The earliest surviving reference to the Arabic term ‘God is great’ (Allāhu akbar) is in a Syriac text known as the Maronite Chronicle, composed in the second half of the 7th century, perhaps as early as the 660s.[1] The anonymous… Continue Reading
The first mosque to be built on the Temple Mount, Jerusalem – forerunner of today’s al-Aqṣā Mosque –, was constructed sometime around 637. We know this thanks to a little-known Georgian source whose information ultimately dates to around 670. Below… Continue Reading
The other day I was looking for epigraphical sources when I came across an article from Islamic Awareness, a website for Muslim apologetics. Now, I quite like Islamic Awareness: their analysis is often awry, but they tend to cite academic… Continue Reading
Guest post by Richard Heffron, doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago and an experienced Arabist. He collects here the earliest Syriac sources for Abū Bakr, which are, as far as I know, the earliest dated sources in any language… Continue Reading