| Patricia Crone |
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Patricia Crone and her associate Michael Cook, working at SOAS at the time, provided an devastating analysis of early Islamic history by looking at the only surviving contemporary accounts of the Islamic invasion, written in Armenian , Greek , Aramaic and Syriac by Middle Eastern witnesses to the rise of Islam. They found that Islam, as represented by admittedly biased sources, was in essence a tribal conspiracy against the Byzantine and Persian empires with deep roots in Judaism , and that Arabs and Jews were allies in these conquering communities. Apparent support for their conclusions came from finds made during the restoration of the Great Mosque of Sana'a in Yemen , where labourers working in the roof discovered fragments of Qu'rans that are among the oldest in existence. German scholars Gerd R. Puin who studied the manuscripts discovered that some of the Qu'ranic writing diverges from the authorised version, which by tradition is considered the pure, unadulterated word of God . What's more, some of the writing appears to have been inscribed over earlier, "rubbed-out" versions of the text. This editing supports the belief of John Wansbrough and his pupils that the Qu'ran as we know it does not date from the time of Mohammad. In ''Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam'', Crone argues that the early Muslim converts turned to Islam because it promised an Arab state based on conquest, rape and pillage. :"God could scarcely have been more explicit. He told the Arabs that they had a right to despoil others of their women, children and land, or indeed that they had a duty to do so: holy war consisted in obeying." BIBLIOGRAPHY Main author
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