Gerald Hawting

Gerald R. Hawting (born 1944) is a British historian and Islamicist.

Hawting's teachers were Bernard Lewis and John Wansbrough. He received his Ph.D. in 1978. He is Emeritus Professor for the History of the Near and Middle East at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London.

In the line of John Wansbrough, Hawting concentrated on the question for the religious milieu in which Islam came into being. He analyzed all available sources about the religions on the Arabian peninsula in the time before Islam in detail. According to Hawting, Islam did not develop within a world of polytheism as is reported by the traditional Islamic traditions which were written 150 to 200 years after Muhammad. Instead, Islam came into being on the basis of a conflict among various types of monotheists which considered each other to fail in living a perfect monotheism, and considering each other to practice idolatry.

Another theme of Hawting's research is the period of the Umayyad dynasty which was of great importance for the formation of Islam as a religion. Hawting was a representative of the Revisionist School of Islamic Studies.

As editor and co-author:

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