Hagarism

Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World

Cover of the first edition
Authors	Patricia Crone and Michael Cook
Country	United States
Language	English
Subject	Islam
Published	1977
Pages	277
ISBN

Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World is a 1977 book about the early history of Islam by the historians Patricia Crone and Michael Cook. Drawing on archaeological evidence and contemporary documents in Arabic, Armenian, Coptic, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin and Syriac, Crone and Cook depict an early Islam based on Christian and Jewish origins different from traditional mythology. The book has been hailed as a controversial but seminal work in its branch of Islamic historiography.

The word "Hagarism" relates to the 7th-century Arabian Peninsula Hagarene tribes, i.e. the descendants of the Egyptian servant girl Hagar, who bore Abraham their son Ishmael.

According to the book Hagarism, the Arab conquests and the formation of the caliphate were a peninsular Arab movement inspired by Jewish messianism. In alliance with the Jews, the Arabs attempted to reclaim the Promised Land from the Byzantine Empire. The Qur'an was a product of 8th-century edits of various materials drawn from a variety of Judeo-Christian and Middle-Eastern sources while Muhammad was the herald of Umar "the redeemer", a Judaic messiah.