In our search for truth, history can become a problem. Those who write and record history have a lot of power to shape our views. For this reason I urge those influenced by Islam to investigate it carefully. Is it true?
First we focus on Mecca, the center of Islam. According to classic Islamic sources we learn that Mecca was a key trade city of Arabia, of great spiritual and economic importance when Muhammad was born (570 CE). The problem? There is no archeological or historical evidence that Mecca existed at that time.
According to Islam, Mecca is the location where Adam and Eve settled after being expelled from the Garden of Eden. Abraham is said to have spent considerable time there. It is said to have been at the heart of two major trade routes. None of this can be confirmed by any historical documents, coins, or archeology. In contrast, Najran, a small city 700km south of Mecca (further from Rome and the center of civilization), has plenty of history. This is found in layers of archeology, in the writings of Strabo (64 BCE – 24 CE), Pliny the Elder (23-79 CE), and Claudius Ptolemy (100 – 170 CE). But their documents never mention the city of Mecca. Procopius of Caesarea (500-564 CE) provides a rich history of western Arabia, but again no mention of Mecca. Mecca is missing until Islam. In fact, the oldest mention of the city dates from 741 CE (i.e. 109 years after Muhammad’s death) where it is referred to in a document known as the ‘Continuatio Byzantia Arabica’.
Mecca is absent from the monumental ‘Universal History’ of the later Greek historian Diodorus Siculus (90 – 30 BCE). Islamic scholars point out that he referred to a temple of the Arabs, but this is in a section dealing with north-western Arabia. (Diodorus and C. H. Oldfather, Diodorus of Sicily. 2, 2 (London; Cambridge, Mass.: Heinemann ; Harvard University Press)., 216-217) There is also a claim that Ptolemy referred to a city in the Arabian Peninsula called “Macoraba”, which they assume was Mecca. Not only are these names quite different, but Ptolemy does not indicate it was in that area. Ptolemy identifies only six cities in Arabia worthy of the title ‘metropolis’ including Najran, but not Macoraba, and no Mecca.
Where was the Quran written, if not near Traditional Mecca?
Usually historians will look for other clues to determine where something comes from, but the Quran has a remarkable lack of context. It seems that whoever wrote or compiled it deliberately eliminated references to contemporary events, people, and locations. Was there an intentional attempt to erase references to location? It is rather surprising how few geographical or historical references can be found in the Quran! It seems to have been scrubbed clean of geography. For example, Mecca occurs exactly once in 48:24. Where was this Mecca?
Occupations provide some evidence of location. Muhammad’s enemies are referred to as “mushrikun” who raise crops and keep livestock. This would be impossible around Mecca, an arid desert.
Of the nearly 150,000 words in the Arabic Quran, only 65 indicate location. Author Dan Gibson in a book entitled “Qur’anic Geography” analyzes these and 54 refer to three tribes: the people of Ad (23), the people of Thamud (24), and the Midianites (7). A search for these tribes finds them all in Northern Arabia, far from Mecca. His research shows that the original city of Islam was probably Petra, a significant city of ancient Syria. Early mosques were built to face in that direction. Today we can go and visit Petra, the ancient capital of the Nabatean kingdom from 2nd century BCE to 106 CE, which controlled trade up and down the Arabian peninsula, located in modern day Jordan.
“It was in Petra that Muhammad directed the destruction of all the idols except one, the Black Stone. This stone remained in the Ka’ba in Petra until it was later taken by the followers of Ibn al-Zubayr deep into Arabia to the village of Mecca for safe keeping from the Umayyad armies. And today it is to this stone that Muslims face, rather than to their holy city and the qibla that Muhammad gave them.” by Jeremy Smyth in “The Mecca Question”.
Linguistic clues can help to find a context of origin. Obviously, the Quran was written in Arabic… or was it? Most Muslims would regard the idea of the Quran not written in Arabic as ridiculous. But let’s examine the evidence. The Quran makes several statements that it was written in pure Arabic. Why? Why this need to convince its readers?
We find that there are many foreign (non-Arabic) words in the Quran, from Persian, Greek, Hebrew, Ethiopian, Coptic, and Syriac. Syriac was the lingua-franca of the Roman Province of Syria. Aramaic was a version of Syriac, spoken by Jesus and his disciples. The Syriac loan words found in the Quran are: Allah, 1:1(Ilah in Syriac); Adn, 9:72 (Eden); Sura, 9:124 (chapter); taghut, 2:257 (idols); zakat, 21:110 (alms). We now need to introduce a startling but plausible theory, that much or all of the Quran was originally not written in Arabic but in Syriac.
The original Arabic of the Quran was written like Hebrew without vowels. Adding vowels later can introduce mistakes. The German linguist Cristoph Luxenberg studied many of the strange riddles of the Quran and believes that the solution is to remove the vowels, and replace them with Syriac vowels. For more on this see “A Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran: A Contribution to Decoding the Text of the Koran” (Berlin: H. Schiller, 2007).. For our purposes, these observations would indicate that the Quran originated in the Syrian province or its borderlands.
The Quran borrows much from Christian sources, but many are apocryphal (invalid) sources such as the ‘Arabic Gospel of the Infancy of the Savior’. (James R. White, What Every Christian Needs to Know About the Qur’an (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Bethany House, 2013). 236-238) Perhaps the most embarrassing statements in the Quran are those regarding Mary, the mother of Jesus being regarded as a deity and part of the trinity. (5:116) The Christian doctrines were well formed within the empire by this date, so this shows that whoever wrote the Quran was influenced by a Christian sect, perhaps the Ebionites, on the fringes of the Roman empire. This is further shown because they are referred to as “Nasara” (Nazarenes) rather than “Masihi” as the Arab Christians usually referred to themselves. To realize how much is borrowed from Jewish and Christian sources, consider that the name Moses occurs 136 times in the Quran, Abraham (69), Mary (34), Jesus (25), and Muhammad only four times.
“As late as the 730’s CE (i.e. 100 years after Muhammad supposedly died), the Christian theologian John of Damascus (676-749 CE) wrote about the sacred scriptures of the Muslims as being a collection of texts rather than a single document… One of the clearest conclusions that we can draw from this snapshot was that the Qur’an was, even at this very late stage, a document that was still in flux.” (Peter Townsend, “The Mecca Mystery – Probing the Black Hole at the Heart of Muslim History” (2019) 6.4)
Could the Hadiths help us find Mecca?
The other main source of Islamic history are the Hadiths (or “reports”, usually translated as “traditions”). These documents are oral traditions passed on for generations about the life and sayings of Muhammad. By 850 CE there were thousands of these traditions, many contradictory, all claiming to be passed directly from the time of the prophet. Muslim scholars classify these Hadiths as sahih (authentic or sound), hasan (good) and da’if (weak). Those who collected these traditions and compiled them lived 200-400 years after Muhammad. Shi’a Muslims do not accept the same collections as the Sunnis do. Apparently anyone could improve his argument or credibility by quoting a supposed saying of the prophet. Imagine if people in Europe today quoted the life and sayings of Napoleon, claiming it is what they heard from their grandparents and their ancestors 5 generations before. Who would take that seriously?
Muslim tradition states that Mohammad was illiterate (although legitimate questions can be raised on this). However, many of his followers were not, in fact Muslim tradition states that they were tasked with working as his secretaries. This raises some good questions about the Hadiths:
- Why rely exclusively on oral retellings for generations for something so important? Why did they not simply commit their precious memories of the prophet to paper?
- Why continue this practice for 200+ years, when it is so easy for these sayings to be corrupted or lost?
- Why do the earliest Muslim rulers never refer to these Hadiths?
It seems obvious that they were invented later to serve the political agendas of Muslim leaders. That seems to fit human nature. But why are Western universities and research institutions not questioning these traditional sources when in other areas of history they would be dismissed as legendary material?
The hadiths contribute much more geographic detail, regarding Mecca, including mountain passes, grasslands, cultivated fields, trees, and grapevines. But again, these do not concur with the location of Mecca. There are also many cases of Muhammad’s warriors using their spoils of war to buy property in Syria. Why there, unless they lived close enough to defend it?
The hadiths also show Persian/Zoroastrian influence. The Quran never mandates that women where veils in public, it only encourages them to cover their chest (24:31). This was not an ancient Arab custom but the wives of Persian noblemen were required to cover their faces (Gavin Hambly, “The Cambridge History of Iran. Vol. 7, Vol. 7,” (2008). 955). Hadiths indicate that Muhammad’s wives faces were veiled, and he is supposed to be an excellent example (33:21), hence the custom in Islam today.
When did Islam really begin?
There were a number of firsts with the construction of the “Dome of the Rock” (691 CE) in Jerusalem during the reign of Abd al-Malik (caliph from 685 to 705 CE) in the Marwanid period:
- First incontestable accurately dated passages from the Quran in inscriptions (although they differ from the Quran Muslims use today, showing that the Quran was not finalized but developing).
- First reference to Islam and to Muslims. Before this they were known as Arab invaders.
- First Muslim repudiation of the divinity of Jesus. Many of the inscriptions are strongly anti-Christian.
- First expression of the the Shahada (i.e. the Muslim confession of faith: ‘There is no God but God and Muhammad is the Messenger of God’).
What would the Marwanid rulers gain by focusing this new religion in Mecca?
“Headquartering their new religion in Syria or Northern Arabia would always leave the followers of Islam open to the charge that they plagiarized their ideas from Judaism, Christianity or pre-existing forms of Arab paganism.” (Townsend, 8.11) Starting a religious tradition in an empty desert, over which they had control, where few people had ever visited, would prevent others from fact checking or contradicting their account of back-projected events.
To summarize we suggest that every truth seeking Muslim ask:
- Why is there no geographic or historical evidence for the existence of Mecca before Islam?
- Why are early Mosques not facing Mecca but Petra?
- Was the Quran originally written in Arabic?
- Why were the Quran and Hadiths not written down immediately as divine revelations?
- How much of Islam was invented for political power and influence?
- Was Muhammad the historical person claimed by Islam?
- Why are there no references to the Quran and Muhammad until 60 years after his death?
- If Mecca was invented, how can we trust any traditions connected with Islam?