Islam emerged amid flourishing Christian and Jewish cultures, yet
students of Antiquity and the Middle Ages mostly ignore it. Despite
intensive study of late Antiquity over the last fifty years, even
generous definitions of this period have reached only the eighth
century, whereas Islam did not mature sufficiently to compare with
Christianity or rabbinic Judaism until the tenth century. Before and
After Muhammad suggests a new way of thinking about the historical
relationship between the scriptural monotheisms, integrating Islam into
European and West Asian history.Garth Fowden identifies the whole of the
First Millennium--from Augustus and Christ to the formation of a
recognizably Islamic worldview by the time of the philosopher
Avicenna--as the proper chronological unit of analysis for understanding
the emergence and maturation of the three monotheistic faiths across
Eurasia. Fowden proposes not just a chronological expansion of late
Antiquity but also an eastward shift in the
geographical frame to embrace Iran.In Before and After Muhammad, Fowden
looks at Judaism, Christianity, and Islam alongside other important
developments in Greek philosophy and Roman law, to reveal how the First
Millennium was bound together by diverse exegetical traditions that
nurtured communities and often stimulated each other.
