Translation of Dequin :
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In Ṭabarī it is described how during the liberation Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥanafīyas and its companions (captured souls?) the wooden bars of Zamzam are broken. A spring or a cult pond with "living water" (usually derived from a nearby river), however, was an integral part of a Mandaean sanctuary. This was surrounded by a fence. In this stood also a cult hut, the maskna. This word is apparently derived from the Old Testament "miskan", the tabernacle[221]. The term maskna is not dissimilar to the name Mecca, and indeed this name is first encountered outside traditional literature[222] in the Mandean settlement area: Seven years after the imprisonment Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥanafīyas Ṭabarī describes the end ʿAbdallāh ibn al-Zubairs in "Macca"[223]. In the Latin chronicle on 754 this is described as follows:
At that time, in the era of 720[224], in the tenth year of his reign, in the sixty-sixth of the Arabs, Abdilmelic reached the summit of power and reigned for twenty years. He persecuted his father's adversary and killed him in Macca, Abraham's house, as they themselves say, between Ur (the city) of the Chaldeans and Carras (the city) of Mesopotamia, by an army commander, whom he had sent for this purpose. Thus he skillfully put an end to the civil war."”[225]
This "Macca" was thus settled by the chronicler in Mesopotamia, near the southern swampland[226], later the retreat area of the Mandaeans. Traditional literature also establishes the site of Ḫāriǧiten ("The Extracted") called"”" (Caves / Clefts)[227]. The numerous stories in the life of the Arab prophet, in which it is said that "exiles" from their community lived in gorges and crevices near Mecca, could have been transferred from here to today's Mecca. One must therefore consider that Mecca with its spring "Zamzam"[228] was originally a Mandaic sanctuary. Also at the bottom of the mosque of Medina there is said to have been a spring[229]. Thus a line of tradition may also lead back from the "imams of time" of the kind Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥanafīyas to the "redeemers" or "messengers" of the Mandaeans, who worked through all ages and generations under different forms and names[230].
These are significant similarities. However, it is the same with them as with the Mandean ideas already mentioned earlier: If one tries to follow these traces further, the search for intermediate stages is difficult. This may be due to the fact that the Imamite tradition of Islam came from a gnosis that was only remotely related to the Mandaean tradition. But this may also be due to the fact that the tradition of the last one thousand years - from both sides - did not want to know anything about such a relationship and clearer indications were eradicated and alienated over the centuries. This possibility must continue to be pursued with particular care.
[221] Rudolph, Mandaean II, p. 17 ff. In more recent texts this hut is called "Mandi".
[222] Equation with the "Macoraba" of Ptolemy is out of the question, since this name is to be understood rather as "“" - West (of the Arabian Peninsula); see Bucharin, Mecca, p. 122. The name "Makoraba" can be found on the map of Ptolemy also about where one would enter such a name - and quite far away from today's Mecca. For further attempts to find Mecca in ancient sources, see Crone, Meccan Trade, p. 134 ff.; compare also Crone and Cook, Hagarism, p. 24 f., in particular footnote 48 on p. 175.
[223] Ṭabarī, Ta’rīḫ XXI p. 224 ff. (II, 844 ff.). He's hit by a brick in his face, not iron.
[224]The 38 B.C. Spanish era. This would mathematically correspond to the year 682 of the Christian era, see Latin Chronicle on 754, preface Mommsen p. 327, but the "66th year of the Arabs" lasted from August 685 to July 686 according to later understanding (so in Tabari).
[225]Latin chronicle on 754, section 45, p. 347. translation into German by the author. Similarly the chronicle on 741: "at Macca, Abraham's house, as they think, which lies between the primeval Chaldeans and the Mesopotamian city of Carras on the wasteland" (p. 347, left column).
[226] The Greek charax denoted a fortification by palisades and the name is correspondingly frequent. Here it will be the today disappeared port city in the north of the Persian Gulf, which was called first after Alexander the Great Alexandria, later, after a renewal by Antiochus: Antiochia and finally after the Arab chief Spasines: Spasinou Charax (Barrington, Atlas, p. 93).
[227]Popp, Biblical Structures, pp. 78-81.
[228] Aramaic "murmur", which can also refer to marbles while praying (note Luxenberg). The murmuring prayers of Zoroastrian priests, frowned upon in Islam, were also called "zamzama" (reference Popp). Compare the article "Zamzam" by B. Carra de Vaux in EI(1), p. 1213.
Ok.
Very confused stuff with the Gnostic(s) (and the rest...) here, which have nothing to see with the Quranic texts.
My observation is : as soon as the muhajirun wrote (from the 720/730 AD) the framework of Mecca/Medina/Muhammad whose the role is to explain the origin of the Quran around which they are gathered, the non Muslim chroniclers (from 720/730 AD) copy this framework as "what has happened". The non Muslim chroniclers have no reason to doubts, they take this "history"for granted. From the middle 8th c. all what is written by those chroniclers is based on the framework of Mecca/Medina/Muhammad.
What is interesting in some of their writings (noted by Dequin) is the blur about keywords of the framework Mecca/Medina/Muhammad. Nobody know where is "Mecca" for example, they locate it in Iraq, nobody know "Hijaz", etc.
These writing attest one important thing : that the framework of Mecca/Medina/Muhammad history is being constructed
and it is not stabilized. and is still in elaboration regarding, as the non Muslim chroniclers source attest, the location of Mecca.
It is all I have to say about the Dequin stuff I translated.
Topic: Qur'anic studies today