This is more a question for readers who know this stuff, what do you think about Patricia Crone & company in their revision of the early history of Islam? I’m more of a Hugh Kennedy guy because I don’t know much about this field and would prefer to stick to the mainstream, but a few years ago I read a short monograph on representational art in mid-Umayyad Syria, and it just didn’t “feel right” in the context of the traditional narrative. The book didn’t really talk much about history, but rather more the Late Antique cultural influences on the Umayyad’s. But what I encountered seemed more like a conventional society of the post-Roman Near East than anything I would recognize as “Muslim.” Of course it’s all impressionistic, and I don’t have a good feel of the lay of the land, so I dismissed it. But how about those of you who know the primary sources? I can’t find Daniel Larison’s opinion on this sort of revisionism via Google, and I would be curious has to his views (since he knows Byzantine history and its sources, and had an interest in Islam at some point as well).
