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Article Excerpt
Preface
In following the footsteps of my predecessors Dupuis, Volney, Taylor, Woolley, Holbach, etc. concerning the myth of the Christian legends, I have finally completed several years of research about the hero of Islam, Mohammed. Fanatics still revere an aging charlatan in Iran, as do the people in Rome who bow before the latest representative of the Dark Ages. Up to know, no one has seriously considered planting the flag of serious doubt in the realm of Arabic history.
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We have many extant accounts of a hero doing the not-too-nouvelle marvelous in a land where stories abound in epic description such as the Thousand-and-One Arabian Nights, Ali Babba and his Forty Thieves, Aladdin and the Magical Lamp, plus many other legends of that stamp. I wish to give in this essay some food for thought that we do in fact have the One-Thousandth-and-Second Arabian Night story in the much-venerated man-legend of Islam.
That Jesus Christ had no real existence, all scholars with any study and rationality know. But of the story, ratherlegend, of Mohammed--have we not been mistaken about one more 'man'?
The Myth of the Man Mohammed
During the night of August 29, 1987 of the vulgar era, I finished the accumulation of several years of questions plus the gathering of information that led to a startling discovery. As an Atheist, I could see no reason why one cannot also crash into the sanctuary of the Imams of the Muslim nations and put to the test the amazing, let us say, incredible tales they expound in their sacred literature.
Now as all who have not relinquished their reason will concede, there is no such thing as inspired literature and it is impossible that there could be any. We must first ask ourselves how the events of a famous person were first noted and if the chronologies of the events of this person's life as penned either by self or by others, are in accord with each other. We also ask if the events related to our minds correspond with the real world or with the land of phantoms, also known as the land of sacred and inspired books. Let us see what I have uncovered.
In his work Mohammed, D. S. Margoliouth lists the earliest known commentaries* on the events of Mohammed, with none being near the assigned time of the prophet of Islam's era. Margoliouth lists the Musnad of Ibn Hanbal, who died in 241 AH (after Hegirah) or 855 CE. Then, concerning Tabaril's Commentary on the Koran, 310 AH or 922 CE and the Isabah, or the dictionaries of persons who knew Mohammed, by Ibn Hajar (circa 1853 CE), Margoliouth notes that the dates are late. Moreover, Ibn Hajar's sources--as well as the matter there-in--are from records and sources no longer accessible. No comment necessary here. Of early Arabic writers, we have 'Amr the son of Bahr, called Al-Jahiz, who died in 255 AH or 868 CE--still rather late, as are the four landmarks of Christianity--the four fictions known as the gospels. We then come to Ibn Ishak, 150 AH or 767 CE, Wakidi, 207 AH or 823 CE, Ibn Sa'd of 230 AH or 845 AD, Ibn al-Athir of 639 AH or 905 AD, Diyarbekri of 982 AH or 1574 CE and Halabi of 1044 AH or 1634 CE--all much too late when one knows the Arabian ability for inventing fabulous tales.
We can quote on but for fear of boring the reader, we shall refer to Margoliouth's book Mohammed and the Rise of Islam which has been reprinted and is still obtainable.
I do wish here to quote an interesting section in Goldziher's Mythology Among The Hebrews, 1967 printing, in which he deals with Islamic literature:
The Mohammedan legends and popular traditions present instances of borrowing stories which in some foreign cycle of legends are connected with favorite heroes of that cycle, by substituting for the foreign heroes those who are well known in Mohammedan tradition. In this manner many Iranian local traditions and stories were changed and interpreted in a Mohammedan sense after the subjection of the mind of Iran to the dominion of Islam. This phenomenon meets us at every step in the history of the religions and stories of the East to West. I will here limit myself to the quotation of a single instance. The mountain Demawend in the region of Reyy plays an important part in the old Iranian story of the war of the great king Feridun with Zohak Buyurasp; to this mountain the conqueror of the demons chained the inhuman monster and made it powerless for evil. Now the Mohammedan legends borrowed Suleyman (Solomon) from the Jews., and invested him with the characteristics which the Agada narrates of the great king of the Hebrews ... (page 354). "... Appropriation and transformation of Greek myths are probably rarer. The case quoted in the text is an instance of such appropriation, in which the place of the less-known personages in the Greek myth is occupied by the more familiar ones of Nimrod and his family.... from Yakut's Geographical Dictionary, IV-351 we find that the writer is speaking of a place called al-Lajun west of the Jordan, and says: "In the middle of the village of al-Lajun is a round rock with a dome over it, which is believed to have been a place of prayer for Abraham. Beneath this rock is a well with abundant water. It is narrated that on his journey to Egypt Abraham came with his flocks to this place, where there was insufficient water, and the villagers begged him to go on farther, as there was too little water even for themselves; but Abraham struck his staff against the rock, and water flowed copiously from it. This rock exists to this day." No further examination is needed to show that this Mohammedan legend is only a transformation of the biblical one of Moses. Yet Ibrahim has been substituted for Musa, a name equally familiar to Mohammedan legends. (page 355).
The reader is asked to examine Goldziher's Hebrew Myths plus his Islamic Studies, both still available.
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