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

prophet of Allah as early as 685—the first such official proclamation. 36 The coins carried the inscription
“In the name of God, Muhammad is the messenger of God (bismillah Muhammad rasul Allah).” 37
Hoyland remarks that this “would mean that the earliest attested Islamic profession comes from an
opposition party. This is not implausible. That the revolt of Abdullah ibn Az-Zubair had religious
implications is confirmed by a contemporary Christian source, which says of him that ‘he had come out of
zeal for the house of God and he was full of threats against the Westerners, claiming that they were
transgressors of the law.’” 38
Abd al-Malik emulated Ibn Az-Zubair in minting coins bearing the inscription Muhammad rasul Allah
—“Muhammad is the messenger of God.” In 696 Abd al-Malik's associate Hajjaj ibn Yusuf (d. 714), who
served as governor of Iraq after the defeat of Ibn Az-Zubair, had coins minted that contained the full text
of the Islamic confession of faith: bism Allah la ilah ila Allah wahdahu Muhammad rasul Allah (“In the
name of God, there is no deity but God on His own; Muhammad is the messenger of God”). 39 (This text is
different from the common phrasing of the shahada in some ways—for example, in placing the bismallah
at the start.)
Even as these proclamations appeared on coins, the situation remained in considerable flux: Some
coins minted in this era bore the confession of faith but still pictured rulers; one depicted rulers with
crosses on their crowns. 40
Regardless, the reign of Abd al-Malik marked an all-important turning point. His reign also witnessed
the first references by non-Muslims to “Muslims,” as opposed to “Hagarians,” “Ishmaelites,”
“Muhajirun,” and “Saracens,” and to the Qur'an itself. Nothing of this sort was recorded for sixty or
seventy years after the Arab conquests began.
Did Abd al-Malik essentially invent Islam, or begin investing it with details about Muhammad and his
teaching, to unify and strengthen his empire? The Muhammad coin that Ibn Az-Zubair minted make it
unlikely that Abd al-Malik originated the idea of the Islamic prophet, but it is possible that he
expropriated and greatly expanded on the nascent Muhammad myth for his own political purposes.
There are hints of this. Much of what we know of Islam may be traced to Abd al-Malik's reign.
According to a hadith reported by the respected Islamic scholar as-Suyuti (d. 1505) and others, the caliph
himself claimed, “I have collected the Qur'an (jama'tul-Qur'ana).” 41 This report emerged very late, and it
contradicted well-established traditions holding that the caliph Uthman, who reigned from 644 to 656,
collected and standardized the text of the Qur'an. But it is hard to explain why this hadith would have been
invented at such a late date unless it contained some kernel of authenticity. Other hadiths back the claim
that the Qur'an came together during the reign of Abd al-Malik. Some traditions record that Hajjaj ibn
Yusuf collected and edited the Qur'an. And several hadiths affirm that Hajjaj added the bulk of the
diacritical marks to the core text of the Qur'an, making it possible for the first time to read it without
confusion—and, not incidentally, fixing the Islamic character of the text. 42 According to one hadith, the
jurist Malik ibn Anas (d. 795) recalled that “reading from the mushaf”—that is, a codex of the Qur'an
—“at the Mosque was not done by people in the past. It was Hajjaj b. Yusuf who first instituted it.” 43
Intriguingly, the fifteenth-century Hadith scholar Ibn Hajar (1372–1448) notes that Hajjaj “had a pure