HIST 433 - Muhammad and the Origins of Islam

This course examines the historical context of the emergence of Islam, its origins in seventh-century Arabia, and the rapid Islamic imperial conquests of the Byzantine and Sassanian Near East and much of the Mediterranean world by the mid-eighth century. We will examine important themes in the formation of the classical Islamic religious, legal, and historiographical traditions down to the early tenth century. Since the majority of the population resisted conversion to Islam during this period, we will also examine how Jewish, Christian, and Zoroastrian subjects of the new Islamic empire were able to retain their distinctive religious identities while at the same time accommodating themselves to and interacting with the new Islamic imperial order in areas of politics, society, law, religion, marriage, burial practices, warfare, etc.

Section 801

Required

• Jews and the Qur'an (2022)
  Bar-Asher, Meir
  ISBN: 978-0691211350
• Muhammad's Grave: Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society (2011)
  Halevi, Leor
  ISBN: 978-0231137430
• In God's Path: The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire (2017)
  Hoyland, Robert
  ISBN: 978-0190618575
• Damascus After the Muslim Conquest: Text and Image in Early Islam (2011)
  Khalek, Nancy
  ISBN: 978-0199736515
• The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque: Christians and Muslims in the World of Islam (2010)
  Griffith, Sydney
  ISBN: 978-0691146287

Textbooks and materials can be purchased at the CSU Bookstore unless otherwise indicated.

Textbooks and materials can be purchased at the CSU Bookstore. Most of the textbooks are also available for checkout as eBooks from the CSU library.