The study of Islamic historiography: A progress report

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society

Volumn 7, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 199-227

  Robinson, Chase F ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 41149098389     PISSN: 13561863     EISSN: 14740591     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S1356186300008841     Document Type: Review

References (120)

1. S.J. Shaw and W. R. Polk (eds.) Studies on the Civilization of Islam (Boston, 1962), pp. 108-37
2. Cf. R. S. Humphreys, Islamic History: a Framework for Inquiry (Princeton, 1991), pp. 74f
3. See A. Cameron (ed.), History as Text: the Writing of Ancient History (London, 1989), pp. 207f
4. T. Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction (Minneapolis, 1983), p. 120
5. For two fairly recent examples, see S. Günther, Quellenuntersuchungen zu den "Maqātil at-Tālibiyyin" des Abū 'l-Faraǧ al-Isfahānī (gest. 356/967) (Hildesheim, 1991)
6. and W. Werkmeister, Quellenuntersuchungen zum Kitāb al-'Iqd al-farid des Andalusiers Ibn 'Abdrabbih (246/860-328/940) (Berlin, 1983)
7. Ibn al-'Adīm, Bughyat al-talab fi ta'rīkh Halab (Aleppo, 1988)
8. See N. Partner, "The new Comificius: medieval history and the artifice of words", Classical Rhetoric and Medieval Historiography, ed. E. Breisach (Kalamazoo, 1985), p. 11
9. Cf. C. Gilliot, "Mythe, récit, histoire du salut dans le commentaire coranique de Tabari", JA, CCLXXII (1994). pp. 244f
10. The idea has been anticipated by others; see, for example, G. Rotter, "Zur Überlieferung einiger historischer Werke Madā'inis in Tabaris Annalen", Oriens, XXIII-IV (1974), p. 105
11. See, for example, G. Juynboll, Muslim Tradition (Cambridge, 1983), chapter 1. It is worth noting that although Motzki's careful qualifications of Schacht's views may allow for some late first-century hadith, he does not argue for an earlier systematization of isnād procedures
12. See E. Landau-Tasseron, "Sayf b. 'Umar in medieval and modern scholarship", DI, LXVII (1990), pp. 6f
13. Cf. E. L. Petersen, 'Alī and Mu'āwiya in Early Arabic Tradition (Copenhagen, 1964), p. 17
14. See D. Pingree, "The fragments of the works of al- Fazāri", Journal of Near Eastern Studies, XXIX (1970), pp.103-23
15. E.g. Māshā'allāh's Fī qiyām al-khulafā' wa-ma'rifat qiyām kull malik
16. see E. S. Kennedy and D. Pingree, The Astrological History of Māshā'allāh (Cambridge, MA, 1971), in particular pp. 129ff
17. For a list of astrological works available in ninth-century libraries, see F. Rosenthal, "From Arabic books and manuscripts, X", JAOS, LXXXIII (1963), pp. 454f
18. nd edition (Oxford, 1969), pp. 401f. (particularly F. Saxl, "The Zodiac of Qusayr 'Arnra", pp. 424-32)
19. For evidence on the Jewish side, see J. H. Charlesworth, "Jewish interest in astrology during the Hellenīstic and Roman period", Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, 20:2 (Berlin and New York, 1987), pp. 926-50
20. for the Armenians' interest, R. W. Thomson, "'Let now the astrologers stand up': the Armenian Christian reaction to astrology and divination", Dumbarton Oaks Papers, XLVI (1992), pp. 304-12
21. On the historiographic significance for the Islamic tradition of Theophilus of Edessa (d. 785), translator of Homer, historian, and court astrologer to al-Mahdī, see Lawrence I. Conrad, "The conquest of Arwād: a source-critical study in the historiography of the early medieval Near East", in A. Cameron and L. I. Conrad, The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East I: Problems in the Literary Source Material (Princeton, 1992), pp. 331f
22. R. G. Khoury, "Un Fragment astrologique inédit attribué à Wahb b. Munabbih", Arabica, XIX (1972), pp. 139-44
23. Ibn al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-Fihrist (Leipzig, 1872), p. 277
24. M. M. Azmi, On Schacht's Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence (Riyadh, 1985)
25. H. Motzki, Die Anfänge der islamischen Jurisprudenz: Ihre Entwicklung bis zur Mitte des 2. /8. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart, 1991)
26. idem, "The Musannaf of 'Abd al-Razzāq as-San'ānī as a source of authentic ahādith of the first century A.H.", JNES, L (1991), pp. 1-21. Motzki's work suggests that some hadith may date from the late first century
27. For a demonstration of how isnāds can misrepresent the transmission of parallel accounts, see S. Leder, "The literary use of the khabar. a basic form of historical writing", in Cameron and Conrad, Problems in the Literary Source Material, pp. 284f
28. Here I draw on several studies by G. Schoeler ("Die Frage der schriftlichen oder mündlichen Überlieferung der Wissenschaften im frühen Islam", DI, LXII [1985], pp. 201-30
29. as well as on S. Leder, Das Korpus al-Haitam ibn 'Adī (Frankfurt am Main, 1991), pp. 8f
30. Günther, Quellenuntersuchungen
31. and N. Calder, Studies in Early Muslim Jurisprudence (Oxford, 1993), chapter 7
32. In addition to the note above, see E. Landau-Tasseron, "Processes of redaction: the case of the Tamīmite delegation to the Prophet Muhammad", BSOAS, XLIX (1986), pp. 253-70
33. N. Abbott, Studies in Arabic Literary Papyri I: Historical Texts (Chicago, 1957), pp. 9f
34. For a more circumspect view, see F. Rosenthal, A History of Muslim Historiography (Leiden, 1952), p. 64
35. A. A. Duri, Rise of Historical Writing among the Arabs, ed. and tr. by Lawrence I. Conrad (Princeton, 1983), pp. 25f
36. and Werkmeister, Quellenuntersuchungen, pp. 432f
37. Abbott, Studies, p. 26
38. On 'Urwa, cf. N. A. Faruqi (Early Muslim Historiography [Delhi, 1979], p. 226: "The style of 'Urwa in writing and presenting the historical material was quite simple and far from any complexity or ambiguity. His approach is quite realistic, clear and free from exaggeration"
39. and Duri, The Rise of Historical Writing, p. 25 (as translated from the 1960 original): "'Urwa's style of writing is direct and far removed from literary affectation, and at the same time his attitude is realistic, unequivocal, and free from exaggeration."
40. See Caetani, Annali dell'Islam, i, pp. 472f
41. P. Crone, Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (Princeton, 1987), pp. 226f
42. The topological character of this number in the conquest traditions was also pointed out by E. Landau-Tasseron in her review of Donner, The Early Islamic Conquests in JSAI, VI (1985), pp. 509f
43. See Conrad, 'The conquest of Arwād", pp. 393f
44. On the exegetical nature of much of what purports to Prophetic history, see Crone, Meccan Trade, pp. 204f
45. and cf. J. Bellamy, "Sources of Ibn Abi'l-Dunyā's Kitāb Maqtal Amīr al-Mu'minīn 'Ali", JAOS, CIV (1984), p. 17
46. The argument was first made by Noth in his "Der Charakter der ersten grossen Sammlungen von Nachrichten zur frühen Kalifenzeit", DI, XLVII (1971). pp. 168-99
47. See, for example, J. Koren and Y. D. Nevo, "Methodological approaches to Islamic studies", DI, LXVIII (1991), pp. 87-107, which concedes that the "'revisionist' approach is by no means monolithic", but then proceeds to treat it as such
48. See, for example, P. Crone, "Two legal problems bearing on the early history of the Qur'ān", JSAI, XVIII (1994), pp. 14f
49. Cf. M. Sharon, ("The military reforms of Abū Muslim", Studies in Islamic History and Civilization in Honour of Professor David Ayalon [Jerusalem, 1986], p. 109, note 15)
50. M. Morony, Iraq after the Muslim Conquest (Princeton, 1984), p. 572
51. See P. Crone, Slaves on Horses: the Evolution of the Islamic Polity (Cambridge, 1980), p. 14
52. See his "Die literarisch überlieferten Verträge der Eroberungszeit als historische Quellen für die Behandlung der unterworfenen Nicht-Muslime durch ihre neuen muslimischen Oberherren", Studien zum Minderheitenproblem im Islam I (Bonn, 1973), pp. 282-314
53. and the Ibādī material used by M. Cook, Early Muslim Dogma (Cambridge, 1981)
54. See Juynboll, Muslim Tradition, pp. 12f
55. The maqtal of 'Uthmān is in fact mentioned as one of the earliest sub-themes of fitna (pp. 33f.); for a full discussion, see now S. Günther, "Maqātil līterature in medieval Islam", Journal of Arabic Literature, XXV (1994), pp. 192-212
56. Here I follow what is now the conventional wisdom, but there are qualifications to be made: see L. I. Conrad, "Abraha and Muhammad: some observations apropos of chronology and literary topoi in the early Arabic historical tradition", BSOAS, L (1987), p. 239
57. J. Wansbrough, The Sectarian Milieu: Content and Composition of Islamic Salvation History (Oxford, 1978)
58. M. Lecker, Muslims, Jews and Pagans: Studies on Early Islamic Medina (Leiden, 1995), p. xi, note 8: "the first two centuries are best studied as a whole"
59. M. Hinds, "«Maghāzi» and «sīra» in early Islamic scholarship". La vie du prophète Mahomet (Paris, 1983), pp. 64f
60. Ibn Abi Shayba, al-Musannaf (Beirut, 1989), viii, pp. 434f
61. E. Shoufani, al-Ridda and the Muslim Conquest of Arabia (Beirut, 1972), chapter 4
62. cf. Donner, The Early Islamic Conquests, p. 90: "The Islamic conquest of the Near East cannot be viewed, then, as something separate from the career of Muhammad the Apostle or from the conquest of Arabia during the ridda wars."
63. Cf. Leder's comment that sira, maghāzī, futūh "are kept distinct, although not entirely separate." See his "Literary use of the khabar", p. 278
64. Humphreys, Islamic History, p. 86
65. Later, in the so-called "Zuqnīn Chronicle" (ca. 775), fetnā reappears in an account that appears to be independent of the Islamic tradition. The texts are translated and discussed in A. Palmer, The Seventh Century in the West-Syrian Chronicles (Liverpool, 1993) pp. 49 and 58
66. The middle of the eighth century thus strikes me as altogether too late for the appearance of fitna in the sense of "civil war"; see G. H. A. Juynboll, "The date of the great fitna", Arabica, XX (1973). pp. 142-59
67. The case that the da'wa functioned to express mawālī claims is made persuasively, even if the dating proposed is too precise for the evidence adduced. But the view that the da'wa/hijra combination is almost certainly Prophetic cannot survive the recent argument that hijra remained an ongoing practice well into the Umayyad period; see P. Crone, "The first-century concept of hiǧra", Arabica, XLI (1994), pp. 352-87
68. Things are naturally different in Qur'ānic studies, since scripture had clear liturgical uses; see, for example, A. Neuwirth, "Vom Rezitationstext über die Liturgie zum Kanon', The Qur'ān as Text, ed. S. Wild (Leiden, 1996), pp. 69-105
69. Here one might note in passing that the printed editions of al-Thaqafi's Kitāb al-ghārāt may not be complete; see E. Kohlberg, A Medieval Muslim Scholar at Work: Ibn Tāwūs and his Library (Leiden, 1992), pp. 170f
70. See Leder, "Literary use of the khabar", p. 282: "Even in the case of a narration which is obviously biased, it often remains difficult to relate the underlying tendency to the evolution of dogmatic thought, so that any conclusions as to chronology will remain somewhat hazardous." Cf. also J. Lassner, Islamic Revolution and Historical Memory (New Haven, 1986), pp. 30f
71. Of the many, many examples that could be adduced: Maymūn b. Mihrān reports that tribute in al-Jazira was initially taken in kind, and that 'Umar replaced īt with a system that combined kind and cash; see al-Balādhurī, Futūh al-buldān (Leiden, 1866), p. 178
72. For criticisms of Noth/Conrad's view on the decentralised character of the conquests, see now F. M. Donner, "Centralized authority and military autonomy in the early Islamic conquests". The Byzantine and Early islamic Near East III: States, Resources and Armies, ed. A. Cameron (Princeton, 1995), pp. 337-60
73. See P. Crone and M. Hinds, God's Caliph: Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam (Cambridge, 1986), chapter 4
74. al-Balādhuri, Futūh al-buldān, p. 306
75. Cf. H. Kennedy, "The financing of the military in the early Islamic state". The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East III: States, Resources and Armies, p. 367
76. Unfortunately, the challenge is not taken up by A. Ibrahim, Der Herausbildungsprozeß des arabisch-islamischen Staates (Berlin, 1994), especially at pp. 237f
77. See al-Tabari, Ta'rīkh al-rusul wa'l-mulūk (Leiden, 1879-1901), i, p. 2804
78. Duri, Rise of Historical Writing, pp. 55f
79. 10 (al-janna aw al-ghanīma) reads al-janna wa'l-ghanima, and on aw in the sense of wa, see E. W. Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon (London, 1863-93), p. 122
80. For a convenient summary, see F. Trombley, Hellenic Religion and Christianization c. 370-529 (Leiden, 1992), ii, pp. 173f
81. (Trombley's imprecise use of the term "Safaitic" is corrected by M. Macdonald, "Nomads and the Hawrān in the late Hellenistic and Roman periods: a reassessment of the epigraphic evidence", Syria, LXX [1993], pp. 303-414)
82. See Tabari, Ta'rikh, i, pp. 2444f
83. See B. Halpern, The First Historians: the Hebrew Bible and History (San Francisco, 1988), p. 6
84. Cf. a more minimalist definition in Cameron, History as Text, p. 33: "History may be descriptive, or synchronic, but its subject is still located in time - that is what distinguishes it as history."
85. The Syriac tradition, for example, can occasionally provide independent corroboration for the Islamic; but as its dependence on the Arabic grows clearer (see L. I. Conrad, "Theophanes and the Arabic historical tradition: some indications of intercultural transmission", Byzantinische Forschungen, XV [1990], pp. 1-44), its value in this respect grows weaker
86. Wansbrough, Sectarian Milieu, p. 35
87. The percentage of dated inscriptions around Ruwāwa (south of Madina) (see S. al-Rāshid, Kitābāt Islāmiyya ghayr manshūra [Riyadh, 1993] is substantially higher than those discussed by Livingston, et al. ("Epigraphic survey, 1404-1984", al-Atlāl, IX [1985], pp. 128-44)
88. For a useful summary and discussion of dated first-century epigraphy, see B. Gruendler, The Development of the Arabic Scripts (Atlanta, 1993), pp. 15f. Clearly the epigraphic evidence remains too thin to say much
89. Conrad, "Abraha and Muhammad", pp. 225-30
90. Khalīfa b. Khayyāt, Ta'rikh (Beirut, 1995), p. 13
91. al-Mas'ūdi, Kitāb al-tanbīh wa'l-ishrāf (Leiden, 1893), pp. 204f
92. On the patterning of Muhammad's chronology, see now U. Rubin, The Eye of the Beholder: The Life of Muhammad as viewed by the Early Muslims (Princeton, 1995), pp. 190ff. The evidence from several non-Islamic sources, which put the Prophet at the head of conquest armies (see Crone and Cook, Hagarism, p. 4, with note 7 thereto), is uneven (only two are from the seventh century, one of which [e.g. the Khūzistān Chronicle] is ambiguous), and, in view of the difficulties of conquest chronology, inconclusive as far as dating is concerned
93. Tabarī, Ta'rikh, i, pp. 3050f
94. "... in the 19th year of the dominion of the Ismaelites"; see ps.-Sebeos, Histoire d'Héraclius, ch. 35
95. The best example may be the dating of Yarmūk, first discussed by T. Nöldeke, "Zur Geschichte der Araber in 1. Jahrhundert d. H. aus syrischen Quellen", ZDMG, XXIX (1875), pp. 79f
96. see also Donner, Early Islamic Conquests, pp. 142f
97. See Crone and Cook, Hagarism, p. 157, note 39; and p. 160, note 56, to which should be added two more. Writing in 689, Hnānīshō" s scribe records the date as "year 69 of the Arabs' rule" (shultānā d-tayyāyē)
98. see E.Sachau, Syrische Rechtsbücher (Berlin, 1908), ii, pp. 6f./182f. And writing ca. 689-90, John Bar Penkāyē uses the same phrase ("year 67 of the Arabs' rule")
99. see A. Mingana, Sources Syriaques (Mosul, 1908), p. 160
100. and S.P. Brock, "North Mesopotamia in the late seventh century: Book XV of John Bar Penkāyē's Riš Mellē", JSAI, IX (1987), p. 68
101. Crone, "The first-century concept of Hiǧra"
102. The eighth-century "Zuqnin Chronicle", by one count, uses no fewer than eight dating systems; see W. Witakowski, The Syriac Chronicle of Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahrē (Uppsala, 1987), pp. 119f
103. One might note in passing that their list of early annals is not complete. Passages from the Ta'rikh sīnī mulūk al-'ālam by Abū 'Īsā Ibn al-Munajjim (fl. late third century), which was familiar to Ibn al-Nadim and al-Mas'ūdī among others, survive in quotations (see S. M. Stem, "Abū 'Īsā Ibn al-Munajjim's Chronography", Islamic Philosophy and the Classical Tradition [Festschrift for R. Walzer] [ed. S. M. Stern et at., Oxford, 1972], pp. 437f.)
104. 'Umāra b. Wathīma (289/901) is credited with a Ta'rikh 'alā al-sinin, which apparendy has not survived, but which Rosenthal had noticed as long ago as 1952 (see Rosenthal, History, p. 64
105. Studies in Arabic Literary Papyri, i, pp. 80f
106. See Sezgin, GAS, i, pp. 291f
107. al-Tabari, Ta'rīkh, i, p. 2516
108. Cf. Lecker's views on the growth of the tradition in his "The death of the Prophet Muhammad's father"
109. See Rosenthal, History, pp. 64f
110. For a very different view of "facts" and "events", see P. Veyne, Writing History, trans, by M. Moore-Rinvolucri (Middletown, 1984), chapter 3
111. Morony, Iraq, p. 573: "Noth is commonly and easily criticized for failing to recognize that stereotyped formulas and topoi can be used to describe separate but similar real events"
112. For some examples of Byzantine battle cries, see M. McCorrnick, Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium, and the Early Medieval West (Cambridge, 1986), p. 4, note 12
113. Such is the case in Tustar; see C. F. Robinson, "The conquest of Khūzistān: a historiographical reassessment", in History and Historiography in Early Islamic Times: Studies and Perspectives, ed. by L. I. Conrad (Princeton, forthcoming)
114. cf. S. Leder, "Authorship and transmission in unauthored literature: the akhbār attributed to al-Haytham ibn 'Adi", Oriens, XXXI (1988), esp. p. 71 ("... the process of transmission must be considered as endowed with a literary identity of its own.")
115. The point is made particularly well by N. Partner, "Making up lost time: writing on the writing of history", Speculum, LXI (1986), pp. 90-117
116. See T.J. Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000-264 BC) (London, 1995), pp. 16f
117. J. Barton, "Gerhard von Rad on the world-view of early Israel", The Journal of Theological Studies, XXXV (1984), pp. 330f
118. J. J. Collins, "Is critical Biblical theology possible?", The Hebrew Bible and Its Interpreters, ed. H.H. Propp, et al. (Winona Lake, 1990), p. II
119. L. Kramer, "Literature, criticism, and historical imagination", in L. Hunt (ed.), The New Cultural History (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1989), p. 101
120. On description and plot, see also Veyne, Writing History, part 1