SPENTA MAINYU

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: "Ignorance is an affront."

YOU ARE IN DARKNESS
 Islam page 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

AFTER THE MESSENGER

 

NATIONALIST EXPANSIONISM

According to the story rewritten by the desert Arabs, Makkans have ignored the Messenger and his messages in those early days.  Islamic literature asserts that if the pilgrims from Medina hadn’t adopted the new codebook, Islam would have continued as a local religion in Makka, and the Messenger would have been just a Kureyshi nabî. This push given by the pilgrims from Makka has made the Messenger the messenger of Makka and its environs. But still he was a local messenger. According to Kuran 6:92 and 42:7, “The Book is intended for the ‘umm-ul-kura’ (mother of the towns=Makka) and the vicinity, and the Messenger is charged with cautioning Makka and its vicinity.”

In spite of this original understanding, the Messenger was transformed into a universal admonisher later. Desert Arab editors of Kuran in later periods must have decided that the status of a ‘Kureyshi prophet for Arabs, chosen from amongst them, and sent to caution the Makkans’ was not sufficiently strong for the Messenger who had started the movement, which was in the process of transformation into an imperialistic tool in toppling empires and subjugating nations. A ‘universal messenger of the supreme creator’ must have sounded much more fitting for the Messenger from Midian. In other words the later desert Arab editors of Kuran must have started feeling that the seeds have taken root. Therefore, a universal codebook and a universal messenger were called for, so they must have written the new messages and descriptions accordingly.

  

FOREIGN STRUCTURES ARE BUILT ON THE TEMPLE HILL

The Hagarene invaders took Yerushalim in 637 or 638 A.D., only 16-17 years after the commencement of their campaign in Medina. They captured the city of Amîd (presently Diyarbakır in south-eastern Turkey) and Harran (the Haran of the Av’ram myth) nearby, only seventeen years after their movement in 622 A.D. But the Messenger was not with them he was dead.

When Yerushalim fell to the Ismaelites Sophronius handed the keys to caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab, who entered the city as the conqueror in 637 A.D., (there is no consensus on the year) and reportedly went to the Temple Mount and declared the place a sacred prayer ground for the ‘Muslims’. A small mascid-prayer house was reportedly built there immediately, which was enlarged around 670 A.D. to hold 3000 people, and eventually it became the Aksa mosque (Grand Larousse Encyclopédique). Another place of veneration (Dome of the Rock=Kubbet-üs Sahra) was built in 691 A.D.

The following entry (actually found only in an addition of the Georgian translation) concerning a construction, dated by tradition at 638 A.D. (soon after the capture of Yerushalim ca. 637 A.D.) appears in a work originally composed by John Moschus (died 619 A.D.), but expanded by Sophronius (died ca. 639 A.D.) - Pratum spirituale. The entry reportedly appears in a portion concerning Sophronius as recounted on the authority of his contemporary, the archdeacon Theodore, and may have been written down ca. 670 A.D.:

We should remember the testimony by bishop Sebeos at this point:

Here is a quote from the notes by Arculf the pilgrim (fl. 670s A.D.):

As we gather from these quotes, the leaders of the Ismaelite-Jewish alliance of the early days have gone up to the Temple Mount as soon as they captured Yerushalim and the Jews have constructed their prayer house by the approval of their allies.

The place of veneration-prayer house from where the Jews were evicted must have been standing on the spot where the Dome of the Rock=Kubbet-üs Sahra stands today. The Dome was built in 691 A.D. We are told that the remains of the Temple can be seen included in the Dome of the Rock. In his interesting research, Ya’akov Ofir claims the Dome of the Rock was built in 691 A.D. for the Jews as their ‘last house’ of prayer by their ally Abd al Malik, the Umayyad ruler of Damascus. Abd al Malik controlled also the land of Israel in those days. The Jews who built the house reportedly believed that their redemption had already come. Therefore, Ofir concludes that the Dome of the Rock is a Jewish building, which means that the Dome of the Rock has never been used as a Muslim mascid, and even today, when the Arabs pray on the Temple Mount they do it in the Aksa mosque. Ya’akov Ofir maintains that the pro-Jewish ruler, Abd al Malik, never built a mosque on the Temple Mount. Rather, he ordered his subjects to pray in the beautiful underground entrance to the Temple Mount behind the Hulda Gates. Jews of the time reportedly called Abd al Malik the ‘Righteous’, but the Islamic historians called him ‘kâfîr’ (unbeliever, infidel). Muslims had replaced his name with the Abbasid al Mamum in the writings in the Dome. The ‘sahra’ (rock) was considered the ‘navel’ of the Earth. Therefore, could we say that the Dome of the Rock represents this ‘navel’?

Abd al Malik had reportedly given the Jews the right to manage the affairs of the Temple Mount. He allowed them to light the candles in the Dome of the Rock and in the place where his subjects prayed in the hall of the Hulda Gates. He returned the Temple Mount to the Jews. Interestingly, even the coins that he minted were similar to the Jewish coins of the time of the Hasmoneans. So, evidently after the destruction of the Second Temple Jews had the complete control of the Temple Mount and they used the remains of the Temple to build a house of prayer for themselves.

Maimonides has written that in 1165 he visited Yerushalim and went up on to the Temple Mount and prayed in the great, holy house on the place of the Holy of Holies.

The Jews who had visited the Temple Mount in the early days of the Hagarene occupation have reportedly spoken of a Jewish house of prayer there. This is mentioned in ‘A House of Prayer and Midrash for the Jews on the Temple Mount in the Days of the Arabs’ by ben Tzion Dinur, who records the very early testimonies of Jews in his article. These testimonies make clear that the Jews were evicted from the Temple Mount at a later period in Arab history.

But question remains: Why the prayer house built allegedly for the Jews was transformed into a place of veneration for the Muslims? Remember Dr. Hawting’s quotation of an Islamic tradition, where we learn that caliph Suleyman (715-717 A.D.) went to Makka to ask about the Hac (Hajj) but was not satisfied with the behaviour there, because Abdullah ibn-ul Zubayr the caliph in Makka was challenging the Omayyad rule in Palestine. So caliph Abd al Malik (of the Omayyads) decided to divert the annual pilgrimage from Makka and Medina to Yerushalim and had the Dome erected over the sacred stone sahra in 691 A.D. In the end caliph Suleyman chose to follow Abd al Malik’s choice and visited the Dome of the Rock. This may be taken as an indication again of the inherent tension between the Arabs of the desert and the northern Arabs. Caliph Suleyman’s action might have contributed also to the confusion as to the location of the sanctuary as late as the early 8th century A.D. Furthermore, Caliph Suleyman’s trip to Makka may be taken as an indication that at long last this city had started assuming the role of the religious centre of Islam decades after the Messenger’s death. It also shows that the desert Arabs have somehow managed to change the place of the ‘sacred shrine’ from Bakka in Palestine to Makka.

Here is what ben Yerucham (the Karait) has reportedly said:

The ‘eviction’ mentioned in the above quote must have come with the initiation of the transformation of the Ismaelite-Hagarene teaching into Islam. The Dome of the Rock and the Al Aksa mosque are foreign structures on the Temple Mount. According to the five books of Moses (first five books of the Old Testament), which even the Muslims believe, the Temple Mount is the site of only one house, the house of the god of Israel.

 

TIME TO BREAK UP…KIBLA IS CHANGED

The Hagarenes had a teaching of their own, which they shaped in line with their priorities, requirements and history. Hagarenes have embarked on their adventure together with the Jews. But following the death of the Messenger transformation of the Ismaelite teaching has begun. It was turned into the nationalist, expansionist ideology of Islam. Because of this transformation nationalist Arabs began to consider the Jews and Christians as rivals of the new ideology.

If we read the codebook of Islam the divine ‘voice’ which the Messenger had supposedly heard from time to time wanted the believers to respect the moral values like, to be virtuous, devoted to god, and be moderate in sexual relations. These messages belonged to the Hagarene period. The believers were called mu’min, mu’minun (‘the faithfuls’) in the beginning, but with the transformation into Islam these labels were replaced by Muslim, müselman, müslüman, and müslümânân (‘the surrendered’). These words were used to describe also the people who heeded the calls of the past messengers. But following the fall of Medina the ‘voice’ from up there has changed direction. As Caetani points out that Kuran has become a book communicating decrees on internal matters and publishing daily orders to believers. The style of the ‘voice’ has changed accordingly. The machinery established in Medina was a theocratic state. Allah had the last say. Allah was communicating his orders only via the Messenger. The new doctrines were creating a completely new system, and the Islamic ideology had only one slogan to build upon: An Arab religion for Arabs. This is the explanation of the official ideology.

The inference is that the alliance between the Ismaelite-Hagarenes and the Jews had broken up upon orders from the Messenger when he was still alive, but this is wrong. The Ismaelite-Jewish alliance lasted years after the death of the Messenger. This wrong impression has originated from the desert Arabs, and there is nothing wrong with it, on the contrary, it is only natural. Because any teaching has to be rigid, menacing, and forbidding in order to hold on to its following and to separate itself from the other ideologies. Therefore, the nationalist ideology, Islam, created by transforming the Ismaelite-Hagarane teaching had to follow a separate road from its former allies. The most important attempt in this separation process was the change of kıbla.

Such a major event, like the change of kıbla, must have had its effect on and triggered a major transformation in the physical environment of Islam. According to the tradition, Caliph Walid I (705-715 A.D.) wrote to all the regions, ordering the demolition and enlargement of the mosques (‘Kitab al-uyun wal-hadaiq’, edited by M. de Goeje and P. de Jong). Could this reconstruction work be essentially about changing the direction of the kıbla from Yerushalim (in reality it was Bakka) to Makka, and outwardly presented as an ‘enlargement’ of the structures? If so, is this not a contradiction between the facts of life and Kuran 2:144-150, which established Makka, Ka’ba as the sanctuary, and the direction for prayers when apparently the Messenger was still alive? If the real purpose was to change the mihrabs of the mosques in line with the change of kıbla, the records indicate that it was done in the 8th century, some 80-90 years after the time specified by the official literature.

The desert Arabs felt the need to find a credible reason for the change of kıbla while they were transforming the Hagarene teaching. According to the solution found by the official ideology the ‘divine voice’ from the celestial realm ordered the Messenger ‘to quit the Jewish doctrine which claims that god has completed the creation in six days and rested on the seventh. Because god did not rest on the seventh day.’ According to the official ideology, the Messenger has decided to cut his relations with the Jews before the battle of Badr, regardless of the consequences. He banned his followers from turning to Yerushalim for prayers and ordered them to turn to Makka instead. The Messenger ordered his followers to fast in the month of the Badr battle. He abolished also the obligation for his followers to observe the ‘ashura’ fast of the Jews.

Here are some points to remember:

Alliance between the Ismaelite movement and the Jews was beneficial for the cause of the desert Arabs who transformed the original teaching. The Temple on mount Zion has outshined the original Israelite-Samaritan sacred temple in Bakka, Shechem. The ‘house of god’- Beth El (Beyt El, Beyt-u Elah, Beytullah) of the Samaritans has fallen to the background and become ‘local’ in comparison with the Jews in the forefront. In other words, Bakka’s condition was suitable to be written off.

The rivalry between the northern and southern Arabs may well have been one of the causes of Yerushalim’s recognition as the kıbla in the north. We understand that the northern Arabs have tried to establish a place of veneration in Yerushalim for the yearly hac (hajj) in place of Ka’ba, Makka in the South.

Do not forget that if we go by what is written in Kuran the direction of the kıbla was changed to Makka and the break with the Jews had occurred close to 624 A.D. (Kuran 2:144,149-150). But;

The contradiction between the statement in the codebook (2:144-150) and the actual facts is due to the editorial work done by the desert Arabs while they rewrote the text according to their wishes.

 

A PLACE CALLED MAKKA

 We have a ‘sacred place’, the location of which is a matter of debate. First of all, we must find out what we know about this place.

Ka’ba is in Makka, so by implication, Makka is considered by Muslims as the first and most important village in the world! In fact much of the official story about the Messenger revolves around Makka, as his formative years were allegedly spent there, and it was to Makka that he sought to return while in exile in Medina. However, in spite of all that importance attached to Makka, it is mentioned directly or indirectly in only seven places in Kuran. Keeping in mind the importance attached to Makka and to Ka’ba near it, these few references seem strange, does it not? Moreover, the number of references to Ka’ba is even lower: Just two. When one remembers the countless references to the ‘Temple’ and the city of Yerushalim in the Old Testament, you will get what I mean.

It is impossible to find any documentary or archaeological evidence that indicates Abraham has ever been to Makka. We do not know even if Abraham as presented in the Old Testament has ever existed! Moreover the only references to Ibrahim and Ismail building or rebuilding Ka’ba are in Kuran (I would like to refer you to my comparison of the Av’ram-Beth El and Ibrahim-Ismail-Ka’ba stories, and to the similarities in the narrations)

Let us recap:

It is also very difficult to find any reference to the village we know as Makka before the advent of Islam. Research has shown that there is a reference to a city called ‘Makoraba’ by the Greco-Egyptian geographer Ptolemy in mid-2nd century A.D. The ‘smart’ researchers desperately trying to find a credible reference to the existence of Makka in the historical ages have claimed that Makoraba was Makka. Nonsense! The difference between the root letters making up Makka, mkk, and the letters making the word Ma-koraba, krb, needs no further explanation. It is impossible to find any reference to Makka or Ka’ba in any authenticated ancient document until one reaches the early 8th century. Crone and Cook tell us that the earliest substantiated reference to Makka occurs in the Continuatio Byzantia Arabica, a source dating from the reign of caliph Hisham, 724-743 A.D. In other words, the earliest supporting evidence for the existence of Makka comes from a period 100 years after the date the Islamic tradition and Kuran place it.

We must ask our crucial questions:

Extensive research done by Richard W. Bulliet on the history of trade in the ancient Middle East paints a different picture than the traditional Islamic legend. The Muslim claims seem to be quite wrong: “Makka simply was not on any of the major trading routes, because Makka is tucked away at the edge of the peninsula. Only by the most tortured map reading can it be described as a natural crossroads between a North-South route and an East-West one.”

Research carried out by N. Groom and W. W. Muller corroborates this view. They have written, “Makka simply could not have been on the trading route, as it would have entailed a detour from the natural route along the western ridge.” In fact, they assert that the trade route must have bypassed Makka by some one hundred miles.” 

Moreover the Greco-Roman trade with India has already been collapsed by the 3rd century A.D. Therefore, in the Messenger’s time there was neither an overland route nor a Roman market to which the trade was destined. The trade remained there, was controlled by the Abyssinians and not the Arabs; and not Makka but Adulis, the port city on the Abyssinian coast of the Red Sea, was the trading centre of that region.

The Greek historians Cosmas, Procopius and Theodoretus were closer to the events of the time, and the Greeks to whom the trade went had not even heard a place called Makka. If Makka were so important, certainly those traders would have noted its existence. P. Crone in her work points out that the Greek trading documents refer to the towns of Ta’if (which is to the southeast of and close to the present day Makka), and to Yathrib (later Medina), as well as Kaybar/Khayber  (means ‘fortress’ in Hebrew) in the north, but there is no mention of Makka. Under these circumstances, the historicity of a settlement right at the centre of the early Islam becomes doubtful.

Finally, in addition to the disagreement as to the geographical location of Makka in the early secular sources, there is also a degree of confusion even within the Islamic tradition. According to the research carried out by J. van Ess (also in Muhammad bin Ahmad al-Dahabi, 1369), in both the first and second civil wars, there are accounts of people proceeding from Medina to Irak via Makka. Since I have taken up this matter earlier, I will not go to details here but suffice to say that Makka is to the southwest of Medina, and Iraq to the northeast.

I believe that the third case reveals the truth. In reality the ‘Makka’ of those days was most probably Bakka. But when the desert Arabs began transforming the Hagarene teaching, they have substituted Bakka with Makka.

As things are, we are faced with a dilemma. The ancient Greek and historical documents paint the following picture:Makka was not the great commercial centre like the later Muslim traditions try to make us believe.

If all these observations do reflect the truth, then who in their right mind could claim that Makka had been the centre of the Muslim world at that time.

There is no Makka in Kuran. There are only seven references to a ‘sacred place’ or shrine. In six verses (14:37, 27:91, 43:31, 47:13, 48:24 and 95:3) a ‘place’ is mentioned but it is extremely doubtful whether that ‘place’ actually is the Makka of today, and the seventh verse, 3:96, gives the name of that ‘sacred place’, the ‘house of god’, as Bakka. This is extremely strange. Makka is not cited in the codebook but Bakka is. What is the reason behind the absence of such an important centre of faith, Makka, a focal point, in the codebook of the belief system?

Now we have to make note of some crucial observations:

These points indicate that Makka has never been thought of or designated as the first beyt (the ‘ouse of god’) by the architects of the Hagarene movement.  

Official Islamic ideology presents Bakka as the old name of Makka. Therefore, if we speculate on the hidden meanings of ‘new an old’ in this statement we can say the following:

Those people who cannot bring themselves to accept anything outside the later Islamic literature must be the ones behind the replacement of Bakka with Makka. By doing so they must have hoped;

Makam-ı Ibrahim (Av’ram’s place) is the name given by the Islamic literature to a stone associated with Ibrahim (Av’ram) near the Ka’ba in the courtyard of the Great Mosque of Makka. There is no indication that the mythological character called Av’ram has ever been to the deserts of Arabia and Makka. 

As far as we know the locals of Makka do not have a tradition connecting Av’ram with Makka, which means that the ‘Av’ram in Makka’ story must have been the invention of the later editors of the codebook, and the related literature.  I have explained elsewhere in this site that a character like Av’ram was absolutely necessary for the Messenger to claim ‘ascendancy’ over the Jews and Christians, and to ‘call them to their senses.’ But there is absolutely no archaeological proof of Av’ram’s presence in Hicaz and the Arabian Peninsula. Ibrahim (Av’ram) did not build Ka’ba with his son Ismail (Ish’mael) as the desert Arabs claim. According to the Jewish teaching Av’ram took his slave Hagar/Hacar and her son Ish’mael out into the desert of Paran not very far from Petra and left them there. But the desert Arabs must have taken this story and changed the names of the locations, thus taking Av’ram as far down as Makka, to make him and the Hagarene teaching theirs, which was originally Sabian-Mandaean.

If Av’ram has never been in Hicaz, how a stone supposedly erected by him could be in Makka? 

Our answers to all these questions are positive. Then why is Makka the ‘sacred’ settlement of our day? Once again, Makka does not appear in Kuran, and we are told that it is also non-existent in the maps of those days, which means that there was no Makka on the agenda in the 7th century A.D. The distinguished geographer Paul Vidal de la Blache of the 19th century A.D. was an expert in the trade routes of the ancient times. He used Ptolemy’s (2nd century A.D.) geographic records and showed that Makka was non-existent.

Makka of the 6th and 7th centuries A.D. exists only in the Muslim literature. Tradition (Ab-ul Farac, Kitab-ul Aganî) tells, “Makka was ruled by the Amalekites.” These Amalekites were an Arab tribe, which is considered as the ‘most ancient’ of the Arab tribes. Arab scholar Ab-ul Feda (13th century A.D.) wrote that “Shem (Noah’s son) had several sons, among them Laud, to whom were born Pharis, Djordjan, Tasm and Amalek” (Historia Anteislamica, ed. H. O. Fleischer). By this reference Ab-ul Feda accredits Amalekites with a primeval existence. Other Muslim historians, who declare this Arabian tribe as of Hamite stock, give its ancestral line correspondingly (‘Amalik’- M. Seligsohn, The Encyclopedia of Islam). So These Amalekites reportedly ruled Makka and the whole of the Arabian Peninsula until the great ‘upheaval’, which was caused most probably by the volcanic eruption and destruction of Santorini. This tradition has come down to us in Kitab-el Aganî by Ab-ul Farac, where it is written that this ‘upheaval’ made the Amalekites leave Makka and move northwards (Ages in Chaos, Immanuel Velikovsky).

Masudi (10th century A.D.) mentions the tradition of a catastrophe (“signs of god’s rage”), which killed many in Makka:

In the following quote Omeyah son of Abu Salt of the tribe of Takif could be referring to this event:

Velikovsky makes a note of the fact that the “Midianites were close kin of the Amalekites, related since the days when the one people occupied Makka and the other lived in Medina… Traditions of the Arabs connecting the Amalekites with Makka connect the Midianites to the region of Medina” (Take note: The Arab traditions confess the connection between the Medinans and the Midian).

In another part of his book (Ages in Chaos) Velikovsky has this to say:

These references to Makka are from 10th and 13th centuries, in other words, 300 and 600 years after the time of the Messenger.

We know the determination, speed and inventiveness of the Arabs in devising hadith and all kinds of tradition. The Islamic tradition is extremely unreliable and the non-Muslim documents have no references to Makka. So what  should we make of this situation?

Because of the fact that the Islamic literature is based on the narration of the narration of a hearsay etc., it is the main obstacle between the truth and us.

As I have mentioned earlier, it is impossible to find a reference to Makka and Ka’ba before the end of the 8th century A.D. Therefore, the first reference to Makka in a non-Muslim source is a 100 years later than the Islamic tradition and Kuran. But these two main sources of Islam claim that,

In spite of this original understanding, the Messenger was transformed into an ‘admonisher for the humankind’. The desert Arabs who wrote the codebook again must have considered a concept of ‘local Kureyshi messenger sent for the Makkans’ as inadequate. Concepts of a ‘universal messenger’ and an ‘Omnipotent creator god’ were much more appropriate for the conquering, subjugating Arab nationalism that put an end to the empires of the day. Therefore, the later editors of Kuran have altered the codebook on those lines. The Islamic literature naturally evolved along those lines.

The Midianite northern Arabs wrote the first scriptures of the Hagarenes. The Arabs of the desert wrote these texts again. They have concealed Bakka, substituted it with Makka and inserted the Makka oriented narrations into the codebook. Orientation of the Arab-ı Mustaribe (Hagarenes) was towards the first ‘house of god’ in Bakka, Shechem. Bakka did exist as the centre of faith once upon a time, but it is in ruins now.

 

KA’BA

Following the transformation of the Hagarene teaching Ka’ba in Makka has become the most important place in Islam. Destruction of the Temple on Zion, which was the focal point once, has caused a lasting change in the ritual of Judaism. Likewise, the change of kıbla from Bakka to Makka has played the same role. It has become the symbol of the Arab nationalism and expansionism. According to the official ideology the Messenger has called Ka’ba the ‘house of god’. But it was the desert Arabs who had initiated and written this idea into the codebook following the death of the Messenger.

According to the official story, the Messenger had ordered his followers to turn to Yerushalim while praying. This is only a supposition. The Messenger was of Midianite Ismaelite stock. He declared his faith as the ‘the unadulterated religion of Ibrahim’ (Av’ram, Abraham), which is Sabianism. The actual place that is connected to Abraham is the sacred place called Beth El (‘house of god’) in Palestine. This sacred place is the historical Bakka in Shechem, near Nablus (Neapolis). As Kuran 3:96 states, the ‘first house of god’ is the sacred place of the Ismaelite Messenger. If all of these were facts, then who in his right mind would think that this Messenger would choose a kıbla for him in Makka. The desert Arabs did the relocation of the ‘sacred precinct’ from Bakka to Makka.

Hagarene’s kıbla was in Bakka, where Abraham had erected a stone. But the nationalist Arab ideology had needed a kıbla of its own. This kıbla was called a ‘sanctuary’, but in reality it was only a mound of stones. It was encircled later on and turned into a place of veneration. Islam maintains that Ibrahim and his son Ismail have re-built the structure. Neither Ibrahim nor Ismail has been to Makka. This story was created by the desert Arabs, and written into the codebook.

Ka’ba is the place where Muslims perform their yearly hac (hajj). Therefore, it is at the focus of the belief system. One immediately supposes that a sacred place like this should have been mentioned countless times in the codebook. Wrong! In the whole of the codebook Ka’ba is mentioned only in two verses of the 5th sura: 95 and 97. No one knows why. Only the authors of Kuran know the reason. But we can have an educated guess, and the following points may give an idea as to the reason behind this peculiarity.

As its name suggests Ka’ba is a square shaped building. Its corners are roughly aligned with the four directions of the compass. Around it there are small buildings and the well which was supposedly created(!) out of nowhere for Hagar/Hacar and Ish’mael by the god (‘Hay’) of the day, when they were left out in the desert by Av’ram. According to the story in the Mosaic scriptures Hagar found water in the well and called it ‘Beer la-hay’ or ‘Hay’s well’. But that well was in Paran, in the desert southwest of the Dead Sea. Smart ideologues of Islam have preferred to relocate Av’ram, Hagar, Ish’mael and the well to the neighbourhood of Makka, and they called the well ‘Zemzem.’

I have told in the section on Av’ram that each tribe in those ages had its own supreme entity. Likewise every tribe in Arabia had its particular tribal supreme overseer. Each of these tribal supreme overseers stayed in their designated places as the tribes moved to another site. All the tribes worshipped their supreme overseers and those belonging to the other tribes as well (They were evidently much more civilized than their off-spring today). When a tribe moved to another site it adopted the supreme overseer of that site, and the migrant tribe came back once a year during its festival to visit its previous supreme overseer. The yearly Hac of the Muslims must be the continuation of this practice established long ago when the people came back periodically to Ka’ba probably to visit the meteor, Hacar-ul Aswad, which is the sacred black stone built into the eastern wall of the Ka’ba. Veneration of this black stone most probably dates back to the pre-Islamic religion of the Arabs, and the popular belief has that it was given(!) to Adam when he was kicked out of paradise. It is not clear what the Islamic mythology means, but Muslim scholars interpret this mythology to establish a foundation for their claim that the first sacred place on the location was established by Adam, and then Ibrahim (Av’ram/Abraham) and Ismail (Ish’mael) rebuilt the place on the ruins of the first sanctuary’s foundations. This is only the mythology of Islam, which shows once again that all the belief systems do create their own myths. The Islamic mythology in relation to Ka’ba shows another example of those attempts throughout the history to take the ownership of a well-established place from another belief system as a place of reverence or worship. The Arabs did take over also the Temple Mount (where once stood the Temple of the Jews) in Yerushalim by building the Dome of the Rock there in 691 A.D., didn’t they?

The pagans are said to have been the first with the tradition of kissing the black stone there. Evidently, Muslims have taken over this tradition. This black stone has become an object of veneration also for the Muslim pilgrims. It is believed to have been white but was blackened by the sins of all those pilgrims kissing it. Reason tells us that getting darker should be due to the oil and dirt on their lips and not their sins. There are many sinners amongst the white skinned population of the world and their skin never gets dark. There are also masses of righteous people amongst the coloured population of the world, and if sin causes darkening, righteousness should lead to the lightening of the skin. Has anybody ever seen any righteous coloured person getting white? No! (This is clearly a nonsensical argument). Muslims also believe that this stone has fallen from the Moon, as if Moon is like a chandelier hanging from the firmament, and the black stone is the fallen candle from it.

There were symbols (idols) of the supreme beings in the sanctuary (Ka’ba) of the pre-Islamic era. Some scholars claim that the yearly Hac was an ancient tradition to punish the autumn Sun because of its diminishing effect and to bring the winter rains.

 

 

PROBLEMS RELATED TO THE ISLAMIC MYTHOLOGY AND LITERATURE

 

There are many contradictions and inconsistencies in the official Islamic mythology and literature.

The dilemma caused by the mihrab of the Kufan mosque is still unsolved because the desert Arabs have preferred to keep their silence on the true meaning of the Ismaelite scriptures. They have also altered those scriptures by rewriting the stories, with them at the focus. A solution will be impossible if these facts are not acknowledged

 

Patricia Crone attracts our attention to the Islamic literature where there are so many Fatimas; and that Ali is presented sometimes as the Messenger’s brother, and concludes with the following remark:

 

 

According Ibn Ishak the Messenger had entered a stage in Medina where there was no political power, but later on he tells also that the Messenger had seized the authority from a well-established ruler in the city. Ibn Ishak is of the opinion that the Jews in Medina were supportive of their Arab neighbours, but Ibn Hisham claims that the Jews in fact attacked them. Which statement is true? Patricia Crone has this to say:

Compilers of the Islamic mythology and literature had played their part in this confusion. Different compilers narrate variations of the same theme. For example, take the Messenger’s supposed encounter with the representative of a non-Islamic belief system, who recognised him as a future messenger. Was the Messenger in his infancy (Ibn Hisham)? Was he about twenty-five years of age (Ibn Hisham)? Was he nine or twelve (Ibn Sa’d)?

Who saw the Messenger? Were they the Ethiopian Christians (Ibn Hisham)? Were they Jews (Abd-ul Razzak)? Was it a seer or kâhin either in Makka or Ukaz or Zu’l Macaz (Abd-ul Razzak, Ibn Sa’d and Abu Nu’aym)? Here again Patricia Crone describes the confusion as,

That may be so! However, we should also accept the fact that similar stories have existed in other belief systems pre-dating Islam. Therefore, Islam could not have done without its own version.

Another problem with the Islamic tradition is ‘proliferation’ (Andrew Rippin), which started showing itself in the 8th century A.D., in other words, 200-300 years after the events to which they referred. According to Michael Cook, these traditions suddenly started to multiply by thousands. For example;

The truth about Abdullah’s death was and is unknown, and the Muslims give the standard answer whenever they are hard pressed, ‘god knows best!’ (M. Cook). However, as time passed, details appear:

 

According to Michael Cook this growing information is the proof that “a fair amount of what Vakidî knew was not knowledge.”  Vakidî is always prepared to give precise vital information where Ibn Ishak, who predates him, was unable to furnish. Therefore, Patricia Crone felt free to express that:

 

R. Stephen Humphreys wrote:

Here is a first class confession by the Muslim scholars:

Is it not strange that we have no material from the early years of the Hagarene movement when there is written material in the museums belonging to periods thousands of years earlier than the Muslims refer to? The above quoted confession has vital importance:

 

The unreliability of the Arabic literary sources is a known fact. The recent studies about the Arabic written sources show that these are “self-indulgent, unreliable pieces of narration created by the faithful.”  They are branded as a form of ‘salvation history’ (sacred history) full of fictitious detail. For instance;

These propositions inevitably lead to shocking conclusions (for the Muslims of our times):

On the contrary I believe that the Hagarenes were not pagans but Sabians. I must draw your attention to the fact that Sabianism (hanifiyyun - hunefa of Arabs) was paganism in the eyes of the Jews and Christians.

This is what the scholars think:

The ‘umma’ (band formed by the Messenger in Medina) that captured Palestine, included a group, which was called the ‘pagans’ or Sabians or the Hagarenes, who were not Muslims, because there was no Islam in those days. They were the early ‘Muslims’ or ‘proto-Muslims’, the mu’minûn.  They acted in alliance with the Jews and some Christian Arab tribes and even pagans and idolaters. The teaching they observed was a collection of Sabian, Mosaic and some Christian and Zoroastrian principles.

                                                                                                                                

THE EARLY NON-MUSLIM SOURCES AND THE CODEBOOK OF ISLAM

We are ready to see what the Christian records said and thought about the Hagarene teaching.

First I will refer again to a conversation I have mentioned earlier, which is in a manuscript dated 874 A.D. The actual conversation had taken place on the 9th day of the month of May, 639 A.D. That was the year when the Hagarenes had captured the whole of Palestine and the Amîd region (present day Diyarbakır in Turkey). The persons in conversation were Umayr Ibn Sa’d al-Ansari (as claimed by the ancient sources) and the Monophysite Patriarch of Antioch John I. The conversation has made clear that:

This conversation has also clarified that the Old Testament was not translated into Arabic at that time and some of the Arab conquerors did read and write. F. Nau has published the Syriac text of the conversation recorded by two historians, Michel and Bar Hebraeus (Ab-ul Farac ibn-ul Ibrî).

I would like to draw your attention especially to the fact that there was no mention of a holy book of Arabs. The year is 639 A.D. and no one had spoken of the codebook of Arabs. What could be said of this point?

The reference to Torah being used by the Arabs in education coincides with the statement that the Hagarenes had no codebook of their own yet in those days. A much more likely possibility is that the bits and pieces of the scriptures were written on various material and was not yet collected between two covers. 

I believe there was not a codebook in those days. It was not written as yet. Hagarenes had their own faith, the ‘religion of Ibrahim’ - Sabianism, and they were in the process of gathering concepts and rules from Judaism and Christianity to add to their own rules.

At this stage I would like to quote an order by caliph Uthman (reported by Suyuti in Al Itkan): “O Muhammad’s companions! Come together and write a book which will be an Imam (the sole model) to people.” This says it all! They are writing a book, not putting it together. Therefore, in Uthman's reign (644-656 A.D.)  there is still no codebook.

There are scholars who claim that there was still no consensus regarding Kuran, about 652 A.D., 30 years after Hicra.

Another indication which shows the absence of an Ismaelite codebook in those very early days comes from the patriarch of Seleukeia, who in a letter written about the beliefs held by the Arabs, has no reference to Kuran. Believe it or not, the year of the letter is 647 A.D. The Messenger had died in 632 A.D., and 15 years after his death there is still no codebook.

The anonymous writer quoted by Prof. M. Guidi in his book Storia e cultura degli Arabifino alla morte di Maometto must be completely unaware of the existence of Kuran because he makes no reference to a codebook at all. The year of the letter is 680 A.D., 50 years after the death of the Messenger.

John of Phenek attributes to the Messenger certain practices deviating in some points from the customs of the Torah (Old Covenant), and mentions the word ‘mashilmanutha’ (‘mesel menut’ -‘based on words’-‘oral,’ ‘based on the word of the mouth’) which suggests that in his time and to his knowledge there was nothing yet committed to writing among the ‘Muslims’ (Qur’an, Alphonse Minagana & David Samuel Margoliouth). This statement means that what the Hagarenes had regarded as their religious code was a collection of ‘oral rules’/’oral tradition’ gathered together from the neighbouring cultures. In other words they did not have a codebook.

The year is 687 A.D., 55 years after the death of the Messenger. Under the reign of Abd al Malik, John bar Penkaye is totally unaware of the existence of Kuran. John bar Penkaye has presented the Messenger as a guide and instructor, as a result of whose teaching the Arabs “held to the worship of the one god in accordance with the customs of the ancient law.” John also makes him out to be a legislator, and observes, “They (Arabs) kept to the ‘tradition’ of Muhammad…to such an extent that they inflicted the death penalty on anyone who was seen to act brazenly against his laws.” The term ‘tradition’ (‘mashilmanutha’) is thought as implying something handed down, and not a fixed corpus of rulings from the Messenger.

Bar Hebraeus and Calal-ud-Din as-Suyuti attribute the collection of Kuran to caliph Abd al Malik bin Marwan (684-705 A.D.) and his lieutenant Haccac bin Yusuf (Ibn Dumak and Makrizi). They say that Haccac proscribed the reading of Ibn Masud’s version.

Christians were seemingly unaware of an official Kuran until the end of the 8th century A.D., 100 years after the death of the Messenger! Kuran became a subject of discussion between Muslims and Christians in the 8th century A.D. We are told that the first mention of Kuran by the Christian writers is closely associated with the story of the monk Sergius Bhira (‘Bahira’), which was current in the Christian circles about the middle of the 8th century A.D.

We have reached the mid-8th century. A document called Fiqh Akbar I, which was drafted to show the orthodox Muslim views, reported to have had no reference to Kuran. Abu Hanife (Numan Ibn Thabit, born Kufa 699-died Baghdad 767 A.D.), the supreme Imam of all had written this text. He is not an Arab, but thought to have been either a Turk or a Persian. The text, which lists the orthodox Muslim views, has no reference to a codebook. This text must have been written in mid 700s A.D., and it has no reference to Kuran! Here is another very important indication for you.

We are in the 9th century A.D. The ‘negative evidence’ supports a late date for the creation of Kuran (J. Wansbrough). The ‘negative evidence’ refers to the lack of any record of Kuran being used in legal decisions before the 9th century A.D.

Joseph Schacht claims that the first considerable body of legal traditions referring to the religious texts began in the 9th century A.D. Hence it is possible to say that Kuran must have come into being later in the 9th century.

Now we must ask our vital questions:

I believe that there were some doctrines, rules, or concepts in written or oral form in those early days, but they were not yet codified and collected in a book called Kuran.

J. Wansbrough’s assertion that there are no stories of Islam before the 8th century A.D. shows that Islam has followed the tradition established by its predecessors, Judaism and Christianity. The stories in Torah, which were written down centuries later than the events they describe are all based on the ‘oral tradition,’ aren’t they? The collection of letters called the New Testament was written after Jesus has left Palestine, was it not? These codebooks, the Talmud and the Christian texts present themselves as the contemporaries of the events they narrate. More precisely, the stories are ancient but were rewritten according to the necessities of the later periods. All the codebooks could be likened to writing a scenario after viewing the film itself. They have been edited and rewritten over and over again to satisfy the specific requirements of the day.

The earliest non-Islamic sources testifying to Kuran (which is non-existent in the Hagarene period) are also from the 8th century A.D. Some Islamic sources suggest that Kuran was not completely established until the 9th century A.D. Manuscript evidence doesn’t allow for a much earlier dating.

What does the codebook tell us about the region, the Messenger, the communities, and the other religions etc.? Michael Cook in Muhammad writes the following:

Dominican Fr. Thery (AKA Hanna Zakarias) who has furthered the study initiated by Fr. H. Lammens, wrote in Islam under Evaluation that Kuran did not originate in Arabia at all and its author was a scholar from elsewhere who created the Arab religious language. I believe that there was not a single author, but authors, and it would be right to say that Zayd ibn Thabit was the most important of them.

At this point I refer you back to what I have written under the subtitle ‘ARAB-I BAIDE’: “The Messenger and/or his scribe and the earliest ‘author’ of the Ismaelite scriptures must have introduced this new language to the desert Arabs as the tongue of the Ismaelite ideology. The Arabs of the desert were not in a position to know this ‘mixed language’. So they had to introduce the diacritical dots and vowels to read the texts.” 

The final version of Kuran was written in Kufa, Irak in the 700s A.D. The 9th century A.D. exegetes considered Kuran a book “without a literary antecedent, which in itself is a ‘miracle.’”  In his book titled The Quran is not Arab Fr. Thery wrote, “When the Quranic text and the Sira are compared, the latter are only the babblings of stupid children. The disorder, unlikelihood, and grossness of their legends on the life of the prophet allow the detail and power of this uneven Arabic text stand out marvellously.”

According to the stories that have come down to us the Makkans and Jews had supposedly opposed the Messenger and his teaching. We could definitely say that these supposed events had a profound effect on the Messenger (or on the later authors/editors of the codebook who had written the stories again). There were also other Arab circles and communities with different attitudes. All these stories, communities and Arab circles were instrumental in the shaping up of the following continuous themes in the codebook:

The repeated references to the past wrongdoings of the communities of the region in their dealings with their god, and the price they had to pay may be taken as further indications to the formative process of Islam. The Hagarene ideology must have taken shape when the Ismaelites had to leave their base in Hicaz and confront the environment dominated by Judaism and Christianity. The Ismaelite Messenger from Midian met this challenge by referring to the past, drawing lessons from the past events, accusing the past communities of doing this or that against their god and messengers etc. Thus the Hagarene ideology had differentiated itself from Judaism, and at the same time had built an identity for itself without leaving the realm of Judaism. When the desert Arabs fell out with the Jews they decided to go it alone. This ‘new’ ideology proceeded relentlessly and developed into the ultimate example of a monolithic religious body in the world.

 

 

THE ENVIRONMENT THAT PRODUCED THE HAGARENE TEACHING

 

DEVELOPMENTS WHICH EVENTUALLY LED TO ISLAM

The Ismaelite Messenger took his chance and declared his teaching. Someone or some event might have pushed  him into declaring the new faith. We are no longer in a position to know his motivation. Too many years have gone by, but we may try and speculate. I believe that the Messenger had his subjective reasons like becoming sovereign and/or finding followers to exploit for the realization of his projects. His predecessors had done the same thing. Therefore, he was not alone in this typical behaviour. Those who had played a role in the shaping up of the Ismaelite teaching may have planned the creation of the newest version or the restoration and continuation of god’s Abrahamic-Semitic revelations. These messages had supposedly begun with Av’ram. But the Messenger and his followers were spreading the news that this time round the supreme overseer had chosen the Ismaelite Messenger for the culmination of his revelation 

I believe that a positive answer to the last question will lead us to the truth. Since then, as a result of the increase in education and the dramatic advances in science, humanity has managed to tear apart the veil of darkness and made the appearance of another self-made messenger with his invented irrationalities impossible. But this time other ‘worldly’ religions took over with messengers and codebooks like Hitler and his Mein Kampf, Karl Marx and his Das Kapital, and Mao Zedung and his Red Book. They ruled for limited periods and led to nothing but suffering and bloodshed. They fell out of fashion before the 20th century was over. They were unable to solve the material problems of humanity and also fell short of promising anything ‘heavenly’.

As the codebook of Islam points out the Messenger was just another one of those messengers who have been sent(!) since time immemorial. The codebook of Islam states, “There is not a community to which a messenger hasn’t been sent.” The first messages allegedly from the god of the Semitic peoples to the Hagarene Messenger were not severe and divisive. They were general principles in the form of all-embracing messages, which the followers of other faiths could not reject. These first messages to the Ismaelites could not be different from the local cultures and peoples within their region, because firstly they borrowed the messages from the others and secondly it would be wise not to antagonize others from the outset. There is no doubt that the Messenger was a clever warlike merchant. He must have had good lieutenants. In the end He adopted this soft and resourceful approach to others.

As indicated in the codebook of Islam the Messenger was a human being. Although some extraordinary dimensions were added to his character in the stories invented while the Hagarene teaching was being transformed into Islam, the Messenger had nothing to do with the miracles. Being a human it was impossible for him not to be influenced by Judaism and the traditions of the land of Midian and Nabataea.

When the Messenger is said to have founded his religion in 622 A.D., He must have been influenced not only by Judaism and the Arabian traditions of Midian and Nabataea, but also by the conditions of the region at the time. These conditions were influenced mainly by the two superpowers of the day: Byzantium and the Sassanid Empire of Persia. 

Byzantium controlled the northern borders of the Arabian Peninsula - Syria, Lebanon and Palestine of our day. So Christianity was just next-door. Byzantium was counting on the support of an ally in the Christian Abyssinia whose capital was Aksum.

Sassanid Persia was controlling a vast territory from Mesopotamia to the Indus River. Therefore, Zoroastrianism was another belief system having an influence on the Arabs. Allegedly Zoroastrians had shown great tolerance for all the other religions, except for the Christians (because they were considered to be an extension of their Byzantine enemies). Judaism was widespread in the Sassanid Empire and was flourishing in Mesopotamia, around the seven cities of the kingdom of Al Medain, not far from the present day Baghdad. It was reportedly there that Resh Galutha, the leader of Judaism, had resided, and it was also in this region that the Babylonian Talmud was rewritten.

What do you think were the reasons behind the Arab conquests?  Why did the Arabs decide to initiate the age of conquests?

So, in the light of the last point we could say that the conquest of Syria and Irak was one of the first objectives of the ruling group of the Islamic ideology. The drive into Syria and Irak may also be seen as the natural follow-up of the Hagarene move towards north into Palestine.  The conquest of Syria and Irak may have been the by-products of Islam’s drive to consolidate its power over all the Semitic (Arab) tribes. The real motive did not make a difference at all. This advance towards north has ended with direct clashes with and the eventual fall of the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires. The nationalist ideology called Islam (the transformed version of the original Hagarene teaching), used as an imperialistic weapon, was instrumental in hurling the otherwise desert bound Arabs on to the global stage.

 

ROOTS OF THE HAGARENE TEACHING 

The Hagarene teaching is the immediate predecessor of the Arab nationalist-imperialist ideology called Islam. Now let us see the main sources of the Hagarene teaching.

 

SABIAN FAITH

Some scholars, who are also the followers of the three ‘belief systems of the book’ have claimed that the Sabian faith had taken its basic dogmas from these belief systems. This seems impossible, because the consensus of opinion tells us that Av’ram (Abraham), who is the common patriarch of the Mosaic belief system, Christianity and Islam has lived earlier than all of them. The faith itself, Sabianism, has its roots in the pagan cults, Mosaic faith and Christianity. This confusion is created by the actual construction of the story of Abraham in Genesis (Torah). The writers of this story must have developed the ‘Av’ram’ (Abraham) personality by merging the character called Ebrum of the Ebla tablets and Bahram the Mandai of the Mandaeans. Here I must refer you to the Mandaean legend titled Abraham and Yurba, (Check the pages under the title PROPHET ABRAHAM in this site) which basically is a very old legend based on the Zoroastrian dualism developed in time with the addition of various themes from neighbouring cultures. Mandaeans are considered as the keepers of the ancient secret knowledge, which is the knowledge dating back to Sumerians. Bahram’s tale was one of those tales they have inherited from the past generations. Mandaeans were one of the haemerobaptist sects settled in and around Palestine. But haemerobaptists are not  the Sabians of the Islamic texts. This is a general title applied to a group of sects.

The Ismaelite Messenger has announced that he was going back to the ‘religion of Ibrahim’ (which is the Sabian faith). Abraham of Hebrews and Ibrahim of the Ismaelite texts is a character borrowed from the Mandaean texts: Bahram. Mandaeans were one of the haemerobaptist sects, who are called Sabians in Islam.

Sabian faith could not be new. Sabians (Mandaeans) were called the keepers of the ancient secret knowledge that predated the Mosaic faith and Christianity. Therefore, the doctrines of the Sabian faith were extant earlier than the religions of the book. Sabian faith has given its doctrines to the religions of the later periods. Muslim scholars do accept this fact. Ibn Hazm wrote: “Faith of the Sabians is the oldest in history and their language is the most widespread in the world.” Some of the Islamic sources declared “The Syriac community is the oldest of all the peoples. The language of all Adam and his sons was Syriac. The religion of this community was Sabianism.”  Furthermore in his book on the Syriac history and literature a Syriac patriarch has stated, “Aramaic-Syriac is one of the Semitic languages. Like the Book of Daniel of Old Testament and the Gospel of Matthew a section of the Sacred Book was given in this language. Some scholars claim that Aramaic-Syriac is the oldest tongue in the world. But more moderate ones say that Syriac is one of the oldest languages.” Another Syriac cleric and historian tries hard to base his claim on Genesis 10:31, 11:1, and states, “When we studied this subject we had the impression that the language of Adam was Aramaic-Syriac.” Syriac community might be considered as the oldest one in the world if we go along with the commentaries on the relevant passages of the Old Testament. But this is unacceptable within scientific criteria, because we have the following matters to address first:

The list of questions may be extended but even the few ones above are sufficient to prove the absurdity of the claims. Moreover there are pre­-conditions for a faith to be the earliest, oldest one:

Sabian faith meets none of the conditions. Sabians were neither primitive nor primary. Sabians knew how to write and read. Sabians had civilized works. Sabian faith was not primary, because animism, totemism and primal religions were earlier, and Sabianism has traces from these. That is why the Sabian faith could be the predecessor of only the religions of the book.

 

MOSAIC FAITH

Let us go back in time. The scene is mount Sinai (Horeb), Moses is up on the mountain where he had a face to face meeting(!) with YHVH. He has won the forgiveness of YHVH and saved his followers waiting down on the slopes. In vehement prayer Moses receives a blinding vision in which the forgiveness is heard as in a cultic shout: “YHVH, YHVH! A god merciful and gracious”.  It is reminiscent of the ceremonies in Egypt, ceremonies to god Aten/Aton. Since the authors were aware of this mountain god cult of the people called Midianites or Kenites, they must have felt no hesitation to insert it into the story in the Old Testament.  It is written in Exodus 34:5-6 that “The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord...And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord god, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and, and abundant in goodness and truth..”  It smells of editing here, doesn’t it? Moreover there is something amiss: Why would this omnipotent creator suffer? Is it because he did not have a people of his own? Ridiculous! 

Furthermore in Exodus 34:14 we have this supreme entity giving his name, as “YHVH, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous god.” Who is this entity called Jealous? Are we to understand that this supreme entity, who has supposedly called himself ‘I am what I am’ is really an entity named Jealous? The creativity of the human mind under the intolerable weight of ignorance is without bounds.

Why are we dealing with the Old Testament when the subject is Islam, you may ask. Well, that expression ‘merciful and gracious’ reappears as the first sentence of Kuran with one substitution, the name Allah replaces YHVH in the beginning of Kuran 96, which is said to be the first sura ever received, in other words revelation of the divine message is said to have begun with it. So except the names the same formula appears both in Torah and Kuran. That is one of the reasons why Torah and Kuran cannot be separated. Another reason is that they share the basic fairy tales.

You may ask again why this reportedly first ever sura is in the 96th place? As usual, no one knows. We do not know how many times Kuran was edited, and rearranged. It is accepted officially that Kuran was collected and edited three times in the past. The present placement of the first sura is obviously the result of those editorial works. Some consider this first sura in Kuran (supposedly the 5th in the order of revelation) as an open indication to the Judaic origin of the revelation. They rightly say that the words Rahman, Rabb, Malik and Rahim are from Torah, and their root is Hebrew and Syriac, which is eastern Aramaic.

The Old Testament opens with a proper beginning - the ‘Creation’. But since Kuran is the follow up and the last in the line of a series of books of the Semitic-Abrahamic religions it did not have to begin from the very beginning, did it? Creation had been completed. Whatever happened had happened. So the authors of Kuran preferred to warn, remind, order, promise and threaten. By reminding what had happened in the past, and through superficial and edited references to the dealings of god with the peoples mentioned in the Old Testament and in the regional tales, Kuran tries to lure new people in to the ‘new’ faith (which is actually ‘ancient’). That was the easiest method. It is exactly this aspect of the ‘new revelation’ that has created problems with the people who have supposedly received earlier the expanded original of Kuran before the appearance of Islam. Therefore, the book did not have to begin right from the beginning, issuing reminders and warnings would be sufficient to win people over.

Some of the concepts and words that were not edited out of the codebook by the desert Arabs and which had been borrowed earlier by the Hagarene teaching from Torah and Judaism are below:

Tabut - Ark of the Covenant;

Taurat/Tavrat - (a possible corruption of Torah, ‘teaching’ - ‘law’);

Sakinat/Sekina - The presence of god;

Tagut - Error (Islam uses the word for a seer, magician, Satan, and for the idols Lat and Uzza);

Ma’un - Refuge;

Masanil - Repetition;

Cannat-u Adn - Paradise (Gardens of Eden, firdaws);

Cahannam - Hell (ge-bne hinnom, gehenna);

Ahbar - Teacher;

Rabb, Rabani, Rabbeinu - Teacher;

Furquan - Deliverance, redemption (The word comes from Aramaic furkono, and it does not mean ‘revelation’);

Darasa - Studying scripture to extract a forced meaning from the text;

Malakut - Government;

Sabt / sebt – Day of Sabbath.

To explain my point further I would like you to think about the present era and the countries that are the users of high technology. The technological terms used by those countries are almost always the ones, which have been coined by the producers of the technology. If you do not have a notion you do not have the word, because you do not need a word to express a non-existent notion. Consequently when you import a concept you have to import the description and a word as well.  This formula tells us that these words were missing in the Hagarene culture. If the words for the above notions were absent, the notions also must be absent. If the words are from Hebrew and eastern Aramaic then the concepts are from Hebrew and eastern Aramaic as well. Therefore, they were borrowed. The existence of these  words and the like in the codebook and the mythology of the religion leads us to the conclusion that the ideas about the divine guidance, revelation, and the judgment day were all borrowed from Judaism. Do not forget, if the concepts were Arabic the words would have been Arabic as well. If the concepts were borrowed from other sources, plain reasoning dictates that those sources should be recognized. This necessity is fulfilled in the text of the codebook of Islam, which has recognised the previous codebooks.

As far as the messengers are concerned there is a direct correlation between Torah, the New Testament and Kuran, because Kuran describes Abraham (Bahram/Abram/Av’ram/Ibrahim), I’zak, Ish’mael (Ismail), Joseph (Yosef/Yusuf), Moses (Moshe/Mose/Musa), Noah (Nuh), Lot (Lut), John (the Baptist/Yahya/Yohanan), Jesus (Yshua/Yeshu/Isa) as ‘Muslims’ (meaning the ‘surrenderers to god’, ‘faithfuls of god’) and claims that all of them had submitted to the ‘true way’ of the sole god. The first thing a person who has surrendered, a ‘Muslim’, learns is that there is only one god; that he is the omnipotent ruler; that he is all-seeing and all-hearing; and that everything comes from him and turns to him. Islam is an all-enveloping ‘ way of life’. There is no separation between the sacred and the secular.

When we follow the saga of the Torah’s god we see that He has been in a never-ending struggle to get his message across to his people (that he is the ‘sole god’). This supreme being began his struggle since the time when the authors of the Old Testament sat down to write their stories.  Later on he is visualized as manifesting himself as a member of the awkward Christian concept of Trinity.

 

 

THE BOOKS RECOGNISED BY THE HAGARENES

AND THE OFFICIAL IDEOLOGY OF ISLAM

 

THE MESSENGERS, EARLIER CODEBOOKS AND THE REALITY

The number of messengers counted in Kuran is 28. Four of them are Arabs, one is Greek, three of them are from the New Testament, and the rest are from the Old Testament. The Ismaelite Messenger is presented as the ‘last one’. Following is the situation according to Kuran:

This is what is written in Kuran. There are four codebooks. All these messengers are thought to have taught the salvation through their belief in the sole god. Muslims are expected to have faith in all these belief systems, because all of them have originated from the sole god, and they all corroborate each other. Muslims are taught that the last ‘word of god’, the sacred Kuran, acknowledges and endorses all the previous scriptures, and clears all the discrepancies and leads man to the perfect truth.

I have mentioned elsewhere in this site that all these books have borrowed from each other;

Now we must run through the vital points once again:

Even this short summary gives you an idea that one should treat with extreme caution all the texts, books and people making statements on these matters.

The Old Testament is the first major codebook of its kind in the region. It contains everything that belongs to the region, from myths and legends to the traditions and the daily lives of the peoples living in the south-eastern Asia Minor, Canaan, Palestine, Egypt, Sinai and the Arabian Peninsula. It was the book of choice, a prime source of reference for the people who would like to know about and connect themselves to their past. It was also a book of choice, in fact the single source, for those who would like to attach themselves to the divinity of the sole god. Though there are some differences, the fundamental stories in Kuran are basically the edited or summarized repeats of, the references to, or the superficial versions of the original stories in the Old Testament. There were other codebooks in the region but the Old Testament was the most influential, it was the ‘word of god’.

In the known world of those days, people believed that the Old Testament was the divine revelation to Moses. There were no independent sources that could demonstrate whether the things written in the Old Testament were the truth. Hagarene teaching had no choice but to accept this fact. Kuran, which came into being after the Ismaelite teaching was transformed, has also acknowledged this fact and submitted its correlation with the Old Testament as a proof of its authenticity. But in reality Kuran recognizes only the first five books of the Old Testament and calls them Taurat/Tavrat, and the rest is just the ‘defilement’ of god’s message. Kuran has accepted the god of Tavrat as its god as well. But do not forget, Sumerian myths are the main source. In those days the Sumerian clay tablets were still under the rubble of the once bustling cities of Mesopotamia. So in later epochs all the peoples of the region took the Old Testament as a divine revelation.

The writers of Kuran recognized the Jewish messengers (only the ones known to them) and their codebooks. But the problem didn’t take too long to show itself. In those ages the messengers of the Semitic-Abrahamic cultures made the habit of looking for a statement in the previous revelations, which could support their claim and endorse their positions. As a matter of fact the Ismaelite Messenger was not interested too much with a reference to him in the Old or New Testaments, because he had adopted the religion of Abraham, the Sabian faith, which was older than Judaism. By adopting the religion of the founding father of Judaism and Christianity the Messenger has gained pre-eminence. When the desert Arabs transformed his teaching, their nationalist ideologues have decided to end close relations with Jews and Christians and separate their ways. But they were hell bent on finding a reference to their Messenger in the codebooks of their rivals. The smallest reference to the Ismaelite Messenger would be a great blow to them.

Muslim scholars and clerics tried to find the prophecy in Tavrat (Five books of Moses, the Hebrew Old Testament) about the coming of the Ismaelite Messenger. They could not find it. Their express verdict was announced: Tavrat was altered. They pointed their fingers at the Jews as the culprits. Then they inserted statements into Kuran that would connect the Messenger with the earlier revelations and more importantly with Tavrat, which was the source of ‘authority.’ At least that was what they hoped.

I have also mentioned earlier that both Moses and Yshua of the codebooks were most probably mythical personalities because apart from the books of the Mosaic religion and the texts on Christianity there are no references to both of them in other sources.

 

THE EARLIER BOOK OR BOOKS CONFIRMED BY KURAN

In some of the verses Kuran states that it was given as a book confirming the book “hat the "people of the book had with them.”  First of all there are three earlier books according to Kuran. So there must be more than one ‘people who had their books with them’. Therefore, it would be correct to speak of peoples and books, and it is right to say that Kuran is not referring to the lost ‘original’ books but to the books, which the ‘believers of the book’ had with them.

First of all, we have to see again the books the Hagarenes have used as the source books of their teaching. The earliest reference from non-Islamic sources to a codebook called ‘Kuran’ occurs in the mid-8th century A.D. in a letter reporting a conversation between a prominent Arab and a monk of Beth Hale. Kuran must have been considerably different than the book we have today. Crone and Cook conclude that except for this small reference there is no indication as to the existence of Kuran before the end of the 7th century A.D. Here are the main points of interest of the conversation in that letter:

The Arab asks why the Christians "adore the cross when he (Jesus) did not give you such a commandment in his Gospel?”  The monk responds with the observation: “I think that for you, too, not all your laws and  commandments are in the Kuran which Muhammad taught you; rather there are some which he taught you from the Kuran, and some are in sura albaqrah (Al Bakara - Sura of the Cow) and in g-y-g-y (Injil/Incil?) and in t-w-r-h (Torah).”

According to this short and extremely important excerpt,

As I have mentioned earlier in the Sergius/Sergis Bhira story Al Bakara is the name of a complete and separate book. The Islamic tradition also confers a different place to Al Bakara (Abbas addresses his soldiers as the ‘believers of the sura of the Cow’ in the battle of Hunayn). Some of the Christian texts record that Al Bakara was a separate book (This is before the transformation of the Hagarene teaching into Islam, and the inclusion of Al Bakara in the Kuran as a sura.)

I believe the codebook referred to as ‘Kuran’ in the short conversation was a book written in eastern Aramaic, Syriac to be precise. It was not Kuran of our day but a book called Kuryan or Kiryan. It held the basic doctrines of the Sabian faith [the Abrahamic faith preserved in the town of Madian (Midian)] (Storia e cultura degli Arabifino alla morte di Maometto). It must have been considerably shorter than the text we have today. It must have been (with minor differences) the fundamental religious text of the sects called generally as the haemerobaptists (Elchesaites-Elxai-Helxai, Mandaeans, Mughtasilah). The hanifs, Sabians-Mandaeans, who were the followers of Bahram the Mandaî’s teaching, belonged to the group which the Arabs called Mughtasilah. Bahram is Av’ram-Abraham of the Mosaic faith, and Ibrahim of Islam.

According to P. Crone and M. Cook, apart from the reference to Kuran in this letter, there is no mention of Kuran. It was only under the governor Haccac of Irak in 705 A.D. that a logical historical context came into being, in which a codebook (an initial body of literature which would later become Kuran) could have been compiled as the Messengers scripture.

Then the books that Kuran was ‘sent to confirm’ (as stated in Kuran) must have been these books. Accusation by the Islamic ideology that the original versions of these previous books have been lost is absolutely unacceptable. Also we should not be expected to believe that the amended versions of these books are in use, because it is unthinkable that Kuran was sent to confirm a text amended by the mankind.

The book that Kuran is claimed to have been sent to confirm could not be the Hebrew Torah, because there is no afterlife in the Hebrew Old Testament. Moreover, the ideologues of Islam have rejected the 34 books added to the first five books of Moses, because they were ‘a deviation from the original divine revelation.’ This is a clear indication that Muslims believed in the existence of an ‘original divine text.’

Gospels and the New Testament as a whole could not have been the earlier book that Kuran was sent to confirm, because of their conflicting doctrines with Islam.

If that is so, then we have to find other books that contained the ‘original revelation’ that Kuran was sent to confirm. Could this ‘original divine text’ be the one used by the Hagarene believers under the name of Kuryan (of the Mandaeans)? Could it be the first five books of Moses, the Torah?

Extensive studies that have been going on for the last couple of hundred years on the Old Testament made clear that the first five books of the Old testament -Torah- were written by four sources. These sources may be individuals or a group of persons, we do not know. If we are to go by what we are told, Moses must be the fifth writer! (How could he have written his own death? This is too much!) All the written bits and pieces were brought together in 500 B.C. and the Torah came into being. But Jews have edited out certain sections. These were the sections that contained the writings by the Hellenized Jews of Alexandria. Torah consists of tales and narrations invented, edited and told by the human beings, which means that Torah is not original. It is written and altered by the mankind. Torah is the result of the boundless imagination of human beings. Therefore, Torah could not be the ‘original divine book’ of the Islamic ideology. Moreover the Hebrew Torah does not have the concepts of afterlife and the judgment day, both of which have been used by the nationalist desert Arabs to win over believers and hold on to them at all costs.

Therefore,

Here we should remember the Islamic scholars’ claim about the book that Kuran is said to be confirming: “It is not a book in use, but the original Torah which has been lost.” No way! Because the Islamic ideology clearly states, that elusive book was ‘in the hands of the believers.’ So, the book mentioned in Kuran was not lost, it existed, it was in use.

The book, which has been sent from on high, is Kuran.  But who are the ones who had that ‘other’ book with them?

Let us find that elusive ‘earlier’ book, which was one of the books used by the Hagarenes.

 

***

Kuran in 2:53 refers to a book called Furkan/Furkaan:

The word Furkan comes from furkono/furkuan, which is Aramaic and means redemption. It seems from the references in Kuran that Furkan was given in addition to or together with the book (Torah). Here Furkan is described as  “The knowledge, intended for separating good from evil, and truth from falsehood, which leads one to salvation and deliverance.”  In Kuran 21:48 this book is said to have been given to Moses and Aaron as a “light and a guide separating right and wrong.”  In 37:117 it is described as “a Book giving clear information.”

Kuran 3:3,4 makes clear that there is a fourth book in addition to the Old Testament, the New Testament and Kuran: “He (Allah) gave you the Book (Kuran) to confirm the ones before you. He has also given Tavrat (Torah) and Incil (Eu-Angelion, the New Testament)… Earlier he had also given Furkan to be a guide to mankind.”  Therefore, we have three earlier books according to Kuran. In some other verses Kuran says: “We gave that Book also to you (Muhammad).” This statement could be taken to mean that this Book and Kuran (which was given to confirm it) are the same books. So could Furkan be this elusive Book? Are we to understand that Furkan has all the fundamentals of Kuran, especially the belief in afterlife, the judgment day?

Before going further, and based on the statement above we have to ask some questions: Was Furkan a book? If it was not a book could the writers of Kuran have mistakenly reasoned it to be a book? If it was a book, could Kuran and Furkan be the same book? Could it be that Furkan was given(!) earlier, and Kuran afterwards to confirm it? Furkan may not have been a book but just a piece of ‘knowledge which separates the right from wrong and leads a person to salvation,” in other words, could it be hokhma/hikhmat/wisdom.

Now let us make a necessary detour.

***

Torah is the ‘written law’. Talmud is the ‘unwritten law’, ‘oral law’, or ‘non-pentateuchal law’. Talmud is not sacred. Only the Old Testament carries that attribute. Talmud is made up of Mishnah and Gemara. Mishnah is the ‘teaching’, the written form of the ‘Oral Tradition’. Through which the Mosaic belief system in its original form is believed to have survived all through these ages. Mishnah (‘deuterosis’ in Greek) is second to Torah, and considered as a divine text until the 18th century. It is a collection of halakhot, the religious law, and laws governing the society. These halakhot are not based on the Torah. Mishnah does not have any eschalatogical ideas in it. It is just a compilation of rules as memorized and related by the rabbis. Therefore, it does not have any references to ‘rewards to the righteous’ or ‘punishment for the wicked after death’. In other words it does not have the concept of judgment day. Compilation of the discussions on the articles of Mishnah is called the Gemara, which means ‘complementary’. Explanations in the Gemara have further explanations called Midrashim (Midrashes), which are haggadic or halakic exposition of the underlying significance of an Old Testament text. But Midrashim are not considered a part of the Talmud, and have nothing divine in them.

The first codification of the Oral Law (Mishnah) was done between 538 B.C.-70 A.D., rabbi Judah ha-Nasi made the final edition about 200 A.D. Palestinian Talmud was finalised in the 4th and the Babylonian Talmud in the 5th century A.D. Therefore, whether Palestinian or Babylonian, Talmud (Mishnah+Gemara) must have been in existence and consulted by the Jewish people in the Messenger’s days. Talmud, Mishnah, Gemara and Midrashes may have been seen by the Hagarene ideologues as the very important ‘divine texts of the first monotheistic belief system’. There are many stories in Mishnah, Gemara and Midrashes that are not in the Torah.  When the writers of Kuran took some of their fundamental stories from these sources they must have felt that they had every reason to accuse the Jews of perverting the original divine message (Torah).

Talmud gives the theological, ethical, and folkloric side of things, and rabbis often refer to it. Talmud records all the views, no matter who said it and why. When there is a need to reconcile contradictory texts Midrashim are consulted. These commentaries known - Midrashim - are a tradition of Rabbinical Biblical exposition and exegesis designed to reveal the inner meaning of Torah.

There is another very important collection of literature called the Tosefta/Tosephta. Those parts which were not included in Mishnah were still collected in a book came to be known as Baraithot. Some of these parts were later collected into a separate work called Tosefta. Importance of Tosefta is that it has references to eschatology and especially to hell, and could be one of the sources of the stories of hell in Islam. Kuran and the stories of the Islamic ideology seem to be in agreement generally with Mishnah, the Babylonian Talmud, Tosefta and the Midrashes.

The orthodox Jews and Christians have always considered these accounts as heretical ever since. But the situation was different with the Jewish communities living in the Hicaz region between the 7th and 9th centuries A.D. They  were part of the Jews who had fled Palestine following the destruction of Yerushalim by the Romans in 70 A.D., and a large number of them had accepted the guidance of these Talmudic writings. Generations of Jews had passed down these Talmudic tales by the word of mouth. Each generation has added its own colour to the accounts and sometimes inserted local folklore, so much so that it is difficult even to have a guess as to what the original stories might have contained. Some orthodox Jews even believed that these Talmudic writings have been added to the “preserved tablets”. These “preserved tablets” are the Ten Commandments and the Torah that were kept in the Ark of the Covenant. They also believed that the Talmudic stories were the replicas of the “book in heaven” that existed in the realm of the supreme being since the beginning (The source of this belief is the ‘me’s in Sumer).  Muslims have the identical concept of Kuran being up there existing on the ‘lavh-i mahfuz’ (‘preserved plate’). Therefore, the writers of the Hagarene religious texts might have taken Talmud (Mishnah + Gemara), Tosefta and Midrashes as a collection of divine origin, and added them to the existing texts.

This is the end of the detour. It would not be wrong to reach the following conclusion after this brief sidetrack:

The Hagarene Messenger and the ideologues may have been made to believe in or accepted the Talmud (especially Mishnah), Midrashes and Tosefta as divine texts alongside their book, which they called called  ‘Kuryan’. It is almost certain that the Ismaelite ideologues have borrowed the majority of their collected stories from these sources. They have most probably adapted these stories according to their requirements and integrated them with the ones in their book (codebook of the Sabians), which they called Kuryan (lectures of faith). It seems highly probable that a number of these traditions from Judaism were unwittingly accepted by the later nationalist Arab editors of Kuran as part of the sacred literature, and included in the holy writings of Islam.

Now we may go back to Furkan.

***

Could the book called Furkan be Mishnah, which is based on the influential Oral Tradition? Could this Oral Tradition has been acknowledged by the Hagarenes as the original divine message given to Moses by YHVH?  YHVH is also the god of Islam, under a different name of course. But as we have seen above the eschalatogical themes are not included in Mishnah. They are either in the Midrashes or Tosefta. So, Furkan cannot be Mishnah.

Therefore, we must continue with our search.

Let us go back to mount Sinai (Horeb in Midian) where Moses is believed to have received the aseret ha-devarim (deka logoi, Decalogue, Ten Commandments). We are told that Moses was actually instructed to hide many of the words he had received. He was to issue publicly only a portion of the books that were dictated to him. The others were to be delivered in secret to the wise. The Ten Commandments must be the open part of the divine(!) orders. 

Christianity also has this secret or esoteric tradition handed down in a mystery from the apostles. It is a private and secret teaching. The uninitiated are not permitted to behold these things, their meaning is not to be divulged by writing it down.

It is clear from here that the mankind has thought it is appropriate for the supreme overseers of the belief systems to take the necessary steps with the aim of holding on to their privileged status. In order to keep hidden the fact that everything is in the minds of the humans and have no relation at all to the reality, precisely the same mankind has imagined the supreme overseers of the belief systems as introducing the concept of a secret knowledge, reserved for the initiated only. This is only natural, because existence and the related matters are believed to be beyond the comprehension of the uninitiated. In actual fact it meant that the so called reality existed, but it was for a few to see, to understand, to comprehend, to speak about etc., and the rest should just listen to what they are told and do not ask any questions.

This is an extremely revealing way of acknowledging that there is no ‘reality’ as such. The legend is preserved in II Esdras (14:18-48) of the Vulgate which relates that when Ezra the priest was commissioned to republish the Law (by amending many sections of the Old Testament according to the principles of Zoroastrianism) in the days following the Babylonian exile he was told that Moses on mount Sinai (Horeb in Midian) had been instructed to hide many of the words he had received and that himself was to issue publicly only a portion of the books that were dictated to him, the others were to be delivered in secret to the wise.

Now let us recap. Muslim scholars interpret Furkan as one of the names of Kuran. I am of the opinion that they have every right to do so. Hasn’t the god of the Messenger told(!) him that he had given ‘that book’ to him (the Messenger) also? The depiction here (‘book’) could be the subjective interpretation of the writers of Kuran, as I have written earlier. Kuran is not Furkan. Furkan may have been the central piece of the Hagarene teaching: The "knowledge which separated the right from wrong and led a person to salvation.” Therefore, Furkan could be a part of the present codebook of Islam.

Let us proceed.

 

 ‘SEVEN COMMANDMENTS TO THE DESCENDANTS OF NOAH’, MESANÎ

Two verses in Kuran refer to something called Al mesani/Al mesaniy. Here is 15:87:

It is clear from this verse that the authors of Kuran have imagined a book or a text, called mesaniy/mesani, was given also to the Messenger. Kuran 39:23 makes it clear that there is something called mesani/mesaniy and Kuran, and they are separate:

Let us go back again to that fateful event on the slopes of mount Sinai (mount Horeb) and remember what happened there. Moses is reported to have received the Ten Commandments on two stone slabs and the secret knowledge in the form of ‘seventy books’, for the initiated. We have surmised that the secret knowledge (the ‘seventy books’) could be the book or text called Furkan. Unfortunately we have nothing concrete to follow that idea. But when it comes to the Ten Commandments we may have something.

The term ‘Ten Commandments’ is applied to two different collections of divine(!) orders, which are not ten words anymore as the name (aseret ha-devarim, ‘ten words’) suggests, but two sets of commandments made of sentences formulated by the human beings over a period of hundreds of years. Kuran mentions the giving of the Ten Commandments in 7:145, and seven of them appear in Kuran 17:22-36:

1. Kuran 17:22 has the first Commandment (You shall have no other gods before me).

* You shall not make unto thee any graven image or likeness of any thing.

     * You shall not take the name of the Lord (YHVH) your god in vain.

     * Remember the Sabbath day.

2. Kuran 17:23 has the fifth Commandment (Honour your father and your mother).

3. Kuran 17:33 has the sixth Commandment (You shall not kill).

4. Kuran 17:32 has the seventh Commandment (You shall not commit adultery).

5. Kuran 17:35 has the eight Commandment (You shall not steal).

6. Kuran 17:36 has the ninth Commandment (You shall not bear false witness.).

7. Kuran 17:34 has the tenth Commandment (You shall not covet your neighbour’s house …wife …manservant …maidservant).

As you see the second, third and fourth Commandments were not applicable to the Hagarene teaching (being the particulars of Judaism). The key to the riddle of mesaniy may be found in Kuran 15:87:

Out of all the texts in the Old Testament the Hagarenes must have accepted the Ten Commandments as the purest of the imaginary divine(!) ordinances, because as we are told YHVH and Moses were there on mount Sinai (mount Horeb) alone, in direct communication for 40 days, and YHVH wrote the divine ordinances with his fingers(!). How many beings would have had an intellectual capacity to turn down a nonsensical imagination like this in those days of ignorance, I wonder.

Let us go a step further into the realm of speculation: As depicted in the displays of the two stone slabs in the synagogues, the original Commandments in Hebrew might have been only single words each, as the name ‘decalogue’ (ten words) suggests.

Some Muslim scholars in their translations of Kuran substituted their interpretations for ‘mesaniy’ with the following description: “We have given you seven of the pairs”. This is the meaning of mesaniy: “Seven of the pairs”. Ten Commandments were pairs of words written on a pair of stone slabs (so all ten of them might have been called ‘the pairs’ - five sets of word pairs on each stone tablet). Seven pairs of words out of these are actually in Kuran. Does it ring a bell? I know that it could be considered as the stretch of imagination to the extreme, but think about it. Let us substitute this meaning and read 15:87 again:

Could these seven Commandments be the ‘original divine text’ that Kuran was sent to confirm? Who would be in a position to say ‘yes’? No one, because there is no reference to afterlife in this text, but we can speculate on the following line:

Could this be the exact description of events or did they have another specific book, which consisted of some of the fundamental doctrines of Islam, as we know them today? We shall try to answer this question in a short while. But let us go to Medina at first. The Hagarene Messenger of the Sabian faith together with a small group of followers had to migrate from his homeland Midian to Medina.

Medina had a population mainly of Jews. There must have been also small groups of Christians, Mandaeans-Sabians, Zoroastrians, polytheists and pagans. There were a lot of foreigners settled around the town, on the lands that Jews controlled. They were mainly previous idolaters, who have adopted Judaism. The rabbis granted them the same rights as the Jews living in the Jewish lands. They were only asked to follow the ‘seven commandments to the descendants of Noah’=The Noahide Covenant. Compared to these foreigners the Messenger and his small entourage were much more advanced in monotheism.

The existence of the Sabian rules in Kuran and the literature of Islam must be the sign of the original Hagarene teaching of the Messenger and his followers. The Messenger and his followers who claimed to have descended from Ibrahim through Ismail must have decided that adopting the ‘seven commandments to the descendants of Noah’ would be beneficial for their cause. Consequently the Messenger and/or the first authors of the Ismaelite texts have decided to include these commandments in their teaching. This attitude could have been instrumental in the signing of the Constitution of Medina, and the creation of an alliance between the Hagarenes and the Jews. The presence of the Noahide Covenant in Kuran is the proof of this.  

Kuran 15:87 and 39:23 make clear that Mesanî and Kuran are different texts. We should not forget that in their translations of Kuran some Muslim scholars have substituted the word Mesanî with the definition “seven of the pairs.” In other words, we are faced with ‘seven’ out of a sequence of ‘doubles’ or ‘twos’ or ‘pairs.’ Ten Commandments, called aseret ha-devarim in Hebrew, and deka logoi (decalogue=ten words) in Greek were supposedly engraved on two stone slabs. Commandments are thought to have been two/four words each, which actually means two sets of two / four words or ‘pairs.’ In other words Ten Commandments are ‘ten pairs of words.’ 

The ‘seven commandments to the descendants of Noah,’ = The Noahide Covenant is in reality the seven of the Ten Commandments in Torah. Could Mesanî (‘seven of the pairs’) in Kuran be the ‘seven pairs’ out of the Ten Commandments = ‘Ten pairs of words’? Could Mesanî be the ‘seven commandments to the descendants of Noah’?

Ten Commandments are the fundamental set of laws of Judaism. The Noahide Covenant contains the seven ethical laws that are suitable for the non-Jews. Those foreigners who adopt Judaism are asked to observe the Noahide Covenant.  Therefore, the Noahide Covenant could be the seven ethical rules of the Ten Commandments. Let us develop this line of thought. Since Noah is earlier than Av’ram and Moses, the Noahide Covenant also must be the set of rules from earlier periods. When the story of YHVH and Moses was in the making the authors must have decided to add some more rules particular to the Mosaic belief system. As a result they must have added three laws (that matched their particular identity) to the Noahide Covenant to create the Ten Commandments, and then edited it into the story of the ‘law giving’ on the mount Sinai.

I believe that the ‘seven of the pairs’ of the Muslim scholars, and the seven of the Ten Commandments that appear in Kuran are the ‘Mesanî.’ It would not be wrong to say that the followers of the Messenger have also observed the majority of the fundamental doctrines of Judaism and the Mesanî (‘the Noahide Covenant’). The ‘umma’ created by the Messenger in Medina, must have included the early Hagarenes of the Messenger who called themselves ‘mu’minun’ (‘believers’), and the Jews, idolaters and pagans. They were kept together by the blended doctrines of the Messenger, which constituted a mixed teaching consisting of Sabian, Judaic, Christian, Zoroastrian principles and the Noahide Covenant.

From the ancient records and the stories told in Kuran we learn that the Jewish scholars and clerics in those days were suspicious of the claims that the Messenger was also the messenger of their god, and had difficulty in accepting the Messenger as a genuine prophet. They thought that they were the owners of the oldest codebook, the Old Testament. They have started asking all kinds of questions to the Jewish scholars about the Messenger, his codebook and his teaching. These Jewish authorities were also the target of questions arising from the reservations related to the correspondence between the Messenger’s rules and the Mosaic scriptures. In short, they were feeling extreme unease for being pushed into confirming this new religion and having to shut their eyes to the alteration and mutilation of the narrations in the Torah.

I have said earlier that seven of the Ten Commandments were written into the Hagarene teaching. The authors of the Hagarene teaching and the later editors of Kuran have made their supreme being say in Kuran 17:39 that the verses between 17:22-36 “are the ones god has revealed to you from wisdom.” This tradition indicates that the Ten Commandments - Mosaic doctrines – were accepted as part of the wisdom by the ideologues of the Hagarene teaching. Wisdom is the divine knowledge. Therefore, the Ten Commandments are the part of the divine knowledge  - wisdom - revealed to mankind.

The Messenger is reported to have said that “faith is Yemenî, wisdom is Yemenî”  (Faith comes from Yemen, wisdom comes from Yemen). This extremely significant statement may be evaluated from two different angles:

But despite all their efforts the truth is written in the codebook of Islam, in 3:96. The original Hagarene teaching (Sabianism, faith of Bahram/Abraham) had its only connection with the place written in that verse: Bakka. That is the place where Bahram/Abraham had supposedly established the ‘first house of god’=Beth El=‘the House of El’. It is in central Palestine. But due to the Vahhabî-Salafî influence on Islam, Makka appears instead of the original Bakka in the recently published Kurans. This is equal to altering the divine revelation, the ‘word of god’, is it not?

 

 

 

THE SAMARITAN CONNECTION

 

ONE OF THOSE PEOPLES WHO HAD A BOOK WITH THEM

In the light of my previous presentation I would like make clear that the people I am going to refer to is only one of those peoples who had a deep influence on the Hagarene teaching.

Kuran 2:4, 5 cite the ‘people of the book’:  

Kuran 4:162 refers again to these ‘people’:

Now we must find out who these people are. I believe they are the Samaritans, and you will see why shortly. They lived in Samaria, which is the central region of the ancient Palestine. Samaritans of the day traced their origin back to the northern Israelite form of the Mosaic belief system. They still exist in small numbers at Nablus (close to Schechem and mount Gerizim), but they are thought to be 1,200,000 strong in the 4th and 5th centuries A.D.

According one line of argument the Samaritans are the descendants of a mixed Yahvistic and pagan population that existed in Samaria following the Assyrian conquest of the Northern Kingdom (Israel) in 722 B.C. This mixed population was due to an aggressive Assyrian colonization policy. To support their idea, researchers refer to II Kings 17:24-41 which attributes the Assyrian conquest to the pagan practices and temples of the local population of Samaria. This negative understanding was kept alive in postbiblical and rabbinic Judaism through the use of the term kutim as a synonym for Samaritan, which stems from the reference in II Kings 17:24 (‘Kutim brought from Kutha’) to the Cutheans as being among the people brought in by the king of Assyria to settle the land after the conquest.

In the Hebrew Bible the term ‘Samaritan’ (hašš mer nîm) appears only in II Kings 17:29, but in that context it may refer simply to residents of the region of Samaria rather than to a particular religious group. As used specifically for the latter group, the name is derived not from the geographical designation but from the term ‘smerîm’, meaning ‘keepers of the law’.

Some researchers like Moses Gaster have described the ‘Samaritanism’ (being a Samaritan) as the non-Judean branch of the old faith of Israel.

 

SAMARITAN BELIEFS AND RELIGIOUS TEXTS

The never neglected theme in the Samaritan religious texts is the absolute sanctity and righteousness of god.

The Muslim formula “With the name of god” (‘bism-il-lah’) is found in Samaritan scripture as ‘beshem’.

The opening chapter of Kuran is known as the Fatiha (opening or gate) often considered as a concise confession of faith. A Samaritan prayer, which can also be considered a confession of faith, begins with the words: “Amadti kamekha al fatah rahmeka”, “I stand before Thee at the gate of Thy mercy.” Fatah is the Fatiha, opening or gate (P. Crone-M. Cook).

Here is the Samaritan Creed:

The sacred book of the Samaritans consisted only the Five Books of Moses – Torah. It embodied the supreme revelation of the divine will and was accordingly highly venerated. The Hagarene Messenger also seems to know and accept the Torah/Pentateuch and Psalms only and has no knowledge of the rest of the books. This may be taken as an indication that they were following an example, the example of the Samaritans.

Samaritans venerated Moses, because the divine law was given to mankind through him. Leaders of the Hagarenes have also shown great respect to Moses, because he was the messenger of Judaism. The Hagarenes felt very close to Judaism (because they were Sabians, which was the faith of a sect within the Mosaic environment) and they took care to keep that closeness.

Waiting for the expected messiah was one of the fundamental beliefs of the Samaritans. They called their messiah Taheb (Restorer). Likewise the ideology of Islam has an almost identical belief related to Mahdi.

Hagarenes must have noticed the importance of the Samaritan religious structure. As I have written earlier the Hagarene Messenger was looking for an ideology, within the world of Judaism, but at the same time not accepting everything related to it. Looking from that angle the Samaritan beliefs must have had a deep influence on the Hagarenes.

 

 SAMARITAN TORAH – JEWISH TORAH

Samaritans insist that their religion is the true, unadulterated teaching of Moses (since they accept the first five books of the Old Testament alone as holy scripture).

They call themselves ‘shamerim’ - observants (Compare this word with the Arabic word mümîn which means ‘one who observes the basic doctrines of the religion’ or faithful). Hagarenes described themselves as mümînûn.

The Samaritan Pentateuch is written in archaic script resembling ancient Phoenician characters. Its text differs from that of the Jews. They identify the chosen place of god as mount Gerizim (overlooks Shechem) and not mount Zion like the other Jews.

In their version of Deuteronomy 27:4 the altar of god is decreed to be erected on mount Gerizim and not on mount Ebal as in the Jewish recension.

Mount Gerizim is believed to have the altars of each of the patriarchs, Adam, Seth, Noah, Abraham, and I’zak. Here we must remember the Islamic myth that Adam has come to the ‘first house of god’ when he was expelled from paradise. The ‘first house of god’ was in Shechem near mount Gerizim, which is also believed to be the place where Av’ram took his son I’zak as a sacrifical offering to his god.

Samaritans regard the temple at Yerushalim and the earlier shrine as apostatic.

A similar injunction is appended to the Ten Commandments after Exodus 20:17 and Deuteronomy 5:21 of the Samaritan Torah.

Here are the Ten Commandments in the Jewish Torah:

Now the Ten Commandments in the Samaritan Torah:

As one could see from here the religious texts of the Samaritans and the rabbinic Judaism share some of the fundamental doctrines. But these fundamental principles have different contents in the Samaritan and Judaic texts. The most important difference between the Samaritan Torah and the Jewish one is the belief in afterlife and the judgment day in the Samaritan Torah.

Scholars are of the opinion that this Samaritan Pentateuch must have been already adopted by the time of the founding of the temple on mount Gerizim, consequently in the time of Nehemiah. Therefore, it must be a recension, which was in existence before the Septuagint.

The Hagarene theologians being under the influence of the Samaritan beliefs have fashioned the Messenger on the ‘example of Moses’. But some changes were made when the Hagarene teaching was transformed into Islam with Makka as its focal point.

Samaritans insist their religion is the true, unadulterated teaching of Moses since they accept only the first five books of the Old Testament as the Holy Scripture. Samaritans accused Jews of altering the  ‘word of god’ (likewise Jews claim the Samaritans have altered the original revelation). The Messenger and the ideologues of the Hagarene movement have accepted only the Torah and rejected the rest of the codebook, because they claimed the Jews have altered the original revelation. In the end the Samaritans, Hagarenes, and later on Muslims, united in blaming the Jews for the alteration of the ‘word of god’.

The parallels between the Samaritan beliefs and Islam (the transformed version of the original Hagarene teaching - Sabianism) are surprising.

 

Now let us think about this.

The basic similarities between the Samaritan creed and the Hagarene teaching (Sabianism - afterwards Islam) are as follows:

 

 
 ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE CONFIRMED BOOKS

With this summary on the similarities between the Samaritan and Hagarene (afterwards Islam) beliefs we can go back to our search for the last one of the books that Kuran was supposedly sent to confirm.

Samaritan texts of faith include their version of the Torah, the Memar Marka, the Samaritan liturgy, the Samaritan law codes and the biblical exegesis. In addition to the Hebrew Pentateuch that was edited to meet their needs the Samaritans had also had a translation of it in Samaritan-Aramaic, the Samaritan Targum. “The liturgical poet Marka is especially valuable because it exemplifies a tradition of exegesis divergent from that of the Jews, and because it anticipates several concepts and even idioms found later in Kuran.”

The representation of a different tradition of exegesis was extremely desirable for the Hagarenes. This exegesis was in harmony with the Hagarene requirement of staying within the Mosaic tradition but differing from Judaism.

Here is the theological text by Marka, called Memar, which demonstrates the principles of the Samaritan religious atmosphere. At this point I invite you to a comparison between the attributes of the Samaritan and the Islamic gods.

Here is god in Memar 

“Great is he who is not large and all greatness belongs to him!

He taught Moses the secrets in the bush, which revealed his greatness and his glory!

The Ma’lak (*) first confronted him and spoke with him about the past and the future.” (Marka, Memar 1.1)

(*)[Sovereign, owner of everything, lord, king, malik, melek]

Following is what the Samaritans think of their codebook:

It was given to us and we believed in it.

It was with them; it was within the Light.

And the glory was around, for it was the word of god.

His hand wrote and the prophet received it with signs from on high.

And Aloah came down and dwelt with him.

(Marka, Memar 6.3)

Here is what the Samaritans think of their Messenger and the Restorer (Taheb):

…Let us stand where we are and listen to the Truth, because our D’mari (Lord and Master) is merciful...

Let us follow the great Prophet Moshe, who leads us well, for he was sent to us by our Mar (Ruler).

Where could be another prophet like Moshe?

He was a good father to all Israel, bringing them up and looking after them, appeasing Aloah with his fast, and healing them (Israel) with his prayer...

(..) His words are the words of his Mar:

Believe in him! You will be safe from all wraths; on the day of vengeance you will be undisturbed...

He who believes in him believes in his D’mar!

Woe to us if we do not remember that!

Let us believe in Aloah and in Moshe, his servant!

A Restorer (Taheb) will come in peace; he will rule (..) and reveal the Truth.

Listen and hear! Stand in Truth! Stop your quarrels!

For Aloah will judge his people.

(..) The word of Truth will penetrate and illumine the world, in which he will come to dwell.

How great is the hour when one comes to hear the voice of Aloah walking throughout the world; and all creatures shall be in order and bow their heads; their hearts will shiver and their eyes droop and their limbs shake from fear on the judgment day.

(Marka, Memar 4.7, 12)

 

(On the judgment day) “And Aloah will speak:

‘Now observe that I, I am he!

Those who stay calm and know this will then be saved.

See, I have taught you rules and judgments.

But beware!

I, I (am) he who stands above creation and above mount Sinai!

I, I (am) he who is, and there is none beside me!

I, I (am) he who is timeless and boundless!

I, I (am) he who is the life of the world (who gave life to the world)!

I, I (am) he who suspended and split by my power!

I, I (am) he who planted the Garden and uprooted Sodom!

I, I (am) he who uprooted and stripped away!

I, I (am) he to whom all belongs and to whom (all) return!

I, I (am) he who puts all the living to death and makes all the dead live!

I, I (am) he who encircles my foes with vengeance!

And now it is good for us to rely on the Truth

And to tremble in the face of his might!’

Perhaps we will find the way of prosperity!” (Marka, Memar 12)

Muslims must have found amazing parallels with their doctrines. Surely it is not a coincidence, is it?

Whether the text of the Samaritan Torah was altered or not, the fact that it was different from the Jewish Torah must have appealed to the Hagarene ideologues. This codebook has come into existence in the Samaritan environment. The texts by Marka above are the most characteristic and powerful examples of that environment. Here Aloah is Lah of the pre-Islamic Arabs, and Allah of Islam. Aloah is also the god of Torah (Samaritan or not). Since the Hagarenes and Islam confirmed the book, which these people had in their hands, the god of that book (Aloah) is also the god of Islam (Allah). Descriptions in these texts, point to another source, may be the most matching one, of the god of Islam.

One of the models of the god of Hagarenes and of Islam was Aloah. Both Aloah and the book (this time the Samaritan Torah) were the products of the Samaritan religious environment. Now let us see what was required for that book that Kuran was allegedly sent to confirm:

One should remember the following points in addition to the requirements mentioned above:

Leaders of the ideology of Islam and/or the authors of Kuran must have decided that the Samaritan Torah has met the conditions stated below:

The Samaritan Torah must have been one of the texts that had the deepest influence on the Hagarene teaching by its concepts, approaches, narrations and words.

 

THE CRUCIAL REFERENCE IN A LETTER

According to P. Crone and M. Cook Kuran must have emerged suddenly. Scholars claim that the dating of the earliest manuscripts show that there was no Kuranic documentation in existence in the mid-late 7th century A.D. The earliest reference to a book called ‘Kuran’ from outside the Islamic literary traditions occurs in the mid-8th century A.D. in a letter between an Arab ‘emir’ and a monk of Beth Hale. Kuran must have differed considerably in contents from the codebook we have today. Except for this small reference there is no indication of the existence of Kuran before the end of the 7th century A.D. Here is the the most important part in that letter at this point:

The important observations in this quote are;

Moreover I believe that the book referred to as ‘Kuran’ in the conversation above was actually the book called ‘Kuryan,’ which contained the doctrines of the Sabian faith. Its original was in Syriac. Sabian is the word Arabs used for the Mandaeans. Mandaeans were a sect in the general group of Haemerobaptists. The mainline Christians labelled Haemerobaptists as ‘Christian heretics’. Hence the following comment by Rev. Mingana is extremely significant:  

Interesting, is it not? I am of the opinion that this addition of ‘hamzah’ was done definitely in the process of transforming the Ismaelite scriptures into Islam. In other words, when there was no book called Kuran the following sources were used as religious texts:

Here is the summary: The Hagarene texts of the day were poles apart from the codebook that exists today. The numerous editorial works done on the codebook, the later additions, and the interference by the desert Arabs support this judgement.

 

THE BOOKS REFERRED TO IN KURAN: FURKAN AND THE OTHERS

This is my scenario at this stage:

In those days of the Hagarenes Al Bakara (presently a sura in the codebook) was a separate and complete religious text. Those who read carefully the sura today will come to the conclusion that Al Bakara is an all-embracing ‘book’ of faith. This ‘book’ reveals (though some parts of it may have been altered by the desert Arabs) a part of the Hagarene approach to their fellow believers and the members of other faiths. Al Bakara relates the fundamental principles, ‘codes’, and requirements. From its first verse beginning with the statement (“This is the book!”) to the last sentence of its last verse, (“…help us against the people who do not believe!”) Al Bakara is in every sense of the word a complete ‘book’ of law. This character of the sura indicates that it was a separate ‘book’ of faith in the beginning. In other words in its present position it is a ‘book within a book’. In the Sergius Bhira story, Al Bakara is the name of a complete book of faith. Al Bakara has a unique place in the Islamic tradition (Abbas addressed his soldiers as the ‘believers of the sura of the Cow’ in the battle of Hunayn).

Al Bakara (which is a sura in the codebook presently) begins with the announcement, “This is the book.” Naturally, this announcement is taken as referring to Kuran, but if we try to visualize the days when Al Bakara was used as a separate book of faith everything becomes clear. This opening announcement actually belongs to the book called Al Bakara in those days. According to different translators, Al Bakara describes itself in its second verse as ‘a guidance to those who guard (against evil)’, ‘a guidance to the worshippers’, ‘guidance unto those who ward off (evil)’, ‘a beacon for the righteous’, ‘a guide to the pious’.

Now let us go back and remember. Here is Kuran 2:53: “We had given the Book and Furkan to Moses.”

The word Furkan comes from the Aramaic furkono/furkuan, which means redemption. The authors of Kuran believed that Furkan was given in addition to or together with the Book to Moses. Judaism necessitates the belief that Torah was the book given to Moses. Here Furkan is described as  “the knowledge, intended for separating good from evil, and truth from falsehood, which leads one to salvation and deliverance.” 

If we go by the description, ‘a guidance’, and keep in mind that the supreme overseer always sends ‘guiding information’ and laws, we may as well accept Furkan as ‘a light and guidance ’given also to Moses. It does not make any difference if Furkan was a book or not. What count is its contents: ‘A guiding information’.

Here is Kuran 3:3-4: “It is He Who sent down to thee (step by step), in truth, the Book, confirming what went before it; and He sent down the Law (of Moses) and the Gospel (of Jesus) before this, as a guide to mankind, and He sent down the criterion (of judgment between right and wrong).”

Here is another translation of the same verse: “He hath revealed unto thee (Muhammad) the Scripture with truth (Kuran), confirming that which was (revealed) before it, even as He revealed the Torah and the Gospel...Aforetime, for a guidance to mankind; and hath revealed the Criterion (of right and wrong).”

Kuran describes Furkan as “a light and a guide separating right and wrong”, and “the knowledge, intended for separating good from evil, and truth from falsehood, which leads one to salvation and deliverance.” 

Al Bakara describes itself as a “guiding knowledge”.

The ‘voice’ in some verses of Kuran addresses the Messenger and says “We gave that book also to you.” That’s right! As we have learned from the Beth Hale monk, the Hagarene Messenger has also used ‘albaqrah’ in addition to other books. Therefore, I have no doubt that Furkan was a book. It was known as Al Bakara. From the standpoint of its message it was ‘a guiding information/knowledge’. The authors of Kuran must have accepted Furkan as such, because they have referred to “the knowledge, intended for separating good from evil, and truth from falsehood, which leads one to salvation and deliverance” as Furkan. 

Therefore, in the beginning there were Kuryan and Al Bakara as two of the main books of the Hagarene teaching. Al Bakara was called as ‘furkan’, meaning ‘furkono’= ‘the guiding knowledge, intended for separating good from evil.”  Furkan = Al Bakara was taken into the codebook as a text of a sura, but its name, Furkan, remained in the codebook as a name describing its character.

Kuran is right in its statement that Furkan (Al Bakara) was given(!) earlier, because Furkan as a book was in circulation before the arrival of Kuran. Thus, I believe we have solved another puzzle. Al Bakara must be the book called ‘Furkan’ in Kuran, and the monk called Sergius Bhira most probably gave it to the Messenger.

This is the summary again:    

Therefore, Kuran 3:3-4 has no secrets as to the books confirmed by Kuran: “He has revealed to you (‘Muhammad’=The Messenger) the Scripture with truth (‘Kuryan’), confirming that which was before it, even as He revealed the Torah and the Gospel...Aforetime, for a guidance to mankind; and hath revealed the Criterion (of right and wrong=Al Bakara=Furkan).”

Therefore, there have been three earlier books, Torah, Gospels, and Furkan. Furkan=Al Bakara was included in Kuran in one of the later editorial works carried out on the book, so for all intents and purposes it could be accepted as “the book given to the Messenger too”. Yes, it was given to the Messenger too, by one of his tutors, Sergius Bhira.

 

 

THE SAMARITAN CONNECTION:

 
BETH EL, ‘HOUSE OF EL’, ‘HOUSE OF GOD’

The central point that connects the Samaria, the Hagarene movement and Islam of the later periods is the life and adventures of Abraham (Bahram of the Mandaeansî, Ibrahim of Islam).

Therefore, we have to begin our journey with Abraham by reading the story in Genesis 12:6-8 where he enters the land of Canaan.

Here we have certain points that need further attention:

This place where Av’ram had erected a stone and called upon the name of his god is mentioned again in Genesis 13:3-4. According to the story here, Av’ram and his family returned to the land of Canaan from Egypt where they lived for a while:

When we read together these excerpts we get the impression that, the place where Abraham erected a stone had already been called as Beth El. In those ages of ignorance oak trees and their surroundings were accepted as sacred places where god appeared to humans and gave his messages. Oak trees have life spans exceeding the life of humans, and they were considered eternal. If we keep this in mind the oak of Moreh must have been there for a very long time. Hence it was a sacred place called Beth El.  The book does not refer to another place, which had been called Beth El earlier than Av’ram’s place. We are told that Av’ram had travelled to a mountain east of Beth El, where he erected another stone.  Av’ram travelled “unto the place of altar, which he had made there at the first.”

This is also the place where Ya’kub stayed for a night on his journey from Beersheba to Haran. Ya’kub (one of the patriarchs of the Hebrews) had a dream there. The supreme entity, which presented himself as the ‘god of Av’ram and I’zak’ made promises. Upon which Ya’kub erected a stone there and called the place Beth El.

Beth El means the ‘house of El’. El was the chief Canaanite god. When the Israelites accepted YHVH as their god, this volcano god substituted El. However, Israelites used the name of this chief god of a polytheist culture as a general name for god. So when the Hagarene movement was initiated, the place where the oak of Moreh was situated was already known as the ‘house of god’.

 

SACRED TOWN SHECHEM, BETH EL

Beth El was on the southern border of Samaria. Samaritans have rejected the sanctity of Yerushalim and chosen the old sacred place of the Israelites in Shechem. Hagarene teaching chose Av’ram/Abraham as their founding father and accepted the place (Beth El, Beyt El, ‘Beyt-u Elah’, ‘Beytullah’) where he had erected a stone for his god as a ‘sacred place’ and kıbla.  Kuran 3:96 gives the name of this ‘sacred place’ as Bakka.

Following the transformation of the Hagarene teaching, in other words when the Sabian faith which had its roots in the  Mosaic faith was transformed into the nationalist and expansionist ideology of Islam and all the mu’minun (faithfuls) became Muslims (those who surrendered), kıbla and the ‘sacred place’ was changed from Bakka to Makka. Desert Arabs behind the stealing of the original teaching have erased Bakka from the literature of Islam, but left Kuran 3:96 intact. This place was called the ‘first house of god’, Ibrahim’s stone was there. The ideologues of Islam suddenly realized that this connection with Ibrahim has given them a much important status, which may be used against the Jews and Christians. Kuran 3:96 should be preserved. Nevertheless, when they realized what they had done, they began to push forth the claim that ‘b’ is exchangeable with ‘m’ due to tribal dialects. Thus, they argued that Bakka was in fact Makka. No way!

The existence of Kuran 3:96 and the place called Bakka are the proof that there was another faith underlying Islam, that its scope  was different, and following the death of the Messenger the original teaching was stolen and transformed.

Establishing the geographical location of Bakka has resulted with this study.

In those days there were two kingdoms, Israel in the north and Judah in the south. In order to prevent the believers from going south to Yerushalim to worship and to promote visits to the ‘sacred place’ in Shechem the kings of Israel emphasized Beth El.

Let us refer to Kuran. The people who are accused by the author of Kuran in 8:34 must be the Jews who have banned the annual visits to the sacred shrine in Shechem. Those who did not permit the people of the kingdom of Israel (Samaritans) entry into the sacred shrine in later periods (Kuran 8:35) could not be anybody but the Romans and the Christians. The cases mentioned could not be related to Ka’ba in Makka. The idols and figurines of all kinds of beliefs and cults were placed in Ka’ba. The followers of these were free to visit the place. Besides, the believers of the Hagarene teaching had never had Makka in their sights and thoughts. Their kıbla and the centre of attention was Bakka, where Ibrahim had erected a stone to his god at the ‘first house of god’=Beth El (Kuran 3:96). The leader of the Jews, Hyrcanus, destroyed the sacred shrine there. In later periods this sacred shrine was at the centre of the conflict between the Samaritans on the one side and Jews and Christians on the other. The Christians prohibited entry to the sacred shrine and it was levelled at the end of the Samaritan rebellion against the Romans.

Christians were the sovereign power in Palestine at the time of the Messenger. Here are the relevant verses of Kuran:

Although the Islamic interpretation of these verses is completely different, I uphold my version. The banning of the Hagarene entry to the Ka’ba was absolutely out of the question. Could you imagine a group of people praying (‘salat’) by clapping hands and blowing whistles in Ka’ba?   Were there Christians around that place in those ages? Even if we imagine for a moment the existence of Christians in those days, what could be their alleged reason to block entry to Ka’ba?

The desert Arabs must have introduced the circulating interpretations about these verses, while they were busy rewriting the codebook. The words ‘Beytullah’ and ‘Mascid-i Haram’ stand for the ‘first house of god’ (Beth El, Beyt El, Beyt-u Elah, Beytullah) where Abraham erected a stone for his god El, in Shechem (Bakka). It is my belief that the origin of the story in Kuran 8:33-35 is in Hosea where we read how the groups of priests murder the pilgrims on the road to Shechem (Hosea 6:9). Judges 9:25 makes clear that such activity was not unknown in the days before the monarchy, and was facilitated by the narrow ravines through which the city was approached (Lawrence E. Toombs). Shechem was seen as a city of refuge and was reportedly a ‘place of safety’ for those (pilgrims) who made it there. It is exactly how Kuran describes Bakka, is it not?

Shechem was almost abandoned under the Assyrian rule following the exile of Jews to Babylon. Some Israelites still lived there as it is written in Jeremiah 41:4-7. The city seems to have been deserted for 150 years. The Assyrians have reportedly settled peoples from other nations in the kingdom of Israel (Northern Kingdom). The Old Testament in II Kings narrate how these peoples have refused to worship the supreme overseer of the land, and how the lions attacked them (This was seen as a divine(!) act. A priest was brought in who taught them how they should fear YHVH. But these peoples carried on worshipping their gods and also feared YHVH (II Kings 17:24-34).

Samaritans are reported to have expressed their wish to take part in the rebuilding of the temple in Yerushalim and conduct their worship in there. But they were turned down and the hostility between the peoples of the kingdom of Israel and Judah was initiated (Ezra 4:1-3; Luke 9:52-53; John 4:9). Based on the conduct above it could be said that Judeans were the people who were blocking the entry of the northerners (people of Israel) into the temple grounds in Yerushalim. But I insist on my interpretation. Sticking to what is written in Kuran 8:35 [“Their worship at the Beytullah (‘house of god’) is nothing but blowing whistles and clapping hands. Therefore, suffer the torment for your disbelief”] I believe that these people blowing whistles and clapping hands in the Temple are the Christians. Jews do not pray whistling and clapping hands.

 

 

THE HAGARENE – SAMARITAN CONNECTION

 

At this stage we have to solve a puzzle. How the connection between the Hagarene movement in Midian and Ibrahim and the Sabian-Mandaean faith in Kutha-Irak was established?  The first clue is in the book by Prof. M. Guidi (Storia e cultura degli Arabifino alla morte di Maometto) where he quotes an anonymous historian writing in 680 A.D., who reportedly was unaware of the existence of a written codebook of the Hagarene movement under any name, and who perceived the Messenger not as a person involved in religious activity but as "a military commander professing the Abrahamic faith preserved in the town of Madian” (Midian)

How did the Samaritans come to be included in this puzzle?

Let us begin with Abraham/Ibrahim. According to the Old Testament and the Judaic literature, and the ideology of Islam and its literature Abraham/Ibrahim came from Aram. Aram was the name of Syria (Which included the present day Irak) in those days. There was Sabianism in Syria in those ages. Some of the Sabians were called the ‘Sabians of Abraham’.

The following excerpt by Moses bin Maimonides (‘Second Moses of Judaism’) holds another key to the solution:

How right he is! Except the Old Testament, the only place where we meet Abraham (Bahram) is Kutha-Irak and the tales of the Mandaeans. Kutha is one of the most important centres where the Mandaeans had lived. According to Ebu el Zanad (died 747 A.D.) also, Mandaeans were a “tribe living in Kutha, Irak.”

The story that brought Ibrahim (Bahram) and the Hagarene movement begins with the birth of the gnosis thought in and around Samaria, Jordan River, Asia Minor, and Alexandria (Egypt). Heresiologists have always regarded the Naassenes (along with Simon Magus) as the progenitors of the Gnosis.

Who were these Naassenes? According to some scholars Naassenes were the Ophites, and to others they were the Nasoreans and the Essenes who existed from periods before Jesus until the 4th century A.D. From the Naassenes, reportedly, sprang the Ophites, the Sethians, and so forth.

Simon Magus, who came from Samaria and became a Christian, was said to have been a disciple of Dositheos the Samaritan messiah, and the prototype for the Seth of the Sethian Gnosis. Both of these figures are said to have been disciples of John the Baptist. According to L. A. Waddell, John the Baptist was not merely a Jewish heretic, but also a trained gibil (fire priest). Sumerian tradition was at the root of John’s training, and the baptism he conveyed reportedly had the same magical properties with the baptisms employed by the Mandaeans.

Who were these Mandaeans? The historical records describe them as a community living at the Ceziret-ül Mawsil (Land of Mosul - Irak). In order to know the Mandaeans we have to understand that the Mandaeans and Manichaeans, and Mandaeans and Dositheans were connected. For instance, Theodore bar Khoni claims that  Dostai was one of the names for the Mandaeans. This was an early name for the Dositheans, going back to the Samaritan exchange period (8th to 7th centuries B.C.). In other words, Dositheans and Samaritans may have been the same group of people or two separate groups coming from an earlier group of people. Consequently, Dositheans should be the group we shall begin with.

Dositheans sprang from the Gnostic group of Haemerobaptists. Dositheos the Samaritan, who declared himself the ‘messiah’, initiated Dositheans. He was reportedly a disciple of Yahya (Mandaeans called John the Baptist as Yahya). Dositheans were a heretic sect born in the first centuries of the Christian era. The ancient Sumerian beliefs were at the root of this movement. These beliefs were passed on to the Ophites in Phrygia, the Samaritans in Samaria, and to the Haemerobaptists. Mandaeans are believed to have been the possessors of these ancient Sumerian beliefs. It would help to remember Kuran 4:162 at this point: “Those of them who are deep in knowledge and the faithful (mu’minûn) who believe both in what is revealed to you and what has been revealed before you. They observe their daily prayers, they pay their alms, they believe in Allah and the judgment day. We will have a big reward for them soon.”

Could ‘those who are deep in knowledge’ be the Mandaeans?

The Essenes sprang from the Dosithean sect. The Essene community can be placed at the Dead Sea area from 90 B.C. to 68 A.D. When the Essenes reached their end the Elchasaites (followers of Elxai) came to being (1st century A.D.), because some of the Essenes have adopted the teaching of Elxai earlier. Arabs called Elchasaites El Hasih. Elxai/Elkesai was the founder of this sect. He has started imparting his messages in the third year of the emperor Trajan. The narrations relating to Elxai give the impression that he was brought up with the doctrines of the Haemerobaptist/Mughtasilah. The name of Elxai/Elkesai crops up once in an ethnographic note in the Kitab al-Fihrist  by Ibn Ebi Ya’kub al Nadim (ed. Flugel, p. 340). The note refers to a religious community whose adherents inhabited the extensive swamps in the lower course of the Euphrates. The Arabs locally knew these people as al-Mughtasilah (‘those who wash themselves’). These are, in fact, the ‘Sabians of the marshes’, who must be identical with the Sabians (‘baptists’=subba of the Arabs) mentioned in Kuran. The ‘Sabians of the Marshes‘ are the Elchasaites. This sect is also known as the Mughtasilah, Masbutha, Sampsean, Nazerini, and Galilei.

The Mughtasilah, before migrating to Mesopotamia must have lived very close to the Jordan River. Because they were Baptists and they preferred flowing water. They took offence at the Christian baptism by still water. These Mughtasilah were the haemerobaptists as they were called by the non-Arab sources.

Haemerobaptists have come to be known as the Sampsaeans from 70 A.D. onwards. Epiphanius is reported to have heard of “a sect living in the country eastwards from the Jordan and the Dead Sea. They were called the Sampsaeans (Sampsenes, Sampsites), who believed in one god, and worshipped Him by ablutions. They held that life arose from water. They vaunted Elkesai as their teacher...In most matters of creed and ritual they were at one with Judaism; nevertheless, they were not Jews. Their distinguishing peculiarity was their reverence for the Book of Elkesai, and they did not own the authority of either the Old or the New Testament. Incorporated with them were the Ebionites, the Nasoraeans, the Nazaraeans, and the Osseans.” Epiphanius states also that the Osseans (Essenes) had renounced Judaism, and no longer lived in the manner of the Jews.

What is more, Epiphanius identifies the Sampsaeans with the Elchasaites/Elxai. His writings indicate that the Nasoraeans were still in existence in his time although few in number. Epiphanius further states that the Sampsaeans came out of the Ossaeans (Essenes) on the other side of the Dead Sea in Perea (now Moab) where Yahya (John the Baptist) was once active.

Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, was reportedly born and raised in the Mughtasilah/Hermerobaptist community (Mandaeans or a related community). According to Kitab al-Fihrist, Mani was initiated into the Elchesaite/Elkasaite doctrines (Joachim Klimkeit, Gnosis on the Silk Road).

As time passed the Sampsaeans/Elchasaites became known as the Galileans, the Nazerini, and, eventually, the Nusairi.

This is the story: Following the disbanding of the Essenes, Sampsaeans are thought to have migrated to Hauran region, the city of Bosra (Syria) and Pella. They are thought to have kept moving north, eventually arriving in Dimask/Dimisk-esh Sham (Damascus). From there, it is clear that some of them made their way to Palmyra, because reportedly some of the Mandaean Aramaic has been influenced by the Palmyrene language. From there, they migrated south along the Euphrates to their new homeland sometime early in the 3rd century A.D. Another group (Nazerini of Pliny) migrated northwest from the Hauran region and eventually ended up in Latakia (once known as Laodicea). This group became known as the Nusairis.

Elchasaites/Elxai were most probably the predecessors of the Mandaeans. Mandaeans have supposedly won over some of the followers of Elxai. The Mandaeans possessed the oldest continuous traditions known to humanity, going all the way back to Sumer.

It is extremely interesting how a group like Essenes, once with singularly Buddhist influences, would be a Jewish sect; then a Christian sect (that held the most primitive Church religion, which brought about the Anointed One’s mission in the first place) would become an Islamic secret sect, basing itself on Isma’ilî doctrines (of the Sevener faction of Shia Islam). This Johannite/Yahyaist Sect was neither Jew nor Christian nor Muslim, yet it is the sect, which helped to inspire the creation of all the three celestial belief systems.

As could be seen from what I have summarized here Sampseans, Mughtasilah/Haemerobaptists, Nasoraeans/Nazerini, Elchasaites/Elkasaites/El Hasih, Mandaeans/Sabians were the names of the sects within a great Gnostic movement.

The Mughtasilah/Nasoraeans/Elkasaites/Sabians have developed a theology that was very similar in many ways with what came before, but very different at the same time.

We are told that the Mandaeans should be regarded as an extreme fringe sect of Jewish Heretics.

It is no secret that the Gnosis developed a strong antipathy to anything Jewish, and to most Christian beliefs, mostly because of the past performance of these groups.

The Mughtasilah/Haemerobaptists/Sampsaeans/Elchasaites/Mandaeans appear in Arabic literature as as Sabe’e or Al-sabiun. Arab authors have sometimes confused the Mandaeans with the Magus, or Magians, and not without reason, since the cults are similar. It was habitual for the travellers in the East to refer to them as ‘Christians of St. John’, and Europeans who have come to Iraq since the Great War know them as the ‘Amarah silver workers’.

In 1994, Professor Sinasi Gündüz published an extensive study in the Journal of Semitic Studies showing conclusively that the Mandaeans and Sabians are the same, the remnants of a very ancient monotheistic religion that originated in or about eastern Syria and northern Iraq sometime about 4000 B.C.

Arabs have called Sabians also as hanifs/hanifiyyun. Umar ibn Khattab had once stated that the Messenger was a Sabian.

We could consider Sabianism as a unique faith/cult, which is a collection of doctrines from Manicheism, animism, primal religions, idolatry etc. Especially Islam has adopted a great number of those doctrines. 

Another one of the ‘peoples of the book’ is the Mandaeans. They were known as the possessors and preservers of the ‘ancient knowledge’ [“Those of them who are deep in knowledge…”(Kuran 4:162)]

 

 

CONNECTION BETWEEN THE SAMARITANS AND THE HAGARENE TEACHING:

GNOSIS AND BAHRAM

The Hagarene movement, Samaritans and Samaria are connected. The movement has adopted the Sabian faith, the ‘faith of Ibrahim as preserved in Midian’.

Ibrahim (Abraham) and Samaria are connected through the ‘first house of god’ in Bakka-Shechem, which was also the first kıbla of the Hagarenes.

Ibrahim (Abraham) came from Aram (Syria) according to Judaic and Islamic stories.

Sabian-Mandaean faith existed in Syria (Irak) in those days and some of the Sabians were called the ‘Sabians of Abraham/Ibrahim’.

Moses bin Maimonides has written, “Abraham was brought up in Kutha” (Presently in Irak. But the land to the East of Jordan was called Syria in those days).

We read about the ‘character’ called Abraham only in the Old Testament and the related literature; and Ibrahim appears only in the codebook of Islam and related texts. Barring those texts and the stories elsewhere in the related stories, Abraham/Ibrahim is non-existent, precisely because his name was changed - not by the supreme being as it is written in the Old Testament - by the mankind. The name of the real character was Bahram. He was a Mandaean. Mandaeans were agnostic sect  living in Kutha. They were known as the possessors of the ‘ancient knowledge’, hence the gnosis that connects Abraham/Ibrahim and the Hagarene movement.

Gnosis was born in Samaria and around the Jordan River (among other places). Simon Magus was one of the progenitors of gnosis. Simon Magus came from Samaria and is said to have been a disciple of Dositheos the Samaritan messiah,

The authors of the Old Testament must have felt that the person they labelled as the ‘patriarch’ needed a name change to adapt it to the culture of the Hebrews and Israelites in those days. Therefore, they substituted Av’ram with Abraham. In fact, they knew that the real character was called Bahram and they were changing the name to Abraham. However, they preferred to keep it secret.

 

 

SAMARITAN CONNECTION:

K U R A N   3 : 9 6   A N D   B A K K A

 

SICHEM/SHECHEM (NEAPOLIS, NABULUS, NABLUS)

Our search for Bakka goes on, because it indicates the existence of a previous faith – the Hagarene teaching (faith of Ibrahim), which was stolen by the desert Arabs and transformed into nationalist ideology called Islam.  In order to find the ‘Bakka’ in Kuran 3:96 we have to go to Shechem. Shechem is situated in the narrow valley between the mounts Gerizim and Ebal. It was in a strategic position, controlling the east-west and north-south trade routes. This settlement, inhabited since 2000 B.C., was heavily fortified.

“Shechem has always held as a place of importance in Israeli consciousness, as an early centre of the nation in its country, and as the focal point of all national and religious hopes for the unification and unity of the nation” (Prof. Benjamin Mazar, excerpt from a conference in Samaria). 

This ancient town of Shechem, which is to the East of Nablus, is presently called Tel Balata. The walls unearthed at the excavations at Tel Balata are believed to be from the 18th century B.C. There are two rings of concentric defensive walls (Halkat-us Sahra=‘Stone rings’). The excavations brought to light a Canaanite temple as well (Grand Larousse Encyclopédique). Moreover, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica these excavations led to the discovery of a pre-Israelite city wall, two monumental city gates, and a citadel with a massive Canaanite temple, all of which are from the 2000s B.C. The old city was destroyed in late 2nd century B.C. A village occupied part of the site in the 1st century A.D. Between 2000-1800 B.C. Shechem was one of the most important towns of the Palestinian hill country (Genesis 12:6, 33:18). Shechem’s population was mixed with Horites (Hivites), Indo-Aryans, Hebrews and other Semites in the 15th and 14th centuries B.C.

The ‘place of Sichem’ (Genesis 12:6) in the city reportedly contained;

This is the ancient sacred place called Beth El (‘house of god’), which is the focus of the traditions related to the patriarchs of the Hebrews (Av’ram and Ya’kub).  “Here also Joshua (Yusha, Yesu) had made the covenant with the people of Israel, and Yeroboam son of Nebat ruled the tribes of the central and northern parts of the land, after the house of David had divided the once united kingdom” (A Shomron).

When David chose Yerushalim as his capital of the southern kingdom of Judah, he had these effects, including the Ark of the Covenant, brought to the city.

Hyrcanus has destroyed the Samaritan temple in Shechem (129-128 B.C.) when the Israelites occupied the hill country. However, Joshua made Shechem the chief meeting place of the tribal confederacy.

Shechem became the capital of the Kingdom of Israel, as opposed to Yerushalim of the Kingdom of Judah in the south. The following period of the Samaritan history is full of conflicts and wars with their strong neighbours - Jews, Christians and the Romans.

The Kingdom of Israel fell in 721 B.C. In the post-exilic period, Shechem became the religious centre for the Samaritans.

The exact date of division between the Samaritans and the Jews is not known, but it was certainly completed by the end of the 4th century B.C. The excavations at mount Gerizim seem to show that a Samaritan temple was built there around 330 B.C. 

Alexander the Great is reported to have visited not Yerushalim but Samaria when he was in the region.

Vespasianus had the city of Shechem destroyed in 67 A.D. and laid the foundations of Neapolis (‘New City’, Nabulus, Nablus). There was a village partly on the site of the old city in the 1st century A.D.

Inscriptions indicate a kind of Samaritan diaspora around the Eastern Mediterranean lands. Romans have crushed the Samaritan uprising in 484 ve 529 A.D. Since then, the Samaritans have become a small community and continued living within the state of Israel.

 

THE ‘FIRST HOUSE OF GOD’

The ‘first house of god’ was in Shechem of the Samaritans. Shechem is counted as one of the directly related sites to Av’ram, in the Old Testament story, according to which, when Av’ram reached the land of Canaan the first place he stopped was Shechem:

He built an altar to his god, and upon his return from Egypt he went,

Av’ram has supposedly received a divine message from his god there. It is called makom Av’ram = ‘Sacred place of Av’ram’, the ‘sacred area of Av’ram’. This place where god has supposedly revealed himself to Av’ram and the other patriarchs is accepted as the locality where a covenant was agreed between god and mankind.

The sacred place of Av’ram is called ‘Beyt-u Elah’ (‘house of Elah’=‘house of god’). I would like to emphasize the similarity between the Beyt-u Elah of Av’ram and Beytullah (‘house of god’) of Islam.

Similarity between the words elah, ilah, alah, aloah and allah is significant. ‘Elah’ is the Hebrew word for the oak tree, and god. ‘Alah’ means oath. The word ‘ilah’ is god in Arabic. Aloah is the name of the supreme deity of the Samaritans. Allah is the name of the omnipotent creator of Islam. It is clear that all these words are intimately related.

We are told that the oak tree lives for a very long period because it has the ability to renew its roots. Therefore, its life span exceeds that of human beings. An oak tree lasts generations of humans; in other words, it is seen as almost ‘eternal’. That must be one of the reasons why an oak tree is considered a ‘place where a supreme being manifests itself.’ 

The oak tree in the Av’ram story is also believed to be the terebinth (Pistacia Terebinthus), which many scholars have referred to as the ‘tree Av’ram sat under’. If you remember the story, Abraham had his friends sit under the oak that was located near his tent door. It is also referred to as the ‘tree under which Ya’kub has buried the idols’.

In his story, Av’ram/Abraham has reportedly planted a grove around the field of Mamre (Mamre=‘Set with trees’ or ’oak grove’). Mamre is identified with Hebron. “In the time of Josephus, a tree some distance north of Hebron was assumed to be the ‘terebinth’ of Abraham.”  Abraham reportedly stopped at this tree because he must have expected a divine manifestation there. According to W. O. E. Oesterley and T. H. Robinson, this is another example of the belief that spirits took up their abode in trees. Moreover, they and many other scholars saw the patriarchal narratives as describing an animistic religion. Discussing Genesis 12:6-8 they point out that ‘oak of Moreh/More’ should be translated as the ‘terebinth of the teacher’, which according to them, meant that it was a tree at which divine teaching was given.

 

CLOSING IN ON BAKKA

As I mentioned earlier, there is no Makka in Kuran. We have the description of a sacred town and a sacred shrine. According to the exegetes, the town where this sacred shrine is situated is Makka, but it is only a supposition. Nevertheless, I have to mention that the name of the place, which was Bakka in the old versions of Kuran, is substituted with Makka in the newer versions.

Therefore, the supposition has become a conviction, and Bakka has been erased from all other places in Kuran, except in 3:96.

However, that other ‘place,’ Bakka, had existed once upon a time, and the Arabs, who follow the line of their ancestors, may erase it from the codebook but they will fail to wipe it out totally from the literature. Because the Hagarene faith, which they have transformed, actually centres on Ibrahim, on Beth El (‘house of god’) in Bakka, his relationship with his god, and his faith etc., all of which is written in their present codebook.

Now we can focus on Bakka, which is the place that has provoked me to rewrite the story of Islam. Bakka is mentioned in Kuran as the place where the ‘first house of god’ was situated. Here is verse 3:96:

These verses are the remnants of the Hagarene teaching. Let us break down this statement into its parts:

In Kuran 2:125 we have the following statement by the supreme creator of Islam:

From here, we understand that Beytullah (‘house of god’) is also called makam-ı Ibrahim. According to Islam Ibrahim was the one who built the ‘house of god’; consequently, he was the first Muslim (‘one who has surrendered to god’).

In addition to the above verses in the official codebook, we have a specific story in the Islamic literature. Here it is: “Ibrahim had a vision, where he was instructed to take Hacar (Hagar) and his son Ismail (Ish’mael) to the place called Bakka...Wherein there was a mound on which were the ruins of the ‘sacred shrine’ that is known as Ka’ba today” (This ‘sacred shrine’ was apparently a pile of stones). We are told that the place was desolate, there was no water, no plants, no trees or people but Ibrahim went to Bakka and left Hacar and Ismail there under the shade of a large tree...and started to leave which prompted Hacar to ask: ‘Ibrahim are you leaving us in this uninhabited, desolate wilderness?’...But Ibrahim left without a word...After some time Ibrahim came back to Bakka, where he found Ismail sitting under a large tree near the spring of Zemzem...They greeted each other and Ibrahim told his son that Allah had ordered him to rebuild Ka’ba (sacred shrine). Abraham pointed to a mound of large stones (This is critical!) and told Ismail,  ‘Allah has commanded me to raise the foundations’…Allah made a covenant with Ibrahim and Ismail there.”

Make a note of the following crucial points in this statement:

Ibrahim of Islam is the character called Bahram in the Mandaean folk tales. Therefore, Bahram is the founding father Av’ram-Abram-Abraham of Jews. Av’ram is the fictitious hero of the Mosaic texts of faith. Therefore, we have to begin with the book of Genesis in the Old Testament, where his story is told.

On route from Haran to Canaan, “Av’ram passed through the land unto the place of Sichem (Shechem), unto the plain of Moreh” (12:6). There LORD (All capitals refers to YHVH in AKJV) appeared to Av’ram and promised to give the land to his seed, in other words, they made a covenant. Thereupon Av’ram built an altar (12:7) (The altar is either a stone standing upright or a pile of stones). From there, he moved to a mountain on the east of Beth El (‘house of El’=’house of god’) and pitched his tent. Beth El was on the West and Hai on the East. There he built an altar (erected a stone or made a pile of stones) on to the LORD and invoked his name (12:8). Samaritans believe that the place where Av’ram built his altar is the place of attempted sacrifice of I’zak.

Then Abraham journeyed towards South (12:9). There was famine in the land and he proceeded to Egypt. (…) After a period in Egypt he returned to Canaan “Journeying from South even to Beth El, unto the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Beth El and Hai” (13:3), unto the place of altar, which he had made there at the first. Av’ram invoked the name of the LORD there (13:4). (He must have gone there not only to visit once more, but also to restore the altar).

Then Av’ram removed his tent, and came and dwelt in the plain of Mamre, which is in Hebron, and built there an altar for the LORD. (…) On his return from the battle of the kings Av’ram was met by Melkizedek (meleki sadak, meleki sedek=‘My King is righteous’), king of Salem and the priest of the Most High god, at the valley of Shaveh (the ‘plain that makes equality’), which is the king’s dale (14:17,18). There Melkizedek “blessed him (Av’ram), and said, blessed be Av’ram of the Most High god, possessor of heaven and earth.”

[According to the Book of Jubilees, Melkizedek blessed Av’ram on the mount of blessing, which is Gerizim (this shows that “since very early times there has been a sanctuary of the ‘Eternal god’ on mount Gerizim, which was invested with great importance in the patriarchal period”)].

The LORD appeared to Av’ram on the plains of Mamre (18:1). (...) Then god tempted Av’ram and he said “Take now thy son, thine only son I’zak…and get thee into the land Moriya; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of” (22:2). God instructed Av’ram to take his son ‘upon one of the mountains,’ because Av’ram lived between the two mountains, Beth El (Gerizim) and Hai (Ebal). (...) When Av’ram was about to kill his son a ram materialized and I’zak was spared (22:13). Av’ram called this place Yehova-Yire (the ‘Lord will provide’) as it is said to this day. In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen (22:14). Then Av’ram descended from the altar high up on the mount and took his son with him, and they went to Beer-Sheba, and Av’ram dwelt in Beer-Sheba (22:19).

We should make note of the following crucial points for a comparison between the story in Torah and the corresponding story in Islamic literature:

The stories in Torah and the Islamic literature make clear that there was a sacred place even before Av’ram/Ibrahim. When we further our search for this sacred place an Internet site by a Shomron (Samaritan) gives the following information:

All the points above lead us to the conclusion that there must have been a sacred place, a shrine, a sanctuary or a temple in Shechem in those very early days. Here is what Robert I. Bradshaw, quoting others, has written:

So there has been a ‘sacred’/‘revered’ place, a temple in Shechem in those days. Read the Judges 9:6: “And all the men of Shechem gathered together, and all the house of Millo, and went, and made Abimelek king, by the plain of the pillar that was in Shechem.”

The important feature for us is the tree outside Shechem, under which there was an erected stone (Genesis 35:4; Joshua 24:26; Judges 9:6). While the Canaanite cult was practised in the city, the tree outside was the place where the faith in YHVH was kept alive. We are interested with this oak tree and with the stone erected under it by Av’ram (Ibrahim), because this is the ‘first house of god’=Beth El.

George Ernest Wright states that there was a temple structure in Shechem as far back as the early Iron Age. This site was examineed by Wright and other archaeologists who came to the following conclusion:

YHVH ordered Joshua ben Nun (Yusha/Yesu/Yuşa ben Nun) to go to the land, which was given to the children of Israel.  Upon which Joshua gathered the people and told the priests to take the Ark of the Covenant with them. The whole congregation proceeded to Shechem. When they were in Shechem, Joshua built an altar unto the LORD god of Israel, made a covenant with the people, and set up a great stone under an oak tree, which was by the house of the LORD (‘house of god’ = Beth El).  Furthermore, in the presence of the children of Israel Joshua wrote upon stones a copy of the law of Moses. On this occasion, they placed the Ark of the Covenant at the top of mount Gerizim. It was here that the priests of the house of Pinhas/Phinehas were given the high priesthood. They have officiated there for 260 years.

The Ark of the Covenant was on mount Gerizim in all these years, which was called the ‘period of grace and shekina’. This period lasted until the foundation of the new Mishkan/Mişkan (house, dwelling) in Shiloh, by Eli. This act is believed to have led to the foundation of numerous religious centres throughout the nation, and king David has established Yerushalim during this political and religious vacuum. After the powerful kings David and Solomon, the unity of the kingdom had disappeared and the country was divided into Israel and Judah. We are told that all the attempts by the Davidic kings to unite the country have failed over the issue of Yerushalim.

Beth El is located at the southern border of Samaria. When there was the Kingdom of Israel in the North and the kingdom of Judah in the South, kings of Israel gave importance to Beth El to keep Israelites from going south to Yerushalim in the kingdom of Judah to worship. In his exegesis to Genesis 12.10 Rabbi Shemuel Luzzato wrote: “If David had not chosen Yerushalim, Shechem or Shiloh would have been the royal cities.

Samaritans of the day traced their origin back to the ‘pure’ northern Israelite form of the Mosaic belief system. They insist that their religion is the true, unadulterated teaching of Moses, because they accept only the first five books of the Old Testament as the holy scripture. They still exist in small numbers at Nablus, which is close to Schechem near mount Gerizim. Samaritans call themselves ‘shamerim’-observants. Compare this word with the Arabic word mümîn-faithful (‘One who observes the basic doctrines of the religion’). When the Hagarene teaching was transformed into Islam mu’min was abandoned as a description and Muslim (‘one who surrendered’) has begun to be used to denote the believers, because this new faith (the weapon of Arab nationalism) necessitated the surrendering of everybody to Arabs. Faith is the weapon employed to reach this objective.

Samaritans have their own version of Torah, and they identify mount Gerizim as the chosen place of god. Mount Gerizim overlooks Shechem. In the Samaritan version of Deuteronomy (27:4) the altar of god is decreed to be erected on mount Gerizim and not on mount Ebal as in the Jewish recension. A similar injunction is appended to the Ten Commandments after Exodus 20:17 and Deuteronomy 5:21. They regard the temple at Yerushalim and the earlier shrine there as apostatic. Scholars are of the opinion that the Samaritan Torah must have been adopted already by the time of the founding of the temple on mount Gerizim, consequently in the time of Nehemiah. Consequently, it must be a recension, which was in existence before the Septuagint. (We would not be wrong if we said that the Hagarenes knew the Samaritan Torah or someone, who knew it, must have briefed the proponents of the Hagarene-Mohamedan movement.

Samaritans claim that Moses did know the sacred place (Shechem-Gerizim), which is written in the 10th Commandment in the Samaritan Torah. Samaritans also claim that Jews have replaced this original commandment [“You shall eat it (the meat of the offfering) before YHVH your god year by year in the place which YHVH has chosen”] with their version [“You shall eat it (the meat of the offfering) before YHVH your god year by year in the place which YHVH shall choose”]. Samaritans argue that this substitution pictured Moses as ignorant of the whereabouts of the sacred place, and pose the critical question:

When we remember the story, where god orders Av’ram to offer his son as a sacrifice to god “On one of the mounts in the land of Moriah/Moriya”, the argument presented by the Samaritans sounds right. The reasoning behind this story must be as follows:

Scholars believe that the Samaritan Torah must have been already adopted by the time of the founding of the temple on mount Gerizim, consequently in the time of Nehemiah. Therefore, it must be a recension, which was in existence before the Septuagint (Greek translation of The Old Testament and Apocrypha). Naturally, the Hagarene Messenger and/or his tutor and/or his storyteller did know the Samaritan Torah.

According to Patricia Crone and Michael Cook the most important Samaritan text of the pre-Islamic period, Memar Marka of the ‘Shamerim’ (Samaritans) refers to mount Gerizim by the following descriptions. Mountain of the East, Bethel, House of god, Gate of Heaven, Luzah, a Sanctuary, Mount Gerizim, House of the LORD, the Goodly Mount, the Chosen Place, the Everlasting Hill, One of the Mountains, the LORD will Provide (‘Yehova Yire’).

 

HERE IS BAKKA

We are told that mount Gerizim contains altars of each of the patriarchs, Adam, Seth, Noah, Abraham, and I’zak. Here we must remember that,

So according to the literature of Islam Adam must have gone to the ‘first house of god’ on mount Gerizim.

The points made above indicate that mount Gerizim and Shechem were considered as sacred places long before the period that the Old Testament refers to. Of all the things related in these stories, the newest entry, Merc-el Baha (where Yusha ben Nun and Kaleb is interred) is the place that will lead us to Bakka.

Therefore, the place where Joshua is buried on the southern slopes of mount Gerizim at Shechem is also called Baha! In other words, Shechem is also called Baha. Now here we have the name of the place, ‘Merc-el Baha.’ 

Here is my proposal: Since Arabic is a Semitic language the words could have different pronunciations because of the diacritical dots and vowels. Now let us take bakka. It is written with two ‘k’s because in the original Arabic word ‘k’ is the so called hard ‘khă’ (خ).  In Bakka/Baka the root letters are ‘b’ and ‘k.’ Now let your imagination go wild, and replace the letter ‘khā’ with ‘hă’ (ح), which has no dot on top. That transforms Baka into Baha, which is the name of the place: Merc el Baha, where ‘merc’ means the ‘meadow’. Consequently, ‘Merc-el Baha’ means the  ‘Baha meadow’ or the ‘meadow at Baha.’

The different pronunciations of letter ‘a’ makes possible the reading or Merc-el Baha as Merc-el Behe or Merc-el Beha.

Now let us consider Bekke. The root letters are ‘b’ and ‘k’ again. The two ‘k’s in the word ‘Bekke’ stand for the hard ‘khă’. Therefore, our word is ‘Be(kh)e.

In the word Behe the root letters are ‘b’ and ‘h’. We know how the diacritical dots change the pronunciation of a word. If we substitute ‘khă’ with ‘hă’ the diacritical dot disappears and ‘Be(kh)e’ becomes ‘Behe’.

Merc-el Baha (Behe or Beha) means the  ‘Baha meadow’ or the ‘meadow at Baha’. One should keep that in mind.

Story tells us that Ya’kub returned to the city of Nablus, to the ‘house of his father’.  This place was actually the altar that his grandfather Av’ram/Abraham had built in the plain at Nablus. This plain was called, ‘Elon Moreh.’ Ya’kub pitched his tent in that place, “before the city” of Nablus. He bought that plain, which is now called ‘Halkat-us Sahra’ (‘rings of stone’). This is extremely interesting because the excavations carried at the mound Tel Balata (the old Shechem) have unearthed two defensive rings of stone walls around the old city.

The author who calls him Yakob  (Son of Aaron and the High Priest of the Samaritans) has the following paragraph in his web page titled ‘Mount Gerizim, The One True Sanctuary’:

Here again we have the ‘plain of Beha’ wherein we have Beth El (‘House of god’). Here could be one of the origins of the claims by Islam to the effect that Jews had altered the original ‘word of god’. Decalogue-Ten Commandments are the ‘word of god’ are they not? Do not forget that Islam seems to have borrowed a great deal of its doctrines from the Samaritan sources. While doing that, they must have borrowed the Samaritan accusations as well.

This paragraph tells us that,

We are told that amongst the places mentioned in the story of Av’ram, Shechem and Beth El are called makom (‘place’) in Hebrew. Here we must remember the term in the Islamic literature: ‘Makam-ı Ibrahim.’ Makom and makam are identical words, meaning the ‘place’ (the sacred place, sacred area). So we can safely say that Shechem and Beth El (the ‘makom Av’ram’ of the Samaritan literature) and ‘Makam-ı Ibrahim’ of the Islamic literature are identical.

Here we must remember the fact that Syria (Irak of our day was in Syria in those days) has always been the immediate neighbour of the lands where the Mosaic belief system had established itself. Syria was bordering on Palestine and the land of Midian in northwest Arabia. Syria has either been the witness to the developments in these lands or directly involved in their affairs. In his travel notes a Muslim ‘voyager’ Eb’ul Huseyin Muhammad ibn Cubeyr (born Valencia 1145, died Alexandria/Egypt?) wrote the following;

Is this all a coincidence? No way!

This conclusion has serious consequences for Islam:

Now we know where Bakka is and what it means for Islam:

 

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