Upcoming reddit AMA with Ilkka Lindstedt on 5 March
https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicQuran/comments/1j09rc7/announcement_upcoming_ama_with_dr_ilkka_lindstedt/Another distinguished scholar. But I have no luck with this AMA thing, as I always arrive late after it gets locked. I am particularly interested in his interpretation of verses such as Q 37:136-137 and others referenced by Patricia Crone: How does he account for such verses that appear to be inconsistent with the Hijazi milieu? I hope to be present to ask this question myself, or that someone else will bring it up.
Thanks for this question! I'll give a short answer now and, if the same question comes up again, a longer one in the AMA.
First, I should note that I am not wedded to the idea that all of the Quran comes from the Prophet Muhammad, active in Mecca and Medina. I think the (vast) majority of the text does come from his revelatory corpus, but there is a possibility that some of the verses stem from different contexts (though I do not think this is necessarily the preferred solution).
As regards Q 37:136-137, I've always read it in tandem with other verses where the audience is told to remember and reflect on past people who did not believe and were destroyed (e.g., 7:73-96); also, the ruins/earlier living places of those by-gone peoples are told to be (rather vaguely) around the believers (Q. 14:45). I am thinking of, in particular, Hegra / Mada'in Salih, in northern Hijaz, which was (as far as I know) abandoned by the time of Muhammad. The place and its ruins would have been an imposing sight to the people (as it still is) -- in the Qur'an, it is mentioned as Thamud's place, but it and similar ruins might have also been connected to other by-gone people known from the Biblical or local lore. I do not think that Q 37:137-138 means that the Meccans would have passed, specifically, (the purported ruins of) Sodom and Gomorrah, but simply says that the people of Mecca have certainly seen ruins in, probably, Hijaz.
As for agriculture in the Quran (mentioned by Crone and, following her, Shoemaker, on the basis of, e.g., Q. 36:33–34, 56:63–64, 2:261, and 6:136–45), I think it's, in fact, a red herring. Patricia Crone is one of my favourite scholars of all time, but I think she got several things wrong, this being one of them. It is quite true that agriculture is not possible in Mecca, because there's neither rain nor an oasis, but one does not have to go further than Ta'if to come to a settlement where there is enough rainfall to cultivate, at least, barley (see Miller's treatment and map). Medina, an oasis town, was famous for its palm-groves, which feature here and there in pre-Islamic poetry. In any case, produce was naturally imported to Mecca; it's not like the people there were eating sand. Olives (mentioned in a few Quranic verses) could be imported from Yemen or Syria. Unfortunately, at the moment, I do not have time to (re)read all the agriculture-related Quranic verses (might do it for the AMA if someone brings this up anew), but my sense is that most verses do not, pace Crone and Shoemaker, say that the audience of the Quranic revelations labor in fields themselves; the Quran simply notes that the audience is familiar with different types of produce, which I do not think presents much of historical problem (as discussed in the preceding), even if we suppose that those verses were proclaimed in Mecca or Medina.
Topic: Qur'anic studies today