Chapaev
30th September 2008, 22:44
http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/13134/sec_id/13134
N. A. Morozov propounded the theory that until the Crusades, Islam was indistinguishable from Judaism and that only then did Islam receive its independent character, while Muhammad and the first caliphs were mythical figures. Morozovs arguments, first developed in his Christ (1930), are summarized by Smirnov, In the Middle Ages Islam was merely an off-shoot of Arianism evoked by a meteorological event in the Red Sea near Mecca; it was akin to Byzantine iconoclasm. The Koran bears the traces of late composition, up to the eleventh century. The Arabian peninsula is incapable of giving birth to any religion - it is too far from the normal areas of civilisation . The Arabian Islamites, who passed in the Middle Ages as Agars, Ishmaelites, and Saracens, were indistinguishable from the Jews until the impact of the Crusades made them assume a separate identity. All the lives of Muhammad and his immediate successors are as apocryphal as the accounts of Christ and the Apostles.
Under the influence of Morozov, Klimovich published an article called Did Muhammad Exist? (1930), in which he makes the valid point that all the sources of our information on the life of Muhammad are late. Muhammad was a necessary fiction since it is always assumed that every religion must have a founder. Whereas another Soviet scholar, Tolstov , compares the myth of Muhammad with the deified shamans of the Yakuts, the Buryats, and the Altays. The social purpose of this myth was to check the disintegration of the political block of traders, nomads, and peasants, which had brought to power the new, feudal aristocracy. Vinnikov also compares the myth of Muhammad to shamanism, pointing to primitive magic aspects of such ritual as Muhammad having water poured over him.
N. A. Morozov propounded the theory that until the Crusades, Islam was indistinguishable from Judaism and that only then did Islam receive its independent character, while Muhammad and the first caliphs were mythical figures. Morozovs arguments, first developed in his Christ (1930), are summarized by Smirnov, In the Middle Ages Islam was merely an off-shoot of Arianism evoked by a meteorological event in the Red Sea near Mecca; it was akin to Byzantine iconoclasm. The Koran bears the traces of late composition, up to the eleventh century. The Arabian peninsula is incapable of giving birth to any religion - it is too far from the normal areas of civilisation . The Arabian Islamites, who passed in the Middle Ages as Agars, Ishmaelites, and Saracens, were indistinguishable from the Jews until the impact of the Crusades made them assume a separate identity. All the lives of Muhammad and his immediate successors are as apocryphal as the accounts of Christ and the Apostles.
Under the influence of Morozov, Klimovich published an article called Did Muhammad Exist? (1930), in which he makes the valid point that all the sources of our information on the life of Muhammad are late. Muhammad was a necessary fiction since it is always assumed that every religion must have a founder. Whereas another Soviet scholar, Tolstov , compares the myth of Muhammad with the deified shamans of the Yakuts, the Buryats, and the Altays. The social purpose of this myth was to check the disintegration of the political block of traders, nomads, and peasants, which had brought to power the new, feudal aristocracy. Vinnikov also compares the myth of Muhammad to shamanism, pointing to primitive magic aspects of such ritual as Muhammad having water poured over him.