later, unified Islamic traditions, which on the whole assumed an anti-Umayyad character, stressed the fact that the Umayyads were muluk.