Patricia Crone

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Patricia Crone, Ph.D., (born 1945,^[1] Denmark) is a scholar, author and historian of early Islamic history working at the Institute for Advanced Study. She established herself as a major challenger to the established narrative of the early history of Islam.^[2]

Contents 1 Career 2 Bibliography 2.1 Sole author 2.2 Coauthor 2.3 Articles 3 References 4 External links

[edit] Career

Patricia Crone completed her undergraduate and graduate work at the University of London, receiving a Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies in 1973 under Bernard Lewis. For the next three years, she served as a Senior Research Fellow at the University of London’s Warburg Institute. In 1977, she became a University Lecturer in Islamic history and a Fellow of Jesus College at Oxford University. Dr. Crone became Assistant University Lecturer in Islamic studies and Fellow of Gonville and Caius College at Cambridge University in 1990, and has held several positions at Cambridge since then. She served as University Lecturer in Islamic studies from 1992-94, and Reader in Islamic history from 1994 until her appointment to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton where she became Andrew W. Mellon professor in 1997. Since 2002, she has been a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Social Evolution & History.

In their book Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World, Patricia Crone and her associate Michael Cook, working at SOAS at the time, provided an analysis of early Islamic history by looking at the only surviving contemporary accounts of the rise of Islam, written in Armenian, Greek, Aramaic and Syriac by witnesses. They claimed that Islam, as represented by contemporary, Non-Muslim sources, was in essence a tribal rebellion against the Byzantine and Persian empires with deep roots in Judaism, and that Arabs and Jews were allies in these conquering communities. ^[3]

In her book Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam, Crone argues that while Muhammad never traveled much beyond the Hijaz, internal evidence in the Qur'an such as its description of Muhammad's polytheist opponents as olive growers, suggests that the events surrounding the prophet took place near to the Mediterranean milieu.^[3]

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Sole author

• From Arabian tribes to Islamic empire : army, state and society in the Near East c.600-850 (2008) ISBN 9780754659259
• Slaves on Horses : The Evolution of the Islamic Polity (1980) ISBN 0-521-52940-9
• Pre-Industrial Societies : Anatomy of the Pre-Modern World (2003) ISBN 1-85168-311-9
• God's Rule : Government and Islam. Six centuries of medieval islamic political thought (2004). Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-13290-5. Also ISBN 0-231-13291-3.
• Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (1987) ISBN 1-59333-102-9
• Roman, Provincial and Islamic Law : The Origins of the Islamic Patronate (1987 Paperback:2002) ISBN 0-521-52949-2
• Medieval Islamic Political Thought (2005). Edinburgh University Press, New Ed edition. ISBN 0-7486-2194-6

[edit] Coauthor

• Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World, (1977) ISBN 0-521-29754-0
• The Formation of Islam : Religion and Society in the Near East, 600-1800 (2002) ISBN 0-521-58813-8
• Islamic Historiography (2002) ISBN 0-521-62936-5
• God's Caliph : Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam (2003; orig. 1986) ISBN 0-521-54111-5

[edit] Articles

• August 2006 article by Patricia Crone summarizing her views: What do we actually know about Mohammed?

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Institute for Advanced Study: Faculty and Emeriti: Crone — homepage in Princeton.
• Book God's Rule book review
• Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam section beginning at page 231