Nevo was active in the Negev Archaeological Project on the
Early Muslim period and the rural settlement in the Negev in the 6-8 centuries AD, under the management of the Institute of Archaeology of the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI). He undertook much of the excavations with his own hands, without workers, with the help og his friends
Amnon Rotenberg and
Nurit Tsafrir.
Discovery of the rock inscriptions In 1981, he and his research group discovered four hundred rock inscriptions in ancient Arabic scripts at a site in the
Negev Desert near Sde Boker. The site is known as 'The Lost City' (Site 92, Israel Survey, map of Sde Boker West). This discovery led him, along with
Judith Koren from the
University of Haifa, to reexamine the sources of Islam and early Muslim history. Nevo presented the first results of the said project at the 3rd International Colloquium organised by the Hebrew University in 1985 on the topic
From Jahiliyya to Islam, under the title "Sde Boqer and the Central Negev, 7th-8th Century AD". He continued his research and published the results in an article on
Arab paganism in the Negev during the
Byzantine period, which he presented at the fifth Colloquium in this series, in 1990. His last article on the subject, "Towards a Prehistory of Islam" ("ahead of Islamic History") was published in 1994 after his death, edited by the journal editors. The full texts of the Negev rock inscriptions, including copying, decoding and translation, were published by Nevo,
Zemira Cohen and
Dalia Heftman in their book
Ancient Arabic Inscriptions from the Negev. Before publishing this book, the findings were gradually published in 1981-1982 and 1986-1988. These inscriptions were the basis for questioning Islamic sources and Early Islamic history, which led to conclusions that contradict the official history of Islamic sources. Nevo belongs to the
Revisionist school of Islamic studies.
Development of support for the Revisionist School in Islamic Studies In his book
Crossroads to Islam: the origins of the Arab religion and the Arab state , which he wrote with Judith Koren and which was published after his death, Nevo presented a theory about the origins and development of the Islamic state and Islamic religion. Like a number of Western researchers before him, each for different reasons, he doubted the historical validity of classical Islamic traditions about the early days of Islam. The first part of the book describes, based on archaeological findings published by other archeologists, the cessation of maintenance of the distant Middle Eastern province by the Byzantine Empire and the empire's withdrawal from the region, following the loss of the economic motive for continual maintenance of the province. Based on these findings, it becomes apparent that there was no Arab conquest from the south. Rather, the Arabs who seized power after the Byzantine Empire's withdrawal left a power vacuum in the region. These were either local Arabs, or tribes from the desert recruited by the empire to maintain its desert borders, prior to the empire abandoning the region. Although a condition for "partnership" with the Byzantines was the adoption of Christianity, in practice ,officially, the head of the tribe declared his belief in Christianity (and therefore including every member of the tribe), but in reality they remained
idol worshippers as before. Later in the book, based on the analysis of historical sources and the Negev inscriptions, Nevo and Koren describe how,, over time, these Arabs adopted the Christian monotheism of the sedentary population which they began to control, and subsequently established an independent religion. According to this reading of the historical findings, the stories of
Muhammad and the
Qur'an are not completely true. This strong skepticism led to a poignant criticism by other historians. However, Koren and Nevo published in 1991 a paper explaining their approach to the study of Islamic history. This paper was later included in a collection of "revisionist" articles, "The Quest For the Historical Muhammad", which he published with scholar
Ibn Warraq. As stated, other researchers came to similar conclusions before him, such as
John E. Wansborough, who investigated in depth the Qur'an text, and reached the conclusion that it was a collection of sayings that "were in the field" and joined together into a holy book only in the mid-8th century, an opinion that Nevo also came from his research on the sails he found in the play. German theologian
Karl-Heinz Ohlig, in an extensive article, built on Nevo's theory as detailed in his book
Crossroads to Islam and developed it on to another. But a few years later, in the book
Die dunklen Anfänge (lit. 'The Dark Beginnings'), which appeared in German only, co-edited by Ohlig, he developed his theory in a completely different way and no longer mentions Nevo's work. In this book, Ohlig claims that while "Muhammad was a title ("the acclaimed") and not a personal name (a claim that was taken directly from Nevo's research), it was a title attributed to Jesus, which means the acclaimed prophet of the Arabs was the Christian Jesus - something completely contrary to Nevo's theory. Many later studies debating Nevo's theory were subsequently published, such as the work of Polish researcher M. Grodzki on the formation of Islam is that of
Hagarism. Yet another similar theory appeared in the 19th century, long before the development of the Hagarism theory:
Reinhart Dozy wrote in his 1864 book
De Israelietan Te Mekka ("The Israelites in Mecca"), that Islam was influenced in the beginning by the tribe of Simon, which had long left the Israelite tribal alliance to resettle in the Arabian Peninsula. Following the sons of Simon, the belief in
Jahiliyyah was not as described in Islamic sources as idolatry, but a belief in a one invisible Abrahamic God. In his opinion, there are even some clues to this in the Bible even in the Bible, such as the unreasonable diminishing of the tribe of Simon over the course of the
Book of Numbers. It may be added that
Beer-lahai-roi is identified by some in Arabia with the
Well of Zamzam in Mecca, and may be identified with the "Study Hall of Shem and Eber" from rabbinical tradition. Some argue that Nevo's view that Islamic traditions regarding Muhammad's origins have already long been expressed by Shi'ite Islam. == Research ==