Muhammad and the Golden Bough

Through its development of a methodology for analysing the mythic and folkloric traditions of pre-Islamic Arabia and the process of their incorporation into Islamic myth and Qur'anic texts, Muhammad and the Golden Bough offers compelling insights for students of Islam, comparative religion, and cultural anthropology. By linking Arabic myth with a broad range of ancient and classical texts--including Gilgamesh, Homer, and the Hebrew Bible--the book makes a provocative contribution to Biblical and ancient Near Eastern studies, classics, and comparative literature. The richness of myth in Arab-Islamic culture has long been ignored or even denied. In "Muhammad and the Golden Bough", Jaroslav Stetkevych demonstrates the existence of a coherent pre-Islamic Arabian myth that was subsequently incorporated into Islamic poetic tradition. The study dissects the intriguing Arab-Islamic myth built around Muhammad's unearthing of a "golden bough" from the grave of the last survivor of an ancient Arab people, the Thamud, who, according to the myth, were destroyed by a divine scourge for their iniquity. Stetkevych draws together the lore of pre-Islamic Arabia, the Qu'ran, and the Biography of the Prophet. Once reconstructed and deconstructed, the Arabian myth then serves as the basis for a comparative study that links Arabic mythic traditions with Gilgamesh, Homer, and the Hebrew Bible.