robert spencer-did muhammad exist__ an inquiry into islams obscure origins-intercollegiate studies institute (2012) (1)

Was That Muhammad?
In light of all this, can it be said that the Doctrina Jacobi refers to Muhammad at all? It is difficult to
imagine that it could refer to anyone else, as prophets who wielded the sword of conquest in the Holy
Land—and armies acting on the inspiration of such prophets—were not thick on the ground in the 630s.
The document's departures from Islamic tradition regarding the date of Muhammad's death and the content
of his teaching could be understood simply as the misunderstandings of a Byzantine writer observing these
proceedings from a comfortable distance, and not as evidence that Muhammad and Islam were different
then from what they are now.
At the same time, there is not a single account of any kind dating from around the time the Doctrina
Jacobi was written that affirms the canonical Islamic story of Muhammad and Islam's origins. One other
possibility is that the unnamed prophet of the Doctrina Jacobi was one of several such figures, some of
whose historical attributes were later subsumed into the figure of the prophet of Islam under the name of
one of them, Muhammad. For indeed, there is nothing dating from the time of Muhammad's activities or
for a considerable period thereafter that actually tells us anything about what he was like or what he did.
One apparent mention of his name can be found in a diverse collection of writings in Syriac (a dialect
of Aramaic common in the region at the time) that are generally attributed to a Christian priest named
Thomas and dated to the early 640s. But some evidence indicates that these writings were revised in the
middle of the eighth century, and so this may not be an early reference to Muhammad at all. 5 Nonetheless,
Thomas refers to “a battle between the Romans and the tayyaye d-Mhmt” east of Gaza in 634. 6 The
tayyaye, or Taiyaye, were nomads; other early chroniclers use this word to refer to the conquerors. Thus
one historian, Robert G. Hoyland, has translated tayyaye d-Mhmt as “the Arabs of Muhammad”; this
translation and similar ones are relatively common. Syriac, however, distinguishes between t and d, so it
is not certain (although it is possible) that by Mhmt, Thomas meant Mhmd—Muhammad. Even if “Arabs
of Muhammad” is a perfectly reasonable translation of tayyaye d-Mhmt, we are still a long way from the
prophet of Islam, the polygamous warrior prophet, recipient of the Qur'an, wielder of the sword against
the infidels. Nothing in the writings or other records of either the Arabians or the people they conquered
dating from the mid-seventh century mentions any element of his biography: At the height of the Arabian
conquests, the non-Muslim sources are as silent as the Muslim ones are about the prophet and holy book
that were supposed to have inspired those conquests.
Thomas may also have meant to use the word Mhmt not as a proper name but as a title, the “praised
one” or the “chosen one,” with no certain referent. In any case, the Muhammad to which Thomas refers
does not with any certainty share anything with the prophet of Islam except the name itself.
Sophronius and Umar
No one who interacted with those who conquered the Middle East in the middle of the seventh century
ever seems to have gotten the impression that a prophet named Muhammad, whose followers burst from
Arabia bearing a new holy book and a new creed, was behind the conquests. 7