To remap early Islam means to remap the entire Arabian Peninsula – from north to south, and from east to west, including of course neighbouring regions, and the kingdoms found within. Like other chapters, the present one combines what we know based on epigraphy and contemporaneous external references on the one hand, and later Islamic sources on the other, in order to problematise the latter while simultaneously thinking creatively about the former. This means asking fundamental questions, interrogating traditionally held opinions that have masqueraded as axioms, and moving the discourse of Islamic origins forward in a way that avoids earlier Orientalist assumptions or noncritical apologetical studies.

Rather than imagine Islam as a sudden rupture on the stage of world history, I work on the assumption, as all do in the subfield of Islamic origins, that the religion emerged, slowly and gradually, from a combination of pre-existent monotheisms and local Arab cultural and literary forms. As a result, Islam must be firmly situated within the context of late antiquity, rather than presented as that which terminated it. As a result, Islam must be firmly situated within the context of late antiquity, rather than presented as that which terminated it. The major question that we all must face, however, is just what this process would have looked like, on account of various textual lacunae and historical silences.