Research Approaches in research of Early Islam

The Hijrah in western Historiography

Abstract

This article centres around this question: how do modern researchers view the Hijrah and its being a historical event or process which took place in a specific time and place. The general  convention is the Hijrah is the emigration of the Prophet Muhammad and his followers from Mecca to Al-Madinah in the summer of 622 CE. yet, a closer examination reveals that the Hijrah is deeply and inextricably tied to the chronological reconstruction of the emergence of Islam and its conquests. Some researchers have argued that the Hijrah was a different historical event, for instance, a campaign of Jews and Arabs - led and inspired by Muhammad - to liberate the Holy Land from Christian hold; still others view the Hijrah as a later historical process, during which Arab warriors migrated to new garrison towns established in the lands conquered by Islam. 

The premise in this article is that the answer to the historical essence of the Hijrah is primarily a historiographical one, which is connected to the historical method and its interpretations. This article will demonstrate how the understanding of the Hijrah has developed via the correlation between traditional historiography - which is derived from the classical Muslim narrative, and new insights which have emerged in recent decades - and are based both on reinterpretation of existing evidence, as well as new evidence (mostly non-Islamic). Considering the central role that the revisionist work by Patricia Crone and Michael Cook, Hagarism, has had on the discussion on the Hijrah, its main thesis will be examined in this paper and compared to both the traditional research approach and the integrative and neo-traditionalist approaches that followed this work.