Violence In Early Islam Religious Narratives The Arab Conquests And The Canonization Of Jihad Marco Demichelis by Marco Demichelis 9780755637997, 9780755638024, 0755637992, 0755638026 instant download after payment.

The concept of jihad holds a prominent place in in Islamic theology and history. Beyond its spiritual meanings, the term has historically been associated with the sweeping Arab conquests of the 8th century BCE. But given advances in our understanding of the historicity and chronology of the Qur’an and early Islamic texts, is it correct to identify jihad and Islam with violent conquest?
In this book, Marco Demichelis explores the history of the concept of jihad in the early years of Islam. Deploying an interdisciplinary approach which combines the hermeneutical study of the early hadiths and the famous ‘Verses of the Sword’ within the Qur’an itself, with historical writing by Islamic chroniclers as well as non-Islamic contemporary sources, numismatics, epigraphical and architectural evidence, the book questions the relationship between the religious concept of jihad and the conquests. The book argues that Christian Arabs who previously fought against the Persians may have had a formative effect on the later emergence of more bellicose rhetoric. So doing, it calls into question assumptions about warlike attitudes inherent within Islamic doctrine, and reveals a more nuanced and complicated history of religious violence in the pre, proto and early Islamic period.