Since John Wansbrough, Albrecht Noth, and Uri Rubin introduced the "literary turn" to thestudy of the origins and rise of Islam, scholars of the field have found themselves facing ashibboleth of sorts: Has the recognition of the literary character of the source material pre-cluded the possibility of reaching factual truth, or is the dismissal of the Islamic source ma-terial unwarranted extremism? How is it possible to extract positive knowledge from themass of legendary material? Is there a sound methodology to deal with the material, andwhere does it lead? No matter how individual scholars go about it, these questions require aresponse before any findings can be assessed appropriately. In the course of modern studieson the beginnings of Islam, different answers have been given, with different reasoning.Fred Donner has summarized the development of approaches as a sequence from a descrip-tive, positivist attitude represented by the optimism of nineteenth-century Orientalists throughthe source-criticism of Wellhausen and the tradition-critical work of Goldziher and Schachtto the "skeptical approach." Under this last rubric Donner lists John Wansbrough's workinformed by the textual analysis of biblical studies, and that of Crone and Cook, who drewthe radical conclusion of these textual studies and abandoned hope of extracting historicalinformation from Islamic sources altogether.' Ever since, any serious historical study in thisfield has to clarify its stance regarding the authenticity and source value of the early Muslimtradition, Qur'an, sira, hadith, and historiography.
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