Books by Sean W . Anthony
In Muhammad and the Empires of Faith, Sean W. Anthony demonstrates how reading non-Muslim and Mus... more In Muhammad and the Empires of Faith, Sean W. Anthony demonstrates how reading non-Muslim and Muslim sources in tandem with a critical eye can breathe new life into the historical study of Muhammad and the world that his message transformed. By placing these sources within the intellectual and cultural world of Late Antiquity, Anthony offers a fresh assessment of the earliest sources for Muhammad’s life, taking readers on a grand tour of the available evidence, and suggests what new insights stand to be gained from the techniques and methods pioneered by countless scholars over the decades in a variety of fields. Muhammad and the Empires of Faith offers both an authoritative introduction to the multilayered traditions surrounding the life of Muhammad and a compelling exploration of how these traditions interacted with the broader landscape of Late Antiquity.
What historical continuity, if any, existed between the practice of crucifixion in the early Isla... more What historical continuity, if any, existed between the practice of crucifixion in the early Islamic polity and crucifixion as practiced by the Byzantines in the Late Roman empire and by the Sasanids in Persia? Crucifixion and Death as Spectacle explores how the first caliphal dynasty of early Islam, the Umayyads, employed crucifixion in its sundry forms to punish brigands and heretics and to humiliate rebels and enemies, and how, while doing so, the Umayyads drew upon a late antique legacy of punitive practices associated with crucifixion in the Late Roman and Sasanid Persian worlds. Like their Roman and Persian predecessors, the Umayyads wielded crucifixion, and thus the symbolism of violence against the body, to attest to their impunity as caliphs and the legitimacy of their rule. Yet, as this study also argues, this is only one side of the story. Dissidents and political rivals mobilized stories of crucified rebels and martyrs, as told and memorialized by Christians and Muslims alike, against the Umayyads in order to contest and subvert the sublimation of crucifixion as an indubitable symbol of the caliphs' use of legitimate violence, and succeeded in propagating alternative religious and political ideologies of their own.
The Caliph and the Heretic: Ibn Sabaʾ and the Origins of Shīʿism, IHC 91 (Leiden: Brill, 2011)
This book is an examination of the traditions and legends concerning early Islam’s first and most... more This book is an examination of the traditions and legends concerning early Islam’s first and most infamous heretic, the Yemenite Jew known as ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sabaʾ. Tracing the evolution and transformation of the many stories and narratives about Ibn Sabaʾ as adapted by Sunnī and Shīʿī scholars alike, this work attempts for the first time to give a comprehensive account of the formation of the image of Ibn Sabaʾ as the quintessential heretic of Islam’s early years. It also offers a new interpretation of the historical importance and beliefs of Ibn Sabaʾ and those early Shīʿa reviled as his followers, the Sabaʾīya. The end result is a revolutionary, new portrait of Shīʿite origins and early Islamic sectarianism.
Analysing Muslim Traditions Studies in Legal, Exegetical and Maghāzī Ḥadīth, IHC 78 (Leiden: Brill, 2010; pbk. 2013)
"Since its inception, the study of Ḥadīth conducted by scholars trained in the Western academic t... more "Since its inception, the study of Ḥadīth conducted by scholars trained in the Western academic tradition has been marked by sharp methodological debates. A focal issue is the origin and development of traditions on the advent of Islam. Scholars' verdicts on these traditions have ranged from “late fabrications without any historical value for the time concerning which the narrations purport to give information” to “early, accurately transmitted texts that allow one to reconstruct Islamic origins”. Starting from previous contributions to the debate, the studies collected in this volume show that, by careful analysis of their texts and chains of transmission, the history of Muslim traditions can be reconstructed with a high degree of probability and their historicity assessed afresh.
On GoogleBooks:
http://books.google.com/books?id=TghRcqivmvwC&lpg=PR1&ots=qDj19yc2c2&dq=%22analysing%20muslim%20traditions%22&pg=PR1#v=onepage&q&f=false"
Papers by Sean W . Anthony
Studies in Late Antiquity, 2025
This article revisits a leitmotif of modern Western scholarship on the Qur'an: the historical-cri... more This article revisits a leitmotif of modern Western scholarship on the Qur'an: the historical-critical appraisal of its accounts of the end of Jesus's earthly mission and its apparent denial of his crucifixion. Whereas most modern studies have sought to contextualize these passages by reading them in light of late ancient Christianity, especially its heresiology, this study adopts a different approach. These qur'anic narratives are read not against the backdrop of Christian sectarianism in Late Antiquity but rather as a response to late ancient Jewish polemics against, and parodies of, the life of Jesus of Nazareth. KEYWORDS Jesus of Nazareth, Qur'an, crucifixion, Jews and Judaism in Arabia, Toledot Yeshu
A ‘Rediscovered’ Letter of the Umayyad Caliph ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (r. 99–101/717–720): Caliphal Authorship and Legal Authority in al-Risāla fī l-fayʾ
Rulers as Authors in the Islamic World, ed. Maribel Fierro, Sonja Brentjes, and Tilman Seidensticker, IHC 213 (Leiden: Brill, 2024), 2024
Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 2022
The intriguing textual history of Q. Maryam 19:19 remains neglected in modern scholarship. This s... more The intriguing textual history of Q. Maryam 19:19 remains neglected in modern scholarship. This study offers an analysis of this textual history in light of new insights from the codicology of early Qurʾan manuscripts. Further, it puts forward suggestions for how one might interpret the verse and its rival readings in light of its textual history and motifs associated with the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary in the homiletic literature of Syriac Christianity in Near Eastern Late Antiquity.
The Conversion of Khadījah bint Khuwaylid
Conversion to Islam in the Premodern Age: A Sourcebook, 46-50. Edited by Nimrod Hurvitz, Christian Sahner, Uriel Simonsohn, and Luke Yarbrough. Oakland: University of California Press, 2020
The Umayyad World, 36-64. Edited by Andrew Marsham. London: Routledge., 2021
Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 2019
According to the standard accounts of the codification of the Qurʾān, the third caliph ʿUthmān b.... more According to the standard accounts of the codification of the Qurʾān, the third caliph ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān compiled the archetypal codex (muṣḥaf) that serves as the authoritative ancestor for all copies of the Qurʾān. ʿUthmān's standardized codex includes 114 Sūras in total, but the caliph allegedly excluded two additional Sūras that appeared in the pre-ʿUthmānic codex of Ubayy b. Kaʿb, a Companion of the Prophet much revered for his knowledge of the Qurʾānic revelation. This study compiles the evidence for the exclusion and existence of these two non-canonical Sūras, collates the earliest testimonies to the text of each Sūra, and offers an evaluation of the two Sūras' historicity and their relationship to the early Qurʾānic corpus.
Journal of the International Qur'anic Studies Association, 2018
In this response to Prof. Hawting’s Presidential Address, I offer my views on the centrality of t... more In this response to Prof. Hawting’s Presidential Address, I offer my views on the centrality of the Meccan sanctuary to the message of the Qur'an in the Meccan period, its subsequent salience in the Medinan period, and the evidence for its continued importance for the Muslims of the seventh century. Reverence for the Meccan sanctuary, I argue, was pivotal to the early community’s self-understanding as a discrete community, both distinct from the “People of the Book” (ahl al-kitab) and as a successor community with a shared biblical lineage. I contend, moreover, that reverence for a sanctuary in Mecca and its attendant rites was regarded as a touchstone feature of the religiosity of the newly hegemonic conquerors from Arabia by the earliest contemporary observers of the conquests and their aftermath.
Shii Studies Review, 2019
A review article of Shahab Ahmed’s posthumously published monograph, Before Orthodoxy: The Satani... more A review article of Shahab Ahmed’s posthumously published monograph, Before Orthodoxy: The Satanic Verses in Early Islam (HUP, 2017)
"Ibn Wāḍiḥ al-Yaʿqūbī: A Biographical Sketch," The Works of Ibn Wāḍiḥ al-Yaʿqūbī, 3 vols., ed. Matthew S. Gordon, Chase F. Robinson, Everett K. Rowson and Michael Fishbein (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 1: 9-22
Biblical prooftexts for the prophethood of Muḥammad play a prominent role in early Muslim interes... more Biblical prooftexts for the prophethood of Muḥammad play a prominent role in early Muslim interest in the Bible. This study re-examines the earliest known attempt by Muslims to find such a biblical prooftext in the New Testament – the Arabic version of Jesus’s sermon on the ‘advocate/comforter’ (Gk. paráklētos) in John 15:23-16 found in Ibn Isḥāq’s Kitāb al-Maghāzī. Key to understanding Ibn Isḥāq’s adaptation of the Johannine text, this study argues, is the Christian Palestinian Aramaic Gospel behind it as well as the climate of late-antique apocalypticism and messianism out of which Ibn Isḥāq’s distinctively Islamic version emerged. This study concludes with an interpretation of Qurʾān 61:6, which appears to claim that Jesus prophesied a future prophet named Aḥmad.
Journal of the International Qurʾanic Studies Association, 2016
Journal of Early Christian Studies, 2015
The biography of the eighth-century theologian John Damascene has long posed seemingly intractabl... more The biography of the eighth-century theologian John Damascene has long posed seemingly intractable problems of historical interpretation for modern scholars, but recent research into his writings and the composition of the hagiographical traditions about his life have made new insights into his biography possible. This essay aims to expand upon these recent contributions by reviewing the evidence for the outlines of John Damascene’s biography that can be gleaned from an examination of the history of his family, the Manṣūrs, and their place in Umayyad Syria during the seventh to eighth centuries C.E.
One the earliest non-Islamic testimonies to the existence of the Prophet Muḥammad can be found wi... more One the earliest non-Islamic testimonies to the existence of the Prophet Muḥammad can be found within the Byzantine apologetic tract known as the
Doc-trina Iacobi nuper baptizati
. Frequently dated by modern historians to as early as July 634 , the tract curiously asserts that the prophet who had appeared “among the Saracens” claimed to possess “the keys to paradise.” This essay investigates this claim and the prevalence of the “keys to paradise” motif in late-antique Chris-tian literature and the early Islamic tradition to provide a new evaluation of the text’s place in and importance to the historiography of Islamic origins.
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Books by Sean W . Anthony
On GoogleBooks:
http://books.google.com/books?id=TghRcqivmvwC&lpg=PR1&ots=qDj19yc2c2&dq=%22analysing%20muslim%20traditions%22&pg=PR1#v=onepage&q&f=false"
Papers by Sean W . Anthony
Doc-trina Iacobi nuper baptizati
. Frequently dated by modern historians to as early as July 634 , the tract curiously asserts that the prophet who had appeared “among the Saracens” claimed to possess “the keys to paradise.” This essay investigates this claim and the prevalence of the “keys to paradise” motif in late-antique Chris-tian literature and the early Islamic tradition to provide a new evaluation of the text’s place in and importance to the historiography of Islamic origins.
On GoogleBooks:
http://books.google.com/books?id=TghRcqivmvwC&lpg=PR1&ots=qDj19yc2c2&dq=%22analysing%20muslim%20traditions%22&pg=PR1#v=onepage&q&f=false"
Doc-trina Iacobi nuper baptizati
. Frequently dated by modern historians to as early as July 634 , the tract curiously asserts that the prophet who had appeared “among the Saracens” claimed to possess “the keys to paradise.” This essay investigates this claim and the prevalence of the “keys to paradise” motif in late-antique Chris-tian literature and the early Islamic tradition to provide a new evaluation of the text’s place in and importance to the historiography of Islamic origins.
transmission and, therefore, has proposed alternative, text-critical renderings of the Quranic ductus itself. This article offers a third —hopefully more compelling — reading, wherein the phrase ‘the dye of God’ is read in light of similar baptismal metaphors scattered throughout the Christian literature of Near Eastern Late Antiquity.