The Qur’ānic Pagans and Related Matters

The late Patricia Crone (d. 2015) was one of the most provocative scholars ofearly Islam. She is infamous for Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World(1977), which she co-authored with Michael Cook. That she has disavowedsome of its more skeptical conclusions may surprise many of her fiercest critics,as well as those revisionists who still invoke them. This current volume,however, demonstrates that while she has not disavowed any of her skepticalapproaches to the study of this field, to her great credit she remained open torevising her views as new evidence presented itself. Reprints comprise mostof this volume, although two chapters have not previously been published.Even the reprints, however, were selected, arranged, and in some cases revisedby Crone herself. All of the articles are tied together by subject matter and methodology.They focus on the mushrikūn (lit. associators), whom she calls “Qur’ānic pagans,”and for the most part seeks to reconstruct their religion, particularlyduring the Makkan period. She takes as her point of departure G. R. Hawting’sThe Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam (1999), which argues thatthe mushrikūn were monotheists and not idolaters (another common translationof the term). In hoping to show that he was mistaken, Crone was promptedto read the Qur’an systematically and, in so doing, discovered that these peoplewere not the pagans depicted in the Hadith, sīrah, tafsīr, or Ibn al-Kalbi’sBook of Idols ...