Tea at Trianon: Origins of Islam

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, June 13, 2025

Origins of Islam

From It Can Always Get Worse:

The Prophet Muhammad is said to have had the first of the revelations that became the Qur’an in 610 AD and to have died in 632. Islamic historiography presents Mecca in the period preceding the Arab conquests as a bustling metropolis, a key stop on the trade route between Syria and Yemen, and its ka’ba as a focus for pagan pilgrims. Islamic records say that the umra, the “lesser” pilgrimage, predates Islam.1 “Al-Haram”—the “Forbidden”—refers to the fact that violence and killing, even of animals, was banned in the sanctuary space, usually marked out with stones, around a pagan shrine or temple, which was often located in a valley or remote desert. The Forbidden Gathering Place was, so Muslim history says, one of the few places the otherwise fractious Arab tribes united.2
In Gibson’s telling, there is no archaeological record in Mecca before 800 AD. Everywhere in the Arab world, says Gibson, when construction projects begin, somebody from the ministry of antiquities is present at the digging of the foundations because of the likelihood artifacts will be discovered. Mecca—despite Muslim belief it was the “Mother of All Cities” at the time of the Prophet, surrounded by great walls and containing many temples—has seen nothing like this, according to Gibson.
From the Qur’an, says Gibson, we get a picture of Muhammad being born in a reasonable-size city, able to raise men for caravans, and, crucially, the setting is an agricultural one. The earliest surviving biography of Muhammad, says Gibson, refers to the Prophet’s birthplace as one where there are grasses and grapes and trees: this is not Mecca. Gibson makes much of his study of ancient maps, and the fact Mecca is on none of them, an oddity if it was such an important economic and social locale. (Read more.)