This volume deals with the methodological and theoretical issues of the study of Islamic origins. Each of the twelve articles examines a different aspect of Islamic origins: early Islamic history including the life of the Prophet, the Sunna and ḥadīth, tafsīr and the Qur'ān, and the rise of Islamic law. Both sceptical (or revisionist) scholars and sanguine (or traditionalist) scholars examine and employ the various contemporary theories on the development of Islam in the first 3 centuries A.H. In so doing, they seek to exemplify the sources and methodologies used to support these theories and to discuss their relative merits.
Herbert Berg, Ph.D. (1996) in the Study of Religion, University of Toronto, is an Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. His research interests are Islamic origins and tafsīr and he has published
The Development of Exegesis in Early Islam (Curzon, 2000).
All those interested in the history of early Islam, the biography of Muḥammad, ḥadīth and Sunna, tafsīr, and early Islamic law.