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Fred M. Donner

Fred Donner's early interest in the role of pastoral nomadic groups in Near Eastern societies led him to write a dissertation on the role of Arabian pastoral nomadic groups in the early Islamic conquest movement in Iraq in the seventh century C.E. His first book, The Early Islamic Conquests (Princeton University Press, 1981), examined this question in more detail, particularly the relationship between pastoral nomads and the state, as well as the more general processes of state-formation and state-expansion that, he thinks, were an integral part of the early conquest movement. He has also written several articles dealing with the question of pastoral nomads and their place in the history of the region.

Close work with the sources for this early period of Islamic history, and the profound questions about the reliability of these sources raised by revisionist scholarship that has appeared since 1977, led Donner to a long-term examination of those sources. This resulted in several shorter studies and culminated in his Narratives of Islamic Origins: the beginnings of Islamic historical writing (Darwin Press, 1998).

More recently, Donner's interests have shifted to the intellectual or ideological factors that were at play in the early expansion of Islam, particularly the significance of militant piety, possibly rooted in an apocalyptic outlook. He is currently at work on a general study of Islamic origins that will attempt to sketch the outlines of this epochal historical process.

His teaching at the University of Chicago focuses on early Islamic history, Islamic social history, and aspects of Islamic law.

Education:

• B.A. Princeton University (Oriental Studies), 1968.
• Ph.D. Princeton University (Near Eastern Studies), 1975.
• Study at Middle East Centre for Arab Studies, Shimlan, Lebanon (8/1966-6/1967),
  and Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen , Germany (9/1970-6/1971).

Position Statements

• Top Ten Reasons to Oppose War Against Iraq
• Chicago Tribune Op-Ed, March 10, 2003
• Additional Note to my March 10 Tribune article

Recent Lectures and Public Presentations

• "Seeing the Origins of Islam in Historical Perspective." First Wadie Jwaideh Memorial Lecture, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, November 4, 2002.
• "Orientalists and the Rise of Islam," Lecture at Conference on "Orientalism: Dialogue of Cultures," University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan, October 23, 2002.
• "The Hybrid Culture of Al-Andalus." Lecture, The Newberry Library, Chicago, IL, April 3, 2002.
• "The Many Faces of Islam." Lecture at Conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Boston, MA, February 17, 2002.

Recent Publications:

• Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing. Princeton: Darwin Press, 1998 (=Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, 14). 358 p.
   
• The Early Islamic Conquests. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. 489 pp.

• The History of al-Tabari, vol. X:The Conquest of Arabia: The Riddah Wars. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993. 216 pp. Introduction, translation, annotations.

• " ‘Uthman and the Rashid‚n Caliphs in Ibn ‘Asakir's Ta’rikh madinat Dimashq: a Study in Strategies of Compilation," in James E. Lindsay (ed.), Ibn ‘Asakir: A Muslim Historian and his work (Princeton: Darwin Press, forthcoming 2001).
   
• "La Question de Messianisme dans l'Islam primitif," Révue du Monde Musulman et de la Méditerranée (forthcoming, 2000).
   
• "The Tribal Perspective in Early Islamic Historiography," in Lawrence I. Conrad (ed.), Historiography in the Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East (Princeton: Darwin Press, forthcoming 2000).
   
• "From Believers to Muslims. Patterns of Communal Identity in early Islam," in L. Conrad (ed.), Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, 4: Patterns of Communal Identity ( _Al-Abhath_, forthcoming, 2003).
   
• "Muhammad and the Islamic Caliphate, 570-1258 C.E.," in John Esposito (ed.), The Oxford History of Islam, chapter 1 (pp. 1-61). (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1999)
   
• "Piety and Eschatology in Early Kharijite Poetry," in Muhammad al-Sa‘afin (ed.), Fi mihrab al-ma‘rifa. Festschrift for Ihsan ‘Abbas. Beirut: Dar –adir, 1997, pp. 3-19 [English Section].
   
• "Centralized Authority and Military Autonomy in the Early Islamic Conquests," in Averil Cameron (ed.), Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, 3: States, Resources, and Armies. (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1995), 337-60.
   
• "Mesopotamian Trade from the Tenth to the Fifteenth Century C.E.," Asien, Afrika, Lateinamerika 20 (1993), 1095-1112.
   
• "Al-Lahajat al-‘ammiyya al-‘arabiyya wa-ahammiyyat dirasatiha" ["The Colloquial Arabic Dialects and the Importance of Studying Them"], Al-Abhath 41 (1993), 3-26 [Arabic].
   
• "The Growth of Military Institutions in the Early Caliphate and their Relation to Civilian Authority," in monograph series supplementing the journal Al-Qanþara 14 (1993), 311-326.
   
• "The Sources of Islamic Conceptions of War," in John Kelsay and James Turner Johnson (eds.), Just War and Jihad: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on War and Peace in Western and Islamic Traditions (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991), pp. 31-69.
   
• "The Shurþa [Police] in Early Umayyad Syria," in M. Adnan Bakhit and Robert Schick (eds.), Proceedings of the 3rd Symposium on the History of Bilâd al-Shâm--Umayyad Period, 2 (Amman, 1989), 247-262.
   
• "The Role of Nomads in the Near East in Late Antiquity (400-800 C.E.), in F. M. Clover and R. S. Humphreys (eds.), Tradition and Innovation in Late Antiquity (Madison: U. Wisconsin, 1989), 73-85.
   
• "The Death of Ab‚ Talib," in J.H. Marks and R. M. Good (eds.), Love and Death in the Ancient Near East. Essays in Honor of Marvin H. Pope (Guilford, CT: Four Quarters, 1987), pp. 237-245.
   
• "The Problem of Early Arabic Historiography in Syria," in M. A. Bakhit (ed.), Proceedings of the 2nd Symposium on the History of Bilâd al-Shâm--Early Islamic Period, vol. I (Amman, 1987), pp. 1-27.
   
• "The Formation of the Islamic State," Journal of the American Oriental Society 106 (1986), 283-296.
   
• "Xenophon's Arabia," Iraq 48 (1986), pp. 1-14.
   
• "Tribal Settlement in Basra during the First Century A.H.," in T. Khalidi (ed.), Land Tenure and Social Transformation in the Middle East (Beirut: AUB, 1984), pp. 97-120.
   
• "Some Early Arabic Inscriptions from al-ºanakiyya, Saudi Arabia," Journal of Near Eastern Studies 43 (1984), pp. 181-208.
   
• "The Bakr b. Wa’il Tribes and Politics in Northeastern Arabia on the Eve of Islam," Studia Islamica 51 (1980), pp. 5-38.
   
• "Muhammad's Political Consolidation in Western Arabia up to the Conquest of Mecca: A Reassessment," Muslim World 69 (1979), pp. 229-247.
   
• "Mecca's Food Supplies and Muhammad's Boycott," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 20 (1977), pp. 249-266.
   
• Numerous Encycopedia entries, over 60 book reviews.