Dan Gibson

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Daniel "Dan" Gibson (*  1956 ) is a Canadian private scholar and historian of the early Arab and Islamic periods .

Life

Dan Gibson is the son and grandson of two British-Canadian private historians who were enthusiastic about biblical history for religious reasons and who passed this interest on to their son and grandson. Dan Gibson first came to Arabia in his early twenties . After graduating from high school and theological studies, he spent his entire life researching the history of the Arabian Peninsula, living with his family alternately in Canada and in various Middle Eastern countries . Dan Gibson has four children and now lives in Canada .

research

At first, Dan Gibson was interested in the history of Arab and Nabatean trade in the 300 BC period. BC to 500 AD After he noticed contradictions between the archaeological findings and the traditional historiography of Arabia and Islam, Dan Gibson began to research the background to these contradictions. Because of his religiously based tendency to read traditional texts like the Bible or the Koran as literally as possible, Dan Gibson did not simply dismiss the traditional stories of Mecca as "fictitious", as many Islamic scholars do today. Rather, Dan Gibson tried to find an explanation for why the texts do not match reality. Although the starting point of the investigation was not purely scientifically motivated, the research question itself is fully scientifically justified. After ten years of research specifically on this topic, his book Qur'ānic Geography was published in 2011 .

Basically, Dan Gibson has the following research results:

  • The geographical references in the Koran are all concentrated in northwest Arabia near Petra and not near Mecca.
  • Up until the year 724 AD, all mosques were directed towards the city of Petra in Jordan and not towards Jerusalem or Mecca. Errors in the builder's calculations or modern measurement errors can be ruled out, as these errors would be too large and too systematic. In 1977, Crone and Cook noticed that some of the older mosques were not geared towards Mecca.
  • It was not until the year 822 that all mosques were consistently aligned with the city of Mecca.
  • The city of Mecca does not fit the descriptions of Mecca in the Koran and Islamic historiography, and Mecca was not on any trade route at that time, as the historian Patricia Crone found out in 1987. In addition, there are no archaeological findings from the seventh century in Mecca. An archaeobotanical study also shows that those plants never grew in Mecca that the Koran reports for Mecca.
  • The city of Petra in Jordan, on the other hand, fits perfectly with the descriptions in the Koran and Islamic historiography in a wealth of details and was also the center of the Arab pilgrimage immediately before the establishment of Islam.
  • In the earliest Koran manuscripts the verses about changing the direction of prayer from an unnamed place (traditionally one thinks of Jerusalem) to Mecca (2: 143-145), as well as the only verse in which the Koran contains the word "Mecca" (48 : 24).
  • The attacks of the Meccans against Medina all came from the north, i.e. from Petra, while Mecca is in the south of Medina.
  • The distances mentioned in Islamic tradition suddenly make sense if you relate them to Petra instead of Mecca.

On this basis, Dan Gibson developed the theory that Mohammed , the prophet of Islam, did not live in Mecca but in Petra. Patricia Crone and Michael Cook had already suggested in their work Hagarism in 1977 that Islam must have originated somewhere in north-west Arabia rather than Mecca. The Kaaba or the black stone in the Kaaba is said to have been brought from Petra to Mecca during the second Islamic civil war . The victorious Abbassids would then have enforced the new orientation towards Mecca. The memory of Petra was lost after a strong earthquake made Petra uninhabitable, or rather the memory of Petra was deliberately erased from history by the Abbassids. The spelling of “Mekka” and “Bekka”, d. H. Petra, is almost identical in Arabic. With the exception of the Koran, practically the entire existing tradition about the beginnings of Islam comes from the Abbassid period. Islam scholars regard these traditions as questionable and unhistorical in many ways.

Reception and criticism

Dan Gibson's book has been very reluctant to take notice of Islamic scholars. One reason for this is Dan Gibson's supposedly religious background and lack of professional academic work, which he is accused of. This has indeed influenced his research, e.g. B. in his premature assumption that the library of Alexandria was destroyed by the Arabs. Another reason is that Islamic scholars are very careful to agree with a hypothesis if it concerns the early Islamic period because of its influence on the Islamic world today. An example of such a hesitant reception is Michael Lecker's review of Dan Gibson's Qur'ānic Geography in the Journal of Semitic Studies in 2014. This review ends with the telling sentence: “The imaginative writing style of this book may have its adherents, perhaps even in academic circles . But the study of early Islamic history is better served by taking small steps, one after the other. "

His theories became known to a wider public through the 2016 television documentary The Sacred City .

Works

  • Dan Gibson: Qur'ānic Geography - A survey and evaluation of the geographical references in the Qur'ān with suggested solutions for various problems and issues . Independent Scholar's Press 2011. ISBN 978-0-9733-6428-6
  • Dan Gibson: The Nabataeans: Builders Of Petra . CanBooks 2004. ISBN 978-1-4134-2734-9 .

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ a b Information on Dan Gibson's biography taken from his website, his book Qur'ānic Geography and the Amazon author information for his book: [1] , [2] , [3] , [4]
  2. ^ Dan Gibson: Qur'ānic Geography (2011)
  3. ↑ Crone / Cook: Hagarism (1977); P. 23
  4. ↑ Crone / Cook: Hagarism (1977); P. 24
  5. ↑ [5] Michael Lecker, Review of: Dan Gibson, The Qur'anic Geography, in: Journal of Semitic Studies (Autumn 2014) Vol. 59 Issue 2; pp. 465-467. German translation for Wikipedia; Original: "This book's imaginative writing may have its followers, perhaps even in academic circles. But the study of early Islamic history is better served by small steps, one at a time."
personal data
SURNAME Gibson, Dan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gibson, Daniel (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian historian
DATE OF BIRTH 1956