Hagarism

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Clive
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Joined: Sun Aug 17, 2014 2:20 pm

Re: Hagarism

Post by Clive »

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/a ... and-review
The Roman and Persian empires are traditionally seen as collapsing into a void that our schoolbooks called the Dark Ages. Holland's thesis is that there was no void: depending on how you interpret the material, the decline of those empires led to the rise of the Arabs, or the rise of the Arabs led to their decline. To test this idea, Holland ranges around the centuries.
"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
ghost
Posts: 503
Joined: Wed Oct 30, 2013 9:12 am

Re: Hagarism

Post by ghost »

Does Holland provide more details on how the Byzantines withdrew from Syria?
Clive
Posts: 1197
Joined: Sun Aug 17, 2014 2:20 pm

Re: Hagarism

Post by Clive »

Someone pointed this out, but without a link.

Did the koran use parts of Herodotus' propaganda document?
Here is Van Bladel explaining the dating, and he relies heavily on the scholar Reinink. The explanations are extraordinarily detailed and convincing:

"The next part of the story is crucial to dating the text. Alexander puts an inscription on the gate containing a prophecy for events to follow his lifetime. These events are given precise dates. First he says that after 826 years, the Huns will break through the gate and go by the pass above the Haloras River14 to plunder the lands. Then after 940 years, there will come a time of sin and unprecedented worldwide war. “The Lord will gather together the kings and their hosts,” he will give a signal to break down the wall, and the armies of the Huns, Persians, and Arabs will “fall upon each other.”15 So many troops will pass through the breach in the wall that the passage will actually be worn wider by the spear-points going through. “The earth shall melt through the blood and dung of men.”16 Then the kingdom of the Romans will enter this terrible war and they will conquer all, up to the edges of the heavens. In closing, Alexander cites the prophet Jeremiah, 1:14, “And evil shall be opened from the north upon all the inhabitants of the earth.” Clearly this corresponds closely with Q 18:99–102, the fifth and last part of the story of Dhu l-Qarnayn.

There are still some details and a conclusion to the story in the Syriac text that have no corresponding part in the Qur’an. When Alexander comes into conflict with the King of Persia, called Tûbarlaq, then, with the help of the Lord, who appears on the chariot of the Seraphim along with the angelic host, Alexander’s armies are inspired to conquer the king of Persia. When he is captured, the Persian king Tûbarlaq promises to give Alexander tribute for fifteen years in return for a restoration of the borders. But Tûbarlaq’s diviners predict that at the end of the world, the Romans will kill the king of Persia and will lay waste to Babylon and Assyria. Tûbarlaq himself puts the prophecy in writing for Alexander, saying that the Romans will conquer the entire world and rule it all before handing power over to the returning Messiah. The Alexander Legend finally comes to an end with the remark that at the end of Alexander’s life, he establishes his silver throne in Jerusalem just as he had promised. This last episode is not reflected in the Qur’anic story, but it has proven important in recent scholarship in assigning a date to the Syriac text (to be discussed later)."

Followed by this explanation. Hold on, for it is technical:

"The second of the two dates, 940 years after Alexander, which marks the time of the final war preceding the Messiah’s return according to the prophecy, is converted likewise to 628–9 CE. The message of the prophecy actually concerns events around this date, which coincides with the end of a long and extremely difficult war between the Persians and the Romans (603–30) during which Jerusalem was devastated, the relic of the True Cross stolen from that city, and the Persians conquered Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, occupying Anatolia, too, and they even besieged Constantinople itself in 626 CE in concert with the Avars, who invaded from the north. The Byzantine remainder of the Roman Empire was only barely saved from the Persian onslaught by the emperor Heraclius’ daring campaign through Armenia, ending in the winter of 627–8 with a surprise invasion into Mesopotamia and damaging raids on the rich estates around Ctesiphon. In these invasions the Türks joined the Byzantines in raids south of the Caucasus at Heraclius’ invitation and afterwards continued to make war on Persian territory in Transcaucasia, plundering until 630. The Byzantine invasion of Mesopotamia led the Persian nobles to remove their King of Kings, Khosro II, from power in February of 628 and to negotiate for peace.33 Persian forces occupying former Byzantine territory withdrew to Persia in 629, and early in 630 Heraclius personally returned the relic of the True Cross to Jerusalem in a formal celebration. (Just a few months before Heraclius’ arrival in Jerusalem, tradition tells us, the inhabitants of Mecca surrendered peacefully to Muhammad and submitted to his government.) Given the date that Alexander’s prophecy signals, 628–9 CE, it must be referring to the devastating wars of that time and their successful end for the Romans.

Reinink has shown that the Alexander Legend demonstrates, through its prophecy and its use of Alexander to prefigure the emperor Heraclius, detailed knowledge of the events of that war and its resolution with the restoration of the earlier borders, a peace treaty, and a final reference to Jerusalem. Using this information, too much to repeat entirely here, he has persuasively argued that the Alexander Legend was composed just after 628, perhaps in 630, the year in which Heraclius restored the cross to Jerusalem.34 In the course of the war, while the Byzantines were very hard pressed by the Persians, Heraclius resorted to highly religious propaganda in order to rally his allies and to improve Roman morale. This propaganda has received recent scholarly attention.35 Likewise Heraclius’ attempts to eradicate the schisms in the Church after the war are well known. Reinink considers Alexander Legend to be a piece of pro-Heraclian postwar propaganda designed to promote the emperor’s political cause not long after the war’s end, re-establishing Roman rule over provinces that had been under Persian power for well over a decade and trying to overcome the schismatic Christological differences dividing his Chalcedonian court from the monophysites of the provinces recently recovered from the Persians. His thesis is that the Syriac Legend of Alexander was composed “shortly after 628” (i.e. in 629 or 630) by an inhabitant of Amida or Edessa, or some other place near to those, in support of Heraclius.36 He argues that the monophysite Syrians were the primary audience (although it is possible that the story was intended also to win over monophysites of other nations such as Arabs).37 Heraclius’ visit to Edessa in late 629 might have been an occasion for its composition. It is also possible that the text was written a few months later when Heraclius restored the cross to Jerusalem
They also referenced.


http://www.academia.edu/4287472/Le_Cora ... age_récent
"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
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