The Mobilization of Faith and the Politics of Identities: Islam’s Scripturalist Antecedents in Arabia
Abstract:
Through legitimization, an entire community can be rehabilitated and can find a new accommodating place in the elites’ propaganda and their social framework. Syncretistic instances can smoothen this process of identity-formation and allow for the taking of neutral positions. Because of the transience of the legitimization process at the time, it was only when the Arabians managed to ‘legitimize’ their identity that they succeeded in establishing a socio-political apparatus, paving the way for the shaping of the Muslim Medieval world. This paper delves into the political and cultural developments of pre-Islamic late antique Arabia, focusing on the religious attitudes of the inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula and its northern extension into the Syrian desert. My discussion offers an interpretative framework that contextualizes the choice of Arabian elites to become Jewish sympathizers and/or convert to Christianity and Islam by pursuing a line of inquiry probing the mobilization of faith in the shaping of Arabian identities. I argue that the Arabian rulers’ cautious conversion follows a broad late antique trend that aimed to ease the transition for their subjects and/or to assume a neutral position towards the developments of the surrounding empires. The success of Muḥammad’s movement lay in his channeling of political knowledge (the Arabians have accustomed with Rome, Iran, and Aksūm’s instruments of control and internal logistics) and of the scriptural traditions into his message, adapting them to Arabia. At the same time, Muḥammad molded Arabian elements for the wider public of Late Antiquity. Much like Christianity had been exploited as a signifiant of bona fides in the Roman Commonwealth, Islam became both a key instrument for the negotiation of identities in the Muslim commonwealth and the greatest religious legacy originating in Late Antiquity.
Valentina A. Grasso is a Visiting Assistant Professor at New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. She is also an affiliate member of the ERC project “The Qur’an as a Source for Late Antiquity” (QaSLA, 2021-6), the Cambridge Silk Road Program, and the London Society for Medieval Studies.
Valentina holds a B.A. cum laude from the University of Catania (Semitic Philology, 2015), a M.A. cum laude from the University of Naples “L’Orientale” (Islamic Studies, 2017), and a Ph.D. (Divinity, 2021) from the University of Cambridge, where she completed her doctoral dissertation on the history of pre-Islamic late antique Arabia under the supervision of Professor Garth Fowden. While her current research explores the interactions between Arabia and Ethiopia during Late Antiquity, her teaching seeks to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of the first millennium world outside of a Eurocentric framework.