Donner Replies

In your December 2006 issue [volume 40(2):197-199], Fred M. Conner's interesting "retrospective review" of Patricia Crone and Michael Cook's Hagarism (1977) gives no credit to the late John Wansbrough for doing at least as much as them to wake up "the then rather sleepy field of early Islamic studies," with his enigmatic, even hermetic contributions Quranic Studies (1977) and The Sectarian Milieu (1978). In the same issue, Mohamad Nasrin misspells his name as 'Warnsbrough' in an informative but rather patronizing review of the recent reprint of Quranic Studies [pp. 250-251 j. Has Wansbrough now become al-aVad, the absent one, whose name is not mentioned, or, if it is, admonishingly mangled? In any case, a thorough critical appraisal of this reputed incendiary among scholars is surely overdue.