Fred Donner

Fred McGraw Donner (* 1945 in Washington, DC ) is an American historian of Middle Eastern history and Islamic scholar at the University of Chicago .

At the center of Donner's research is the historical-critical examination of the emergence of Islam. Donner dealt with revisionist Islamic studies in numerous works . In this context, he rejected their extreme form, which completely rejects the Islamic tradition of early Islamic history. Nevertheless, Donner's works (based on his work The Early Islamic Conquests ) are characterized by a rather skeptical attitude towards early Islamic tradition, especially since he considers the revisionists' critical attitude towards Islamic sources to be justified. Donner has even taken the position in recent years that Islam emerged as a “movement of believers”, in which Christians and Jews were originally included as members with equal rights, and that a split from these did not take place until the late 7th century.

Life

Donner was born in Washington, DC and grew up in Basking Ridge , New Jersey . In 1968 he completed his Bachelor of Arts in Oriental Studies from Princeton University . From 1966 to 1967 he interrupted his studies to study Arabic at the Middle East Center for Arab Studies (MECAS) in Shemlan , Lebanon . From 1968 to 1970 he served in the US Army , a. a. 1969/70 in Herzogenaurach in Germany. 1970–71 he studied oriental philology at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg . He then went back to Princeton to do his PhD. In 1975 Donner obtained his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies .

From 1975 to 1982 he taught Middle Eastern history at Yale University . In 1982 he became a professor at the University of Chicago at the Oriental Institute and Department of Near Eastern Languages ​​and Civilizations . From 1997 to 2002 he was its president.

From 1992 to 1994 Donner was President of the Middle East Medievalists . From 1992 to 2011 he was editor of the journal Al-Usur al-Wusta: The Bulletin of Middle East Medievalists In 2007, Donner received a Guggenheim grant to research Arabic papyri from the first century of Islamic history from collections in Paris, Vienna, Oxford and Heidelberg .

From 2009 until today, Donner was director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago. Donner is currently the President of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA). He was a member of MESA since 1975 and a member of the Board of Directors of MESA from 1992 to 1994. In 2008 he received the Jere L. Bacharach Service Award from MESA. Donner is also a member of the American Oriental Society .

research

Donner's book The Early Islamic Conquests (1981) was recognized as "masterful" and as "an important contribution to the understanding of early Islamic history". In 1993 Donner also translated a volume of the history of at-Tabarī .

In his work Narratives of Islamic Origins from 1998 Donner dealt with the early Islamic tradition. Donner describes the extreme position in research, which questions the entire early Islamic tradition, as a skeptical approach . He does not mean that these researchers are only skeptical of the source tradition - which Donner also pleads for, especially with regard to the Islamic historiography of the conquests, which was written with a clear time lag to the events described - but rather the informative value of the all of the early Islamic tradition as a whole. Donner argued in favor of an early date for the text of the Koran. In this way, Donner reacted in particular to the theory of a late canonization of the Koran text, as proposed by John Wansbrough and Yehuda D. Nevo . The work shows how the need for legitimation of rule in the developing Islamic community gave rise to those issues that are at the center of Islamic historiography, in particular prophethood, community, hegemony and leadership. In this context, Donner pleaded for a critical examination of the sources, which also includes the respective historical context.

In 2010 Donner published his major work Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam . Thunder explains his understanding of the origin of the religious movement that later came to be known as Islam. Due to the historical criticism of the classical Islamic traditions, which were only written 150-200 years after Mohammed, Donner arrives at a different picture than the traditional one. Donner's main thesis is that Islam began as a “believers' movement” initiated by Mohammed and, in addition to the followers of the message of the Koran, also included Christians and Jews as equal members. It was not until Abd al-Malik (685-705) that Islam began to break away from Christians and Jews.

This thesis was presented in 1993 in London at a workshop entitled “Late Antiquity and Early Islam”. The thesis was first published in the article “From Believers to Muslims” in the journal Al-Abhath 50-51 (2002-2003), pp. 9-53.

Reception and criticism

Fred Donner is recognized in the professional world as a leading researcher into early Islamic history. His more recent thesis of the early days of Islam as a kind of “ecumenical” movement of “believers” met with a positive response from the public.

Patricia Crone (a leading exponent of the revisionist discipline) believes that Fred Donner's thesis is built on a weak foundation. In addition to some verses from the Koran addressing Jews and Christians as "believers", Donner would be based on unsubstantiated assumptions. The positive reception in the public comes from the fact that Donner paints an image of Islam that suits the zeitgeist, according to Crone.

Works

• The Early Islamic Conquests (Princeton University Press, 1981) ISBN 0-691-05327-8
• The History of al-Tabari (Vol. 10): The Conquest of Arabia (State University of New York Press, 1993) ISBN 0-7914-1072-2 (translation)
• Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing (Darwin Press, 1998) ISBN 0-87850-127-4
• Muhammad and the Believers. At the Origins of Islam (Harvard University Press, 2010) ISBN 978-0-674-05097-6

Web links

• Donner's Page at the University of Chicago

Remarks

1. ↑ ^{a b} Portrait of Fred Donner on the University of Chicago website
2. ↑ See Fred Donner: Narratives of Islamic Origins. The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing. Princeton 1998, pp. 25ff.
3. ↑ See the foreword in Paul M. Cobb (Ed.): The Lineaments of Islam: Studies in Honor of Fred McGraw Donner. Leiden / Boston 2012, here p. 6ff.
4. ↑ Al-Usur al-Wusta: The Bulletin of Middle East Medievalists
5. ↑ University of Chicago article on the Guggenheim Fellowship, April 12, 2007
6. ^ Hugh Elton in Bryn Mawr Medieval Review BMMR No. 9410/1994; Mahmood Ibrahim, Review of The Early Islamic Conquests in: International Journal of Middle East Studies Vol. 15 No. November 4, 1983; pp. 577-579
7. ↑ See Fred Donner: Narratives of Islamic Origins. The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing. Princeton 1998, p. 20, note 47.
8. ↑ Fred Donner: Narratives of Islamic Origins. The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing. Princeton 1998, pp. 62f.
9. ↑ Fred Donner: Narratives of Islamic Origins. The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing. Princeton 1998, pp. 291ff.
10. ↑ Patricia Crone: Among the Believers Tablet Magazine August 10, 2010
11. ^ New York Times, The Muslim Past , Sunday Book Review by Max Rodenbeck June 25, 2010
12. ↑ Patricia Crone: Among the Believers Tablet Magazine August 10, 2010