I have just finished a biography of the Prophet by Juan Cole. Little in it was new to me, and much of it seemed a little off, a little to eager to excuse or justify to hostile Christian readers. It was interesting, though, to read the biography of the Prophet as a historical text rather than the religious one I was taught at school, and I was very interested in how he placed the rise of Islam in the space between two warring empires. However, the writing was incredibly bad. Here is one passage, where he waxes lyrical:
The caravan may have set out from the small Arabian holy city in August 592. Citizens gathered beneath the lambent late-afternoon sun to see the traders off, having invested in the mission, ringing bells and beating tambourines. Muhammad and the other traders wore the white robes of merchant-priests of peace. They thereby signaled to any hostile tribesmen that they had no warlike intentions and traveled between sanctuaries under the protection of the Creator God. Members of the Hashim clan had a special advantage in this regard since they served as caretakers of the Kaaba and even coarse rural tribesmen respected their vocation. Bedouin children ran up to them, giggling and hawking fruit and water. Muhammad and his men would have passed through occasional adobe villages, roofs thatched with palm leaves, as they traversed the auburn steppe, interrupted by teal abal bushes and strewn with colorful loose chert.
Such travelers rode through the night beneath a spangled sky. At dawn the sun slowly flared behind low basalt hills, tinting the twisted crags with rose and violet, then embossing them in brass. They halted when the heat of the day grew too oppressive, catching some sleep and waiting for nightfall. After several days of riding, the party would have reached the date-palm oasis of Yathrib. There, happy to see some limpid pools and fruit-laden date and jujube trees after days of eating dust, they would have stocked up on water, dates, and other refreshments for the precarious arid trek north.
Now I have turned to a far better, sharper and more humorous book, Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Blue Flower. What a pleasure it is.