Scholar who questioned traditional accounts of the origins of Islam

Patricia Crone, who has died aged 70, was a scholar who explored untapped archaeological records to challenge conventional views of the roots and evolution of Islam.

Historian colleague Fred M Donner said Crone had made it clear that historians of early Islam had failed to challenge the validity of their sources, complacently accepting instead the version of history created by the Islamic tradition itself.

Crone disputed assumptions that Islam had been transmitted by trade from Mecca, suggesting rather that it had been spread by conquest. She also identified how indigenous rural prophets in what is now Iran had defied conquering Arabs and helped shape Islamic culture, setting the stage for conflicts that endure today.

Current events frequently intruded on her scholarship. Writing about present-day Muslims, she said: “Wherever they look, they are being invaded by so-called Western values – in the form of giant billboards advertising self-indulgence, semi-pornographic films, liquor, pop music, fat tourists in indecent clothes and funny hats, and politicians lecturing people about the virtues of democracy.”

Patricia Crone was born in Kyndelose, Denmark, in 1945. She attended the universities of Copenhagen and London, then taught at Oxford, Cambridge and Princeton. Jewish alliance She argued that Muhammad was first perceived not as the founder of a new religion but as a preacher in the Old Testament tradition, at a time when Arabs and Jews were allies.

His success, she argued, “had something to do with the fact that he preached both state formation and conquest: Without conquest, first in Arabia and next in the Fertile Crescent, the unification of Arabia would not have been achieved.”

Patricia Crone is survived by four siblings.