Paul Clark

Reviewed by Paul Clark

According to this version of events, the first complete copy of the Qur’an was produced within 20 years of Muhammad’s death.

The dominant paradigm in academia follows the Sunni Moslem account quite closely, minus the supernatural bits. Shoemaker, however, rejects this view and says the Qur’an was almost certainly compiled much later, under the ninth Caliph Abd al-Malik, who reigned from 685–705.

In the early chapters, reading this book felt like dropping in on a family argument as Shoemaker attacks the views of those academics with whom he disagrees. As a lay reader, it is difficult for me to assess the competing claims and counter-claims, but Shoemaker lays out his arguments and evidence clearly and at some length. He makes a strong case for a revisionist understanding of the origins of the Qur’an.

Shoemaker’s reasons for rejecting the “scholarly Sunnism” paradigm:

• In a lengthy chapter on the radio carbon dating of early copies of the Qur’an, Shoemaker rejects the argument that we have radiometric proof of early composition.
• He looks at what we know about the cradle of Islam, the Hijaz region, which includes Mecca and Yathrib (a.k.a. Medina). He argues that this region, which was almost entirely non-literate and contained few if any Jews and Christians, was incapable of producing such a sophisticated text as the Qur’an. He also notes that much of the Qur’an would have been incomprehensible to anyone without a solid knowledge of Christian and Jewish lore, a knowledge completely lacking in Muhammad’s audience in the Hijaz, geographically and culturally isolated as it was.
• He examines philological evidence that suggests the Qur’an is mostly written in a dialect of Arabic spoken well to the north of the Hijaz.
• Inspired by Bart Ehrman’s Jesus Before the Gospels, Shoemaker has two chapters dealing with the science of memory. It is clear that, without a written Qur’an to check what they remembered, it simply wouldn’t have been possible for Muhammad’s early followers to memorise his exact words. Human memory doesn’t work that way. Even remembering the gist would often be beyond them. Similarly, studies of how oral cultures preserve their historical memory indicate that the act of remembering is an act of reconstruction, and that cultures constantly evolve as they are passed on. Remembering happens in the present, not the past, and is always coloured and shaped by the present.
• An interesting idea that I hadn’t encountered before: some students of the New Testament have suggested that the gospels were written as memoranda: something akin to teachers’ notes, an aide memoire to help preachers. Such memoranda are fluid and change as new copies are made. If this view is correct, Matthew’s gospel, which develops and adds to Mark’s, wouldn’t have been seen as a separate document but as essentially the same thing. Shoemaker says this may have been true of many of the early written documents that were later compiled to make the Qur’an.
• He stresses the strong Christian influence on the Qur’an. This, he says, means that much of it was written after Islamic doctrine evolved following contact with the Christian subjects of the Arabs’ growing empire.
• The Qur’an is “invisible” in the early decades of the Islamic empire. We don’t have a single reference to it anywhere. This means it almost certainly wasn’t completed within 20 years of Muhammad’s death.

So how, according to Shoemaker, did the Qur’an come to be written?

He agrees with the standard view that Muhammad created a community of monotheistic and eschatological believers in the early years of the 7^th century. He took control of the Hijaz and later extended his rule to pretty much the whole of Arabia. After his death, his followers carved out a powerful empire that would extend to Syria, the Levant, Mesopotamia and eventually all of the Middle East.

Shoemaker accepts that Mohammad’s followers will have done their best to remember and pass on his message, though they would have had trouble memorising even the gist of what he said, never mind his exact words. As their empire grew, the early Moslems encountered and were influenced by Christian and Jewish ideas, which seeped into their collective memories of Mohammad’s message.

In different parts of the empire, different groups wrote down parts of what they believed to be Muhammad’s words. They may also have included a number of pre-Muhammadan texts. Different sets of written texts were collected together, and there may even have been collections that claimed to be complete.

Eventually, much later than traditionally believed, Caliph Abd al-Malik made the decision to create a single, authoritative version of the Qur’an, suppressing all alternatives. In this, he was completely successful. The Islamic world, to this day, has just one version of the Qur’an, which is revered by all different sects. Nothing remains of any alternatives.

Shoemaker’s book isn’t aimed at those who are new to the topic. I would recommend that anyone wishing to understand the origins of Islam start with something like Tom Holland’s In the Shadow of the Sword or one of Michael Cook’s books, such as his Muhammad in the Past Masters series or his The Koran: A Very Short Introduction. However, this book is an excellent next step for those who wish to dig deeper. Shoemaker makes a strong case for his hypothesis, which seems to be rigorous and based on a sound understanding of the available evidence.

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