G. R. Hawting

Gerald R. Hawting (born 1944) is a British historian and Islamicist.

Life

Hawting's teachers were Bernard Lewis and John Wansbrough. He received his Ph.D. in 1978. He is Emeritus Professor for the History of the Near and Middle East at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London.

Research

In the line of John Wansbrough, Hawting concentrated on the question for the religious milieu in which Islam came into being. He analyzed all available sources about the religions on the Arabian peninsula in the time before Islam in detail. According to Hawting, Islam did not develop within a world of polytheism as is reported by the traditional Islamic traditions which were written 150 to 200 years after Muhammad. Instead, Islam came into being on the basis of a conflict among various types of monotheists which considered each other to fail in living a perfect monotheism, and considering each other to practice idolatry.

Another theme of Hawting's research is the period of the Umayyad dynasty which was of great importance for the formation of Islam as a religion. Hawting was a representative of the Revisionist School of Islamic Studies.

Works

• The First Dynasty of Islam: The Umayyad Caliphate AD 661-750 (1986).
• "John Wansbrough, Islam, and monotheism" (1997).
• The Idea of Idolatry and the Rise of Islam: From Polemic to History (1999).

As editor and co-author:

• Approaches to the Quran (1993).
• The Development of Islamic Ritual (2006).