Damien Casey

Muhammad the Eschatological Prophet

It is clear from Stephen Shoemakers study of traditional narratives of the origins
of Islam and the life of Muhammad that these were heavily theologised in order
to account for Islams distinctiveness. Initially the Believers movement led by
Muhammad was an inclusive one concerned for the reform of monotheistic belief
in the God of Abraham in preparation for the imminent arrival of the Day of
Judgement. Muhammads followers did not initially distinguish themselves
from other Abrahamic monotheists. Because many, if not most, of the people
of the Near East were already ostensibly monotheists, the original Believers
movement can best be characterised as a monotheistic reform movement, rather
than as a new and distinct religious confession. Rather, convinced of the imminence of the Last Judgment, and, feeling themselves surrounded by corruption
and sin, they strove to form themselves into a righteous community so as to attain salvation on Judgment Day. One might say that Muhammad had no more
intention of establishing a new religion than did Jesus. As with time the Jesus
movement felt a need to distinguish itself from its Jewish foundations, so it
was with Muhammads community of believers. And just as Paul would distinguish between the legal requirements of Gentile and Jewish Christians, Muhammads followers were expected to follow Quranic law but Jews could also follow
the Torah and Christians the gospel. This chapter will trace an interesting parallelism in the self-understanding of both Jesus and Muhammad as eschatological
prophets who would herald the coming of the reign of God and the Day of Judgement.

1 Prophets, religious beginnings, and revision

1.1 The Jesus movement
What the search for the historical Jesus uncovered was the absolute centrality of
the notion of Jesus as an eschatological prophet, leading Albert Schweitzer to

Stephen J. Shoemaker, The Death of a Prophet: The End of Muhammads Life and the Beginnings of Islam (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012).
Fred M. Donner, Muhammad and the Believers. At the Origins of Islam (Cambridge, MA:
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010), 87.
Ibid., 67.

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conclude that The historical Jesus will be to our time a stranger and an enigma. This is a position that most biblical scholars would hold to this day. However, there remains a tendency among many scholars of the historical Jesus to
portray Jesus as a social and ethical reformer in a reflection of the scholars
own values. The same can be said of western scholars who have attempted to
present a sympathetic portrait of Muhammad and of Islam to the West. But
the idea of Muhammad as an eschatological prophet is just as strange and unfamiliar as is the similar apocalyptic portrait of Jesus. Just as the urgency of
Jesus eschatological message became diminished and reinterpreted with time,
so it was with Muhammads community of believers.

1.2 Hagarism
The current revisionism in the study of Islamic origins can trace its beginnings to
Patricia Crone and Michael Cooks landmark study Hagarism, which although
often methodologically flawed has raised questions about the received history
of Islam that will not go away. Despite the perceived inadequacy of Crone and
Cooks account, its basic thesis seems to stand, putting in doubt the claim
that Islam was born in the full light of history as the suspicion emerges
that traditional historiography was in fact heavily theologised history.
One key indication that early Islamic history has been theologised is its
chronology of the Prophets death, just as in the canonical gospels, where the
precise day of Jesus death makes a theological point. While the synoptic gospels
narrate that Jesus died on the day of the Passover so that the Last Supper may be
a Passover meal, the Gospel of John describes Jesus death on the day before,
while the Passover lambs are being slaughtered, in order to identify Jesus as
the Passover lamb. Similarly with the death of Muhammad, traditional accounts
of the life of Muhammad relate that Muhammad died before entering the prom Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of its Progress from
Reimarus to Wrede, trans. W. Montgomery (London: A. & C. Black, 1910), 399.
E.g., John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant
(San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991); Burton L. Mack, Who Wrote the New Testament?
The Making of the Christian Myth (San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995); and Marcus
Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time (San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995).
In particular one thinks of the works of Karen Armstrong, including Muhammad: Prophet For
our Time (London: Harper, 2006).
Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1980).
Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History, vol. 12 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), 464.

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Muhammad the Eschatological Prophet

231

ised land, suggesting a strong parallel with Moses. The identification is not accidental, considering that Moses is the prophet mentioned more than any other in
the Quran. As Shoemaker notes: Muhammad is frequently modeled directly
after the life of Moses, in an effort to shape Muhammads biography according
to the pattern of a biblical prophet. The same tendency is evident in Matthews
portrayal of Jesus as the new Moses handing down the perfection of the Law at
the Sermon on the Mount.

2 Eschatology in early witnesses to the Believers

movement
Apart from the so-called Constitution of Medina there is no extant documentary
mention of Muhammad in Arabic for the first seventy years of the Islamic era.
According to Donner, the earliest dated inscription mentioning Muhammad is
an Egyptian tombstone bearing the date 71 AH. As for the traditional dating
of the death of Muhammad, Shoemaker argues that eleven different sources
from the seventh and eighth centuries, including one from the Islamic tradition
itself, indicate Muhammads continued survival at the beginnings of Near Eastern conquests.
Although there is a dearth of early texts witnessing to the rise of Islam, those
few that we do have from outside of the Islamic tradition give credence to the
eschatological character of the early movement. Three of these will be considered below, in very different genres: a Greek apology for Christianity directed
at Jews, The Teaching of James, recently baptised; a Jewish apocalyptic text,
The Secrets of Rabbi ben Yohai; and the Armenian History of Sebeos. The eschatalogical content of these Christian and Jewish texts will be compared with the
account of the Quran.

Shoemaker, The Death of a Prophet, 114.

The five discourses found in Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7 do not seek to do away with the
Torah, but can be understood as a thoroughly rabbinic practice as expressed at the beginning of
the mishnaic text Pirkei Avot 1.1 or Ethics of the Fathers: Make a fence for the Torah, the basic
thinking being this maxim is to go beyond the Law in order to increase the likelihood that one
will not inadvertently infringe upon the Law. So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is
perfect (Matt 5:48).
Fred M. Donner, From Believers to Muslims: Confessional Self-Identity in the Early Islamic
Community, Al-Abhath 50 51 (2002 2003): 9 53 at 41.
Shoemaker, The Death of a Prophet, 13.

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Damien Casey

2.1 The Teaching of James, recently baptised

The Doctrina Jacobi nuper baptizati is the earliest extant non-Muslim text that refers to the upheaval of the Arab conquests. It is a Greek apologetic written in
response to the forced baptism of Jews ordered by Heraclius. Its author argues
for the appropriateness of forced conversions, making the case that the Jews
should persist in their adopted religion, Christianity. Of special interest here is
its record of a supposed discussion between Jacob, a forced convert, with
other Jews on recent events within the Byzantine Empire.
When the candidatus was killed by the Saracens, I was at Caesarea and I set off by boat to
Sykamina. People were saying the candidatus has been killed, and we Jews were overjoyed. And they were saying that the prophet had appeared, coming with the Saracens,
and that he was proclaiming the advent of the anointed one, the Christ who was to
come. I, having arrived at Sykamina, stopped by a certain old man well-versed in scriptures,
and I said to him: What can you tell me about the prophet who has appeared with the Saracens? He replied, groaning deeply: He is false, for the prophets do not come armed with a
sword. Truly they are works of anarchy being committed today and I fear that the first Christ
to come, whom the Christians worship, was the one sent by God and we instead are preparing to receive the Antichrist. Indeed, Isaiah said that the Jews would retain a perverted and
hardened heart until all the earth should be devastated. But you go, master Abraham, and
find out about the prophet who has appeared. So I, Abraham, inquired and heard from
those who had met him that there was no truth to be found in the so-called prophet,
only the shedding of mens blood. He says also that he has the keys of paradise, which
is incredible.

That the prophet should claim to be the keeper of the keys (cf. Matt 16:19) reflects
an early Islamic tradition, Shoemaker suggests. The Jews looked with hope to a
deliverer. We shall see this supported by The Secrets of Rabbi Simon ben Yohai, to
be discussed below. The seventh century was a time of escalating polemic
against the Jews, beginning with the conflict with Persia, but reaching a new plateau in response to the Muslim conquests. After all, it was not yet clear that
Islam was a new religious threat. Neither does it seem, according to the testimony of some sources, that Muslims considered Christians a religious adversary.
According to the Nestorian patriarch Ishoyahb III, writing in 650, The Arabs not
See the more detailed treatment of this text in Sarah GadorWhytes chapter in this volume.
Doctrina Jacobi V.16, in Gilbert Dagron and Vincent Droche, Juifs et chrtiens dans lOrient
du VIIe sicle, Travaux et Mmoires 11 (1991): 17 248 at 209. Cited and translated by Robert G.
Hoyland, Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1997), 57.
Shoemaker, The Death of a Prophet, 23.
See the chapter by Bronwen Neil in this volume.

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only do not fight Christianity, they even recommend our religion, honour our
priests and saints of our Lord, and make gifts to monasteries and churches.
The Jews, on the other hand, were an old enemy and the similarities between
Jewish and Muslim practices were noted.
Explaining how the Saracens had their descent from Sara, Sozomen had almost two centuries earlier observed that:
Such being their origin, they practice circumcision like the Jews, refrain from the use of
pork, and observe many other Jewish rites and customs. If, indeed, they deviate in any respect from the observances of that nation, it must be ascribed to the lapse of time, and to
their intercourse with the neighboring nations.

Consequently, those things that Jew and Muslim held in common, such as circumcision, the direction of prayer, and the veneration of certain objects, were
the dominant concerns of Christian anti-Muslim tracts. This is clear from a
text attributed to Maximus the Confessor who, although troubled by the forced
conversion of the Jews, nonetheless fulminates against those who announce
by their actions the presence of the antichrist, as if they were the reason for
the turn of events. What is more terrifying, I say, for the eyes and ears of Christians than to see a cruel and alien nation authorized to raise its hand against the
divine inheritance? But it is the multitude of sins committed by us that has allowed this.
In the wake of the Arab conquest Christianitys version of the doctrine of
manifest successes needed to be reversed, and anti-Jewish volleys were part of
this new arsenal, even while it maintained its triumphalist tone. The Jews
were the punching bag used to help the Christians salvage some semblance of

Ishoyahb Patriarcha III, Liber Epistolarum (CSCO, Scriptores Syri, ser. III/64, 251). Cited by
Donner, From Believers to Muslims, 49.
Sozomen, HE 6.38.11 (eds. Joseph Bidez and Gnther C. Hansen, GCS NF 4.299; trans. Chester
D. Hartranft, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 2, eds. Philip Schaff and Henry
Wace, Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1890, online at http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/26026.htm).
Hoyland, Seeing Islam, 82, notes the presence of these three themes in a number of works,
including the late seventh-century Greek apology, Trophies of Damascus, and John of Damascus,
De fide orthodoxa 4.12, 16 and 25.
Maximus, Ep. 8. Cited by Hoyland, Seeing Islam, 78. This text is dubious. See the comments
by Sarah Gador-Whyte in her chapter at n. 24.
As Hoyland, Seeing Islam, 80, notes, the Trophies of Damascus begins with the words: Of
the divine and invincible church of God. On the notion of invasion as Gods punishment, see
Abdul-Massih Saadi, Nascent Islam in the Seventh Century Syriac Sources, in: The Qurn in its
Historical Context, ed. Gabriel Said Reynolds (London: Routledge, 2008), 217 22 at 219.

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Damien Casey

self-esteem. The Jewish interlocutor of the mid to late seventh-century anti-Jewish tract Trophies of Damascus ripostes: If things are as you say, how is it that
enslavements are befalling you? Whose are these devastated lands? Against
whom are so many wars stirred up? What other nation is [so much] fought as
the Christians? To which Anastasius of Sinai could be replying in his Dialogue
against the Jews:
Do not say that we Christians are today afflicted and enslaved. This is the greatest thing,
that though persecuted and fought by so many, our faith stands and does not cease, nor
is our empire abolished, nor are our churches closed. But amid the peoples who dominate
and persecute us, we have churches, we erect crosses, found churches and engage in sacrifices.

2.2 The Secrets of Rabbi ben Yohai

For our purposes the most significant work of Jewish apocalyptic literature of the
seventh century is that attributed to one of the great rabbis of the second century, Simon ben Yohai. Two versions of The Secrets of Rabbi ben Yohai are incorporated into the Prayer of Rabbi Simon ben Yohai, which dates to the Crusades, and
into another midrash entitled Ten Kings. As for The Secrets themselves, Bernard Lewis is convinced that the events and rulers referred to are those of the
Umayyad Caliphates. The Prayer of Rabbi Simon simply reused the older tradition of the Ishmaelite conquest and reapplied it to the Crusades.
According to The Secrets, Rabbi Simon ben Yohai had been hiding in a cave
from the Roman emperor when he prayed standing for forty days and nights, beseeching God: Lord God, how long wilt Thou be angry against the prayer of Thy
servant? (cf. Ps 80:5). It is here that the vision begins. Rabbi Simon is shown
two empires: the Kenite, associated with Rome, and Ishmael, with the Arabs.
He saw the Kenite. When he saw the kingdom of Ishmael that was coming, he began to say:
Was it not enough, what the wicked kingdom of Edom did to us, but we must have the

Trophies of Damascus II.3.1.220. Cited by Hoyland, Seeing Islam, 79.

Anastasius of Sinai, Dialogue against the Jews (PG 89.1221 CD). Cited by Hoyland, Seeing
Islam, 81.
Bernard Lewis, An Apocalyptic Vision of Islamic History, Bulletin of the School of Oriental
and African Studies, University of London 13/2 (1950): 308 38 at 309.
Lewis, ibid. For Graetzs argument, see Heinrich Graetz, Geschichte der Juden von den
ltesten Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart: aus den Quellen neu bearbeitet, vol. 5, Geschichte der Juden
vom Abschlu des Talmud (500) bis zum Aufblhen der jdisch-spanischen Kultur (1027)
(Magdeburg: Druck und Verlag von Albert Falckenberg & Co., 1860), Note 16 at 489 97.

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Muhammad the Eschatological Prophet

235

kingdom of Ishmael too? At once Metatron the prince of the countenance answered and
said: Do not fear, son of man, for the Holy One, blessed be He, only brings the kingdom
of Ishmael in order to save you from this wickedness. He raises up over them a Prophet according to His will and will conquer the land for them and they will come and restore it in
greatness, and there will be great terror between them and the sons of Esau.

The revelation continues as Rabbi Simon asks Metatron: How do we know that
they are our salvation? Metatron responds by referring Rabbi Simon to the
prophet Isaiahs vision of the two riders (Isa 21:6 7) as a prophecy of messianic
deliverance through this Ishmaelite prophet. Metatron also cites Zechariahs
prophecy that Israels salvation shall come riding on an ass (Zech 9:9). Muhammad is clearly identified therefore with the fulfillment of Jewish messianic hopes
and corroborates the report of Doctrina Jacobi that the prophet had appeared,
coming with the Saracens, and that he was proclaiming the advent of the anointed one, the Christ who was to come. Shoemaker makes an interesting observation that the grammatical ambiguities in the Hebrew text do not make it clear
whether it is God or the prophet who is to conquer the land. Shoemaker argues
persuasively that Lewis is simply following tradition in ascribing the conquest to
God, but that based on the text alone it would be more reasonable to ascribe the
conquest to the prophet.

2.3 The History of Sebeos

Our third text of interest is the Armenian history attributed to Sebeos, bishop of
the Bagratunis, writing around the year 660. Sebeos is the first non-Muslim author to present an exposition of the rise of Islam that pays attention to what
Muslims themselves thought they were doing. Hoyland cites as evidence of Sebeos trustworthiness as a chronicler his occasional use of documentary material
and his apparent access to privileged information. Sebeos sees the Arab conquests as part of the salvation history. As descendents of Abraham, Muhammad

Adolf Jellinek, Bet ha-Midrasch, vol. 3 (Leipzig: Vollrath, 1855), 78. Cited and translated by
Lewis, An Apocalyptic Vision, 321 322.
Doctrina Jacobi V.16, 209. Cited by Hoyland, Seeing Islam, 57.
Shoemaker, The Death of a Prophet, 27 30.
Hoyland, Seeing Islam, 128.
Hoyland, Seeing Islam, 125 26.

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Damien Casey

and his followers could rightly lay claim to the promised land. I shall speak of
the stock of Abraham, not of the free one but of that born from the handmaiden
concerning which the divine word was fulfilled: his hands on all, and the hands
of all on him. Sebeos believed the kingdom of Muhammad and his followers
to be the fourth of the successive kingdoms prophesied by Daniel. In this he
differs from the more widespread Christian view that saw the sons of Hagar as
a tool of Gods wrath for the chastisement of Christians.
Sebeos describes how the Jews gathered in the city of Edessa after the departure of the Persians and were subsequently besieged by Heraclius army. Realising that they could not hold out, the Jews negotiated their peaceful departure.
Theophilus of Edessa (695 785), writing a century after Sebeos, gives us a slightly different account, although Hoyland clearly finds his reconstructed account of
Theophilus more convincing than that of Sebeos, which he describes as garbled. The sources using Theophilus describe how Shiroi (Siroes), having murdered his father the Shah Khosrau and become emperor himself, made peace
with Heraclius and agreed to restore all Byzantine lands seized by Persian
troops. Heraclius and his brother Theodore were marching to Syria to reclaim
those cities. When Theodore reached Edessa and informed them of what had
happened, the Persians replied: We do not know Shiroi and we will not surrender the city to the Romans. The Jews of Edessa, standing on the walls with the

See the commentary by Howard-Johnston in The Armenian History attributed to Sebeos,

Robert W. Thomson and James Howard-Johnston, with Tim Greenwood, TTH 31, 2 vols. (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999), vol. 2, 238.
Sebeos, Ch. 42 (trans. in Thomson and Howard-Johnston, The Armenian History, vol. 1, 95).
Sebeos is here citing Gen 16:12, which continues with the statement that Ishmael shall be a wild
ass of a man.
Ibid., 239. Dan 2:36 45, elaborated as the four beasts of the last judgement in Daniel 7.
John bar Penky writes from Mesopotamia: We should not think of the advent (of the
children of Hagar) as something ordinary, but as due to divine working. Before calling them,
(God) had prepared them beforehand to hold Christians in honour, thus they also had a special
commandment from God concerning our monastic station, that they should hold it in honourGod put victory into their hands in such a way that the words written concerning them
might be fulfilled, namely: one man chased a thousand and two men routed ten thousand
(Deut. 32.30). How otherwise could naked men riding without armour or shield have been able
to win, apart from divine aid, God calling them to destroy by them a sinful kingdom (Amos 9.8)
and to bring low through them the proud spirit of the Persians. Trans. Sebastian Brock, North
Mesopotamia in the Late Seventh Century: Book XV of John bar Penkys Rish Melle, Jerusalem
Studies in Arabic and Islam 9 (1987): 51 75 at 57 58.
Hoyland, Seeing Islam, 635 n. 28. In an excursus (631 71), Hoyland explains that his reconstruction of the lost chronicle of Theophilus of Edessa is based on the agreement of extant
authors who seem to have used his text as their main source for the history of the period.

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Muhammad the Eschatological Prophet

237

Persians, taunted the Christians, thereby provoking Theodores assault on the

city. Persian resistance was crushed, leading them to accept a pledge of safe return to their country. A Jew by the name of Joseph, fearing for his people, escaped from the city in order to find Heraclius, whereupon he successfully urged the
king to forgive his fellow Jews and to send an envoy to restrain his brother from
extracting vengeance.
In Sebeos account the Jews then went to the sons of Ishmael and informed
them of their blood relationship through the testament of scripture, asking for
aid. But although the Muslims were persuaded of their close relationship, yet
they were unable to agree amongst themselves, because their cults were divided
from each other. At this point Muhammad enters the narrative:
At that time a certain man from among those same sons of Ismael whose name was Mahmet, a merchant, as if by Gods command appeared to them as a preacher [and] the path of
truth. He taught them to recognize the God of Abraham, especially because he was learned
and informed in the history of Moses. Now because the command was from on high, at a
single order they all came together in unity of religion. Abandoning their vain cults, they
turned to the living God who had appeared to their father Abraham. So Mahmet legislated
for them: not to eat carrion, not to drink wine, not to speak falsely, and not to engage in
fornication. He said With an oath God promised this land to Abraham and his seed
after him forever. And he brought about as he promised during that time while he loved
Israel. But now you are the sons of Abraham, and God is accomplishing his promise to
Abraham and his seed for you. Love sincerely only the God of Abraham, and go and
seize your land which God gave to your father Abraham. No one will be able to resist
you in battle because God is with you.

Just as Rabbi Simon understood the rise of the kingdom of Ishmael as divine
providence, Jewish messianic expectations were encouraged by Arabs building
on the Temple Mount. According to Sebeos, the Jews, after gaining help from
the Hagarenes for a brief while, decided to rebuild the temple of Solomon. Finding the spot called Holy of Holies, they rebuilt it with base and construction as a
place for their prayers. But the Ishmaelites, being envious of them, expelled
them from that place and called the same house of prayer their own.
Jerusalem and especially the Temple Mount were of high significance to the
believers due to the expectation that the key scenarios of the Day of Judgement
would take place at the Temple Mount. It was on the Rock that God had chosen

Chronicle 1234 1.235 36 (trans. in Theophilus of Edessas Chronicle and the Circulation
of Historical Knowledge in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, trans. Robert G. Hoyland, TTH, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011, 80 81). See also Hoyland, Seeing Islam, 635.
Sebeos, 135. Ch. 42 (trans. Thomson and Howard-Johnston, vol. 1, 95 96).
Sebeos, 139. Ch. 43 (trans. Thomson and Howard-Johnston, vol. 1, 102).

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Damien Casey

as His throne and from which He ascended to Heavan (sic). On this Rock, God
will judge mankind and on this Rock, the Scales will be placed. Given then
the centrality of Jerusalem for eschatological expectation, its conquest was especially significant.

3 The Quran: The prophet of the Hour

The Quran abounds in eschatological imagery. Sura 16 begins with the pronouncement that The command of Allah is coming or, more literally, the
rule or reign of God is coming. Although only Allah knows the hour It may
be that the Hour is nigh (33.63). It is possibly even nearer than a twinkling
of the eye (16.77). It is Muhammads mission to warn them of the Day
(40.18); for The threatened Hour is nigh (53.57); the Hour is surely coming
(20.15). Of that there is no doubt (22.7). The doom of thy Lord will surely
come to pass (52.7). Their reckoning draweth nigh for mankind, while they
turn away in heedlessness (21.1) for most of mankind believe not (40.59). People will not recognise the signs for what they are. The Hour has come near, and
the moon has split [in two]. And if they behold a portent they turn away and say:
Prolonged illusion (54.1 2). The judgment will indeed befall (51.6), casting
down some and exalting others (56.1 3); and when it does the disbeliever will
cry: Would that I were dust! (78.40). To those who disregard the warning the
Quran threatens that they behold that which they were promised (19.75).
Some of the most poetic texts in the Quran describe the Day of Judgement, accompanied and anticipated by a range of astronomical phenomena and terrestrial cataclysms.

Meir Jacob Kister, Sanctity Joint and Divided: On Holy Places in the Islamic Tradition,
Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 20 (1996): 18 65 at 62.
As Donner, Muhammad and the Believers, 143 44, writes: The Believers ambition to
establish the writ of Gods word as widely as possible was apparently given special urgency by
the conviction that the Last Judgement was imminent. The mood of apocalyptic expectation in
which presumably, they followed the lead of Muhammad himself made it important to get on
with the business of creating a righteous order so that, when the End came, those who would be
counted amongst the Believers would attain paradise. This may also explain the early Believers
desire to extend their domains to Jerusalem, which many apocalyptic scenarios depicted as the
place where the events of the Last Judgment would be played out. They may also have believed
that the amir al-muminin as leader of this new community dedicated to the realization of Gods
word, would fulfil the role that expected the last emperor who would, on the Last Day, hand
earthly power over to God.
Translations from the Quran are by Marmaduke Pickthal.

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Muhammad the Eschatological Prophet

239

When the sun is overthrown, and when the stars fall. When the hills are moved, and when
the camels big with young are abandoned, and when the wild beasts are herded together,
and when the seas rise, and when souls are reunited, and when the girl-child that was buried alive is asked for what sin she was slain. And when the pages are laid open when the
sky is torn away, and when hell is lighted, and when the Garden is brought nigh, (then)
every soul will know what it hath made ready. (81.1 14)

It seems likely that Muhammad expected to see the Day of Judgement in his own
lifetime. The problem here is that sura 3.144 of the Quran states that the prophet
would die. However Al-Tabars history describes an episode that suggests that
this text might be a later interpolation. Ibn Ishaqs Life of the Prophet recounts
the episode as follows, with Umar (who will be the second Caliph) protesting
at the news that the prophet has died.
Some of the disaffected will allege that the prophet is dead, but by God he is not dead: he
has gone to his Lord as Moses b. Imran went and is hidden from his people for forty days
returning to them after it was said that he had died. By God, the apostle will return as
Moses returned and will cut off the hands and feet of men who allege that the apostle is
dead.

Clearly Umar believes that the prophet will not die before the Day of Judgement
arrives. But Ab Bakr (who is about to become the first Caliph) rebukes Umar
saying:
O men, if anyone worship Muhammad, Muhammad is dead; if anyone worship God, God is
alive and immortal. Then he recited this verse: Muhammad is nothing but an apostle.
Apostles have passed away before him. Can it be that if he were to die or be killed you
would turn back on your heels? He who turns back does no harm to God and God will reward the grateful. (3.144) By God, it was as though the people did not know this verse (concerning the apostle) had come down until Ab Bakr recited it that day. The people took it
from him and it was (constantly) in their mouths.

Al-Tabar gives an alternative account whereby after Ab Bakrs recitation of sura

3.144 prompted some of the companions of the prophet to affirm that they had
never heard those verses before Ab Bakr spoke them on that day. Shoemaker
argues that In all likelihood, the alarmingly unfamiliar Quranic verse placed in
Ab Bakrs mouth at Muhammads death was in fact a later interpolation de-

Alfred Guillaume, The Life of Muhammad: a translation of Ibn Ishaqs Sirat Rasul Allah
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 682.
Guillaume, Life of Muhammad, 683. Cf. Al-Tabar, The History of Al-Tabar, trans. Ismail K.
Poonawal, vol. 9 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 184 85.
Al-Tabar, The History of Al-Tabar, vol. 9, 187 88.

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signed to adjust the early communitys eschatological calendar around their

leaders unanticipated passing. There are in fact a number of hadith that suggest that Muhammads ministry was intimately connected with the Hours imminent arrival. This finds expression in the tradition cited by Ibn Hanbal that Muhammad explained to his followers that The hour has come upon you; I have
been sent with the Hour like this, and he showed them his two fingers, the index
finger and the middle finger, joined so as to indicate their concurrence. AlTabars history reconciles the two-finger tradition by observing that the index
finger is shorter than the middle finger, calculating that from the total length
of the worlds existence the Hour would arrive 500 years after the prophet.
Just as the urgency of Jesus eschatological message became diminished and
reinterpreted with time, so it was with Muhammads community of believers. I
follow Donner in his argument that the followers of Muhammad did not initially
see themselves as constituting a distinct confessional identity. Muhammads
own self-understanding is that of a reformer of monotheism. What mattered to
the Believers was not a persons confessional identity, but whether he or she
shared their belief in the One God, Creator of the World and Judge at the end
of time, and their conviction that the Day of Judgement was near, or at least rapidly nearing. To ensure their salvation in the face of the imminent Day of Judgement, the Believers strove to create a community (umma), submitting themselves
to a life of piety lived in strict accordance with the divine law that had been revealed repeatedly throughout history. What was essential was belief in the one
God of Abraham and in the Last Day. Otherwise Muhammads followers did
not initially distinguish themselves from other Abrahamic monotheists.
Lo! those who believe, and those who are Jews, and Sabaeans, and Christians Whosoever
believeth in Allah and the Last Day and doeth right there shall no fear come upon them
neither shall they grieve. (Sura 5.69)

This is affirmed by the Constitution of Medina, which only mentions one set of
religious beliefs in which it states that it is not lawful for any Mumin who has

Shoemaker, The Death of a Prophet, 183.

Ibn Hanbal, Musnad 3.310 11. Cited by Shoemaker, The Death of a Prophet, 174 75.
Shoemaker, The Death of a Prophet, 173.
See Donner, Muhammad and the Believers, 69 ff.
R.B. Serjeant, The Sunnah Jmiah, Pacts with the Yathrib Jews, and the Tahrm of
Yathrib: Analysis and Translation of the Documents Comprised in the So-Called Constitution of
Medina, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 41/1 (1978):
1 42 at 8, describes the Constitution of Medina as consisting of treaties establishing the confederation between the Quraysh Muhajiriin seeking protection at Yathrib and the tribal Sup-

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affirmed what is on this sheet and/or believes in God and the Last Day, to support or shelter an aggressor or innovator. The Constitution of Medina gives witness to the inclusion of Jews as a distinct group within the community. The only
doctrinal requirement of the Constitution is belief in God and the Last Day.
Thus Christians and Jews could continue to follow their own scriptures under Islamic rule. While some Jews and Christians seem to have joined Muhammads
community while retaining their confessional identities, others clearly rejected
it, or did not live up to the Quranic standard of piety, or rejected the imminence
of the Day of Judgment.
The Nestorian monk John bar Penky of northern Mesopotamia, writing in
the late 680s, confirms that the Arab raiders demanded tribute, but were content
for each of the subject peoples to remain in their faith of choice. He also suggests
that there were Christians, both monophysites and Nestorians, amongst the raiders. Furthermore, recent evidence suggests that some of the earliest mosques
were established on the place of worship of the people of the book, the best
known being the Church of St John in Damascus but also, it would seem, in
part of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, before a mosque was established on
the Temple Mount. Of course the anti-Trinitarian polemic remains an obstacle
for the inclusion of Christians, as Trinitarian faith was seen as a threat to Islamic
monotheism. Most early Muslim believers, however, probably had little knowledge of the Quran. Doctrinal clarity became more significant later as the identity of the community of believers evolved.
All of this is consistent with what we know about the first community of believers at Yathrib, which included at least some people of the book (al-kitb),
certainly some Jews. Patricia Crone and Michael Cook note that the Jews appear
in the Constitution of Medina as forming one community (ummha) with the be-

porters (Ansar) of Muhammad [that] have been lumped together with later agreements and
transmitted as a single document known to European scholars as the Constitution of Medina
a misnomer in that it relates the treaties to a locality rather than to tribes. From the historical
view-point it is not less in importance than the Quran itself and, though slightly jumbled in
transmission, it is patently authentic.
C3a. Translation by Serjeant, The Sunnah Jmiah, 23.
Shoemaker, The Death of a Prophet, 208.
Text of John bar Penky in: Alfons Mingana, Sources Syriaques (Leipzig: Otto Harrassowitz,
for Imprimerie des Peres Dominicains a Mossoul, 1907 8), vol. 1, 147, lines 1 6. Cited by Donner,
From Believers to Muslims, 44.
Ibid., 51.
Donner, Muhammad and the Believers, 77.
Shoemaker, The Death of a Prophet, 209 210.

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lievers despite the retention of their religion. The question of whether any
other groups of monotheists belonged to Muhammads community is unable
to be answered as clearly by traditional sources. According to the Constitution
of Medina: The Jews of Band Awf are a confederation (ummah) with the Muminuin, the Jews having their religion/law (din) and the Muslimn/Muminiin
having their religion/law, their clients (mawali) and their persons, excepting anyone who acts wrongfully (zalama) and commits crime/acts treacherously/breaks
an agreement, for he but slays himself and the people of his house. Similarly,
the Constitution further affirms that the Jews of the Aws, their clients and themselves, are on the same (basis) as the people of this sheet.
We find some intriguing confirmation of the inter-confessional nature of the
first community of believers in an unlikely source two centuries later. We have in
the teachings of Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 855), founder of the conservative Hanbali
school of religious law (fiqh), reports that the question of whether the early community (umma) included Jews and Christians remained a matter of great concern. Ibn Hanbal responded with vehemence to the repeated questions on this
issue, exclaiming: This is a filthy question, and one must not discuss it. Ibn
Hanbal seems utterly perplexed when the question continues to come up and
is surprised to learn that anyone could possibly claim such a thing.
In the wake of Islamic rule messianic hopes ran high amongst all the conquered peoples. But even when Islam began to establish clear boundaries between its own identity and that of other monotheists, as exemplified by the
anti-Trinitarian inscriptions in the Dome of the Rock a monument to victory
over the Christians the eschatological strain began to reassert itself in new
ways. Amongst those marginalised within Islam we can see the development
of the same messianic expectation of the Mahd, the rightly guided one, the
restorer of religion and justice who, according to a widely held Muslim belief,
will rule before the end of the world. The concept of the Mahd first appeared
in the contexts of sectarian rivalries and confessional disputes of the first civil
war when the title was applied variously to the caliphs Uthman, Ali, and Alis
Crone and Cook, Hagarism, 7.
Donner, From Believers to Muslims, 29.
C2a (trans. Serjeant, The Sunnah Jmiah, 27).
G6 (trans. Serjeant, 33).
Al-Khalll, Ahl al-milal 1:54 55. Ibn Hanbals responsa on this topic occupy 1:53 62 of this
collection. Cited by Shoemaker, The Death of a Prophet, 216.
Donner, Muhammad and the Believers, 200.
Wilferd Madelung, al-Mahd, in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, Brill Online, 2013,
http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-2/al-mahdi-COM_0618
(accessed 14 Feb. 2013).

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243

son al-Husayn, by their supporters. After the death of Muwiya, the term came
first to be used for an expected ruler who would restore Islam to its original perfection. An interesting variation on the role of the Mahd that reflects an earlier
inclusiveness can be found in a tradition attributed to Kab al-Ahbr, an early
Yemenite Jewish convert to Islam who, al-Tabar relates, accompanied Umar
to Jerusalem in 636 and revealed to him the site of the Temple Mount. According to this tradition, the Mahd was so called because he would find the original
texts of the Torah and the gospel concealed in Antioch. As transmitted by Abdullah Bishr al-Kathami from Kufa:
The Mahd will send (an army) to fight the Rm, will be given the knowledge of ten, and
will bring forth the Ark of the Divine Presence from a cave in Antioch in which are the
Torah which God sent down to Moses and the Gospel which he sent down to Jesus, and
he will rule among the People of the Torah according to their Torah and among the People
of the Gospel according to their Gospel.

4 Conclusion
In considering the earliest sources documenting the rise of Islam I am struck by
parallels in the development of both Christianity and Islam. Both founding figures understand themselves to be the prophet who would usher in the eschaton.
Both movements originally sought to be as inclusive as possible within the constraints of what was considered the necessary requirement of preparation for the
Day of Judgement. When the eschaton failed to arrive and the fires of the apocalyptic imagination died down, both communities adjusted their expectations
and self-understanding. They constructed their identities by consolidating a tradition and developing institutions by which to maintain and nourish what was
new and distinct in each. Both communities were supercessionalist in the manner in which they established boundaries and constructed a clear identity from
the other from which they emerged. The Christian church, divorced from the synagogue, sought to distance itself ever further from Judaism even as it claimed Ju Hayrettin Ycesoy, Messianic Beliefs and Imperial Politics in Medieval Islam: The Abbasid
Caliphate in the Early Ninth Century (Columbia, SC: The University of South Carolina Press,
2009), 19.
Madelung, al-Mahd.
Shari Lowin, Kab al-Ahbr, in: Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, exec. ed. Norman
A. Stillman, Brill Online, 2013, http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopedia-ofjews-in-the-islamic-world/kab-al-ahbar-SIM_0012450 (accessed 14 Feb. 2013).
Madelung, al-Mahd.

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daisms legitimacy as heir of the covenant for itself. Islam, similarly, as the instrument of Gods justice, sought to distinguish itself from the embarrassment
of feuding factions of monotheisms by establishing itself as the straight path.

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