The term “Late Antiquity” has long been used to designate the period from the Christianization of Rome to the rise of Islam and the Arab conquests (from approximately the fourth to the seventh centuries CE). It has supplanted the older, Eurocentric term “Dark Ages,” which suggests an age characterized by decline. In contrast, scholars now see Late Antiquity as an era of startling creativity and dramatic change that reshaped the interconnected Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds. Far from merely being the transitional period between classical antiquity and the Middle Ages, it clearly merits careful study as an historical epoch of unique political, religious, social, and cultural significance in its own right.
Among scholars of Islam, Late Antiquity has taken on a special significance as more and more research shows the myriad ways in which the Qur’an and early Islam were shaped by their environment—both the imperial milieu of the Byzantine Empire and its eastern counterpart, the Sasanian Empire, and the religious and cultural matrix of late antique Judaism and Christianity. It is increasingly clear that the relationships between the Qur’an and formative Islam on the one hand and the other religious traditions of the pre-Islamic and early Islamic era on the other must be framed as a tripartite conversation between Jews, Christians, and the community of believers (mu’minun) who eventually came to call themselves Muslims.
Scholars now widely recognize the numerous continuities between the religion, culture, politics, and society of Late Antiquity and that of early Islam, continuities I have examined in a number of publications. My work in this area ranges from theoretical and methodological considerations of the concept of Late Antiquity as it relates to the Qur’an and Islam, as well as dealing with more specialized subjects such as prophecy and scriptural exegesis as they are illuminated through a comparative lens that locates these subjects in the late antique cultural and religious milieu.
ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS
“From the Mishnah to Muḥammad: Jewish Traditions of Late Antiquity and the Composition of the Qur’an”
Studies in Late Antiquity 7 (2023) [forthcoming]
“Editor’s Introduction: Eastern Perspectives on Late Antiquity”
Mizan: Journal for the Study of Muslim Societies and Civilizations 3.1 (Fall 2018)
DOI: 10.17613/9gd0-vw24
Review Essay: “Positivism, Skepticism, and Agnosticism in the Study of Late Antiquity and the Qur’an”
Journal of the International Qur’anic Studies Association 2 (2018): 169–199
DOI: 10.5913/jiqsa.2.2017.a008
[Review of G. W. Bowersock, The Crucible of Islam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017) and Carol Bakhos and Michael Cook (eds.), Islam and its Past: Jahiliyya, Late Antiquity, and the Qur’an (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017)]
“Exegesis”
Routledge Handbook on Early Islam
Herbert Berg, ed.
Abingdon: Routledge, 2017, 98–125
“Ahab, Bar Kokhba, Muhammad, and the Lying Spirit: Prophetic Discourse before and after the Rise of Islam”
Revelation, Literature, and Community in Late Antiquity
Philippa Townsend and Moulie Vidas, eds.
Berlin: Mohr Siebeck, 2011, 271–313
SHORT ESSAYS
Introduction to edited online forum Conflict and Convergence in Late Antiquity: Judaism and Christianity at the Origins of Islam
Published on Mizan, November 11, 2015
“About Global Late Antiquity”
Published on Mizan, October 27, 2015
ENCYCLOPEDIA ARTICLES
Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009–)
“Aniconism, III. Islam” (1 [2009]: 1219–1224)
“Constantine I The Great, II. Islam” (5 [2012]: 677–681)
“Conversion, V. Islam” (5 [2012]: 732–738)
“Ctesiphon” (5 [2012]: 1133–1136)
“Elchasaites, II. Islam” (7 [2013]: 580-581)
“Interpretation, History of, V. Islam” (13 [2016]: 121–131)
The Routledge Encyclopedia of Ancient Mediterranean Religions (Routledge, 2016)
Contributed entries on “ʿAbd al-Malik”; “ʿArabiyya”; “Caliph”; “Dajjal”; “Dome of the Rock”; “Fiqh”; “Fitna”; “Himyar”; “Madhhab”; “Najran”; “Night Journey”; “Qadi”; “Ridda”; “Risala of al-Shafiʿi”; “Satanic Verses”; “Seal of the Prophets”; “Sunni”; “Tafsir”; “ʿUthmanic Recension”
BOOK REVIEWS
Stephen Shoemaker, The Apocalypse of Empire: Imperial Eschatology in Late Antiquity and Early Islam
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018
Review of Qur’anic Research 6.7 (2020)
Uriel I. Simonsohn, A Common Justice: The Legal Alliances of Christians and Jews Under Early Islam
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011
Islamic Law and Society 21.3 (2014): 309–315