La question du messianismedans l’islam primitif

Abstract

P. Crone and M. Cook, in their book Hagarism(1977), put forward the idea that the prophet Muhammad and the early believers preached the imminent coming of a Messiah whom they identified with the second caliph, 'Umar ibn al-Khattâb. As evidence, Crone and Cook relied on the testimony of some more or less contemporary Jewish and Christian sources along with the well-known fact that, in Muslim tradition, 'Umar carries the sobriquet, al-fârûq, etymologically related to the Syriac word for « savior ».The present article undertakes a re-examination of the sources adduced by Crone and Cook and considers relevant passages in the Quran, to show that the evidence for an aboriginal messianic orientation among the early believers is lacking. Although the messianic idea would become very important in the later Islamic community - after the first century A.H. - there seems no reason to believe that it was present among the believers of Muhammad's day.The author contends that the stories about the origin of 'Umar's nickname, al-fârûq, are best understood as part of an attempt by pious Muslims the the second century A. H as well as afterwards to disguise an earlier phase in the life of the community of Believers when it was more open to other kinds of righteous monotheists, particularly Jews and Christians.