GR Hawting

Gerald R. Hawting (* 1944 ) is a British historian and Islamic scholar .

Life

Hawting was a student with Bernard Lewis and John Wansbrough , and received his Ph.D. in 1978. He is Professor Emeritus of Middle Eastern History at the London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).

research

As a student of John Wansbrough, Hawting focused on the question of the religious milieu in which Islam arose. To this end, he analyzed in detail all available sources about the religions on the Arabian Peninsula in the period before Islam. In Hawting's opinion, Islam did not emerge in a world of polytheism, as the traditional Islamic traditions, which only emerged 150 to 200 years after Mohammed, tell us. Instead, Islam arose out of a conflict among monotheists who accused themselves of not being real monotheists and who therefore polemically accused themselves of worshiping images.

Another focus of his research is the Umayyad period, which was of great importance for the development of Islam as a religion. Hawting was a representative of the Revisionist School of Islamic Studies .

Works

• The First Dynasty of Islam: The Umayyad Caliphate AD 661-750 (1986).
• John Wansbrough, Islam, and monotheism (1997).
• The Idea of ​​Idolatry and the Rise of Islam: From Polemic to History (1999).

As editor and co-author:

• Approaches to the Quran (1993).
• The Development of Islamic Ritual (2006).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Department of History: Professor GR Hawting. Last accessed August 2016
2. ↑ Norman Calder: Review of: The first dynasty of Islam, by GR Hawting , in: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies Volume 51 Issue 1 (February 1988), p. 131