Everything about Historiography Of Early Islam totally explained
The
historiography of early Islam refers to the study of the early origins of Islam based on a critical analysis, evaluation, and examination of authentic
primary sources materials and the organization of these sources into a narrative timeline that's subject to scholarly methods of criticism.
Islamic sources date no earlier than 100 to 150 years after the events being referred to had taken place. There are very few surviving
primary sources, such as manuscripts and inscriptions, for the period, and only sketchy archaeological data. Most of the Islamic history seems to have been primarily transmitted orally until well after the rise of the
Abbasid Caliphate. Islamic scholars then sifted and recorded the traditions. They did so in an extremely politicized context, just after one dynasty, the
Umayyads, had been overthrown, and when the groups that eventually became the
Sunni and
Shi'a sects of Islam were putting forth rival histories of Islam.
Modern Western scholars are much less likely than Islamic scholars to trust the work of the Abbasid historians. Western historians approach the classic Islamic histories with varying degrees of circumspection. There are two approaches toward the early narrations and
Hadith. The first group consider them as factitious or dubious stories and use them very cautiously. The other approach which has been emerged at the end of the twentieth century accepts these narrations and try to judge them in the context of history and on the basis of their compatibility with the events; in this approach, tendentiousness alone isn't necessarily evidence of late origin.
History of Muslim historians
Science of biography, science of hadith, and Isnad
Muslim historical traditions first began developing earlier from the 7th century with the reconstruction of
Muhammad's life in the centuries following his death. Due to numerous conflicting narratives regarding Muhammad and his
companions from various sources, it was necessary to verify which sources were more reliable. In order to evaluate these sources, various methodologies were developed, such as the "science of
biography", "
science of hadith" and "
Isnad" (chain of transmission). These methodologies were later applied to other historical figures in the
Muslim world.
Ilm ar-Rijal (
Arabic) is the "science of biography" especially as practiced in Islam, where it was first applied to the
sira, the life of the
prophet of Islam, Muhammad, and then the lives of the four
Rightly Guided Caliphs who expanded Islamic dominance rapidly. Since validating the sayings of Muhammad is a major study ("Isnad"), accurate biography has always been of great interest to Muslim biographers, who accordingly became experts at sorting out facts from accusations, bias from evidence, etc., and were renowned throughout the known world for their honesty in recording history. Modern practices of
scientific citation and
historical method owe a great deal to the
rigor of the Isnad tradition of early Muslims. The earliest surviving Islamic biography is Ibn Ishaq's
Sirat Rasul Allah, written in the 8th century.
The "
science of hadith" is the process that Muslim scholars use to evaluate
hadith. The classification of Hadith into
Sahih (sound),
Hasan (good) and
Da'if (weak) was firmly established by
Ali ibn al-Madini (
161-
234 AH). Later, al-Madini's student
Muhammad al-Bukhari (810-870) authored a collection that he believed contained only Sahih hadith, which is now known as the
Sahih Bukhari. Al-Bukhari's
historical methods of testing hadiths and
isnads is seen as the beginning of the method of
citation and a precursor to the
scientific method which was developed by later
Muslim scientists. I. A. Ahmad writes:
Urwah ibn Zubayr (d. 712),
Wahb ibn Munabbih (d. 728),
Ibn Ishaq (d. 761),
al-Waqidi (745-822),
Ibn Hisham (d. 834),
al-Maqrizi (1364–1442), and
Ibn Hajar Asqalani (1372-1449), among others.
Historiography, cultural history, and philosophy of history
The first detailed studies on the subject of
historiography itself and the first critiques on
historical methods appeared in the works of the
Arab Muslim historian and historiographer
Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), who is regarded as the father of
historiography,
cultural history, and the
philosophy of history, especially for his historiographical writings in the
Muqaddimah (
Latinized as
Prolegomena) and
Kitab al-Ibar (
Book of Advice). His
Muqaddimah also laid the groundwork for the observation of the role of
state,
communication,
propaganda and
systematic bias in history, and he discussed the rise and fall of
civilizations.
Franz Rosenthal wrote in the
History of Muslim Historiography:
World history
Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari (838-923) is known for writing a detailed and comprehensive
chronicle of
Mediterranean and
Middle Eastern history in his
History of the Prophets and Kings in 915.
Abu al-Hasan 'Alī al-Mas'ūdī (896-956), known as the "
Herodotus of the
Arabs", was the first to combine
history and
scientific geography in a large-scale work,
Muruj adh-dhahab wa ma'adin al-jawahir (
The Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems), a book on
world history.
Until the 10th century, history most often meant political and military history, but this wasn't so with
Persian historian
Biruni (973-1048). In his
Kitab fi Tahqiq ma l'il-Hind (
Researches on India), he didn't record political and military history in any detail, but wrote more on
India's
cultural,
scientific, social and
religious history. Along with his
Researches on India,
Biruni discussed more on his idea of history in his
chronological work
The Chronology of the Ancient Nations.
7th Century non-Islamic sources
There are numerous early references to Islam in non-Islamic sources, many have been collected in historiographer
Robert G. Hoyland's compilation
Seeing Islam As Others Saw It. One of the first books to analyze these works was
Hagarism authored by
Michael Cook and
Patricia Crone.
Hagarism concludes that looking at the early non-Islamic sources provides a much different and more accurate picture of early Islamic history than the later Islamic sources do, although its thesis has little acceptance. For some, the date of composition is controversial. Some provide an account of early Islam which significantly contradicts the traditional Islamic accounts of two centuries later.
634 Doctrina Iacobi
636 Fragment on the Arab Conquests
639 Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem
640 Thomas the Presbyter
640 Homily on the Child Saints of Babylon
642 PERF 558
644 Coptic Apocalypse of Pseudo-Shenute
648 Life of Gabriel of Qartmin
650 Fredegar
655 Pope Martin I
659 Isho'yahb III of Adiabene
660 Sebeos, Bishop of the Bagratunis
660 A Chronicler of Khuzistan
662 Maximus the Confessor
665 Benjamin I
670 Arculf, a Pilgrim
676 The Synod of 676
680 George of Resh'aina
680 The Secrets of Rabbi Simon ben Yohai
680 Bundahishn
681 Trophies of Damascus
687 Athanasius of Balad, Patriarch of Antioch
687 John bar Penkaye
690 Syriac Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius
692 Syriac Apocalypse of Pseudo-Ephraem
694 John of Nikiu
697 Anti-Jewish Polemicists
7th Century ambiguous sources
644 - Inscription marking the death of Umar, Saudi Arabia.
Famous Muslim historians
Urwah ibn Zubayr (d. 712)
Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri (d. 742)
Ibn Ishaq (d. 761)
Imam Malik (d. 796)
Al-Waqidi (745-822)
- Book of History and Campaigns
Ali ibn al-Madini (777-850)
Ibn Hisham (d. 834)
Dhul-Nun al-Misri (d. 859)
Muhammad al-Bukhari (810-870)
Muslim b. al-Hajjaj (d. 875)
Ibn Majah (d. 886)
Abu Da'ud (d. 888)
Al-Tirmidhi (d. 892)
Abu al-Hasan 'Alī al-Mas'ūdī (896-956)
- Muruj adh-dhahab wa ma'adin al-jawahir (The Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems) (947)
Ibn Wahshiyya (c. 904)
- Nabataean Agriculture
- Kitab Shawq al-Mustaham
Al-Nasa'i (d. 915)
Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari (838-923)
Al-Baladhuri (d. 892)
Hakim al-Nishaburi (d. 1014)
Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī (973-1048)
- Indica
- History of Mahmud of Ghazni and his father
- History of Khawarazm
Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi (13th century)
Ibn Abi Zar (d. 1310/1320)
Al-Dhahabi (1274-1348)
Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406)
Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani (1372-1449)
Modern secular scholarship
The earliest Western scholarship on Islam tended to be Christian and Jewish translators and commentators. They translated the easily available Sunni texts from Arabic into European languages including German, Italian, French, or English, then summarized and commented in a fashion that was often hostile to Islam. Notable Christian scholars include:
William Muir (1819–1905)
Reinhart Dozy (1820–1883) "Die Israeliten zu Mecca" (1864)
David Samuel Margoliouth (1858–1940)
William St. Clair Tisdall (1859–1928)
Leone Caetani (1869–1935)
Alphonse Mingana (1878–1937)
All these scholars worked in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Another pioneer of Islamic studies, Abraham Geiger (1810–1874), was a prominent Jewish rabbi and approached Islam from that standpoint in his "Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen?" (1833). Geiger's themes were continued in Rabbi Abraham I. Katsh's "Judaism and the Koran" (1962)
Other scholars, notably those in the German tradition, took a more neutral view. The late 19th century scholar Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918) is a prime example. They also started, cautiously, to question the truth of the Arabic texts. They took a source critical approach, trying to sort the Islamic texts into elements to be accepted as historically true, and elements to be discarded as polemic or pious fiction. These scholars might include:
Michael Jan de Goeje (1836–1909)
Theodor Nöldeke (1836–1930)
Ignaz Goldziher (1850–1921)
Henri Lammens (1862–1937)
Arthur Jeffery (1892–1959)
H. A. R. Gibb (1895–1971)
Joseph Schacht (1902–1969)
Montgomery Watt (1909–2006)
In the 1970s, what has been described as a "wave of sceptical scholars" (Donner 1998 p. 23) challenged a great deal of the received wisdom in Islamic studies. They argued that the Islamic historical tradition had been greatly corrupted in transmission. They tried to correct or reconstruct the early history of Islam from other, presumably more reliable, sources such as coins, inscriptions, and non-Islamic sources. The oldest of this group was John Wansbrough (1928-2002). Wansbrough's works were widely noted, but perhaps not widely read. Donner (1998) says:
» Wansbrough's awkward prose style, diffuse organization, and tendency to rely on suggestive implication rather than tight argument (qualities not found in his other published works) have elicited exasperated comment from many reviewers. (Donner 1998 p. 38)
Wansbrough's scepticism influenced a number of younger scholars, including:
Martin Hinds (1941–1988)
Patricia Crone (b. 1945)
Michael Cook
In 1977, Crone and Cook published, which argued that the early history of Islam is a myth, generated after the conquests of Egypt, Syria, and Persia to prop up the new Arab regimes in those lands and give them a solid ideological foundation. According to their theory the Qur'an was composed later, rather than early, and the Arab conquests may have been the cause, rather than the consequence, of Islam. The main evidence adduced for this thesis was based upon a contemporary body of non-Muslim sources to many early Islamic events. If such events couldn't be supported by outside evidence, then (according to Crone and Cook) they should be dismissed as myth.
Crone and Cook's more recent work has involved intense scrutiny of early Islamic sources, but not total rejection of those sources. (See, for instance, Crone's 1987 publications, Roman, Provincial, and Islamic Law and Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam, both of which assume the standard outline of early Islamic history while questioning certain aspects of it; also Cook's 2001 Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought, which also cites early Islamic sources as authoritative.) One writer claims that they've in fact disavowed the work ((External Link
) (External Link)) but in the absence of direct comment from Crone and Cook, it's difficult to know what to make of his claims.
In her book Meccan Trade And The Rise Of Islam, Crone states: » If one storyteller should happen to mention a raid, the next one would tell you the exact date of this raid, and the third one would furnish you even more details. Waqidi (d. 823), who wrote years after Ibn Ishaq (d. 768), will always give precise dates, locations, names, where Ibn Ishaq has none, accounts of what triggered the expedition, miscellaneous information to lend color to the event, as well as reasons why, as was usually the case, no fighting took place. No wonder that scholars are fond of Waqidi: where else does one find such wonderfully precise information about everything one wishes to know? But given that this information was all unknown to Ibn Ishaq, its value is doubtful in the extreme. And if spurious information accumulated at this rate in the two generations between Ibn Ishaq and Waqidi, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that even more must have accumulated in the three generations between the Prophet and Ibn Ishaq.
Claims for the late composition of the Qur'an have also been reinforced by the 1972 discovery of a cache of ancient Qur'ans in a mosque in Sana'a, Yemen. The German scholar Gerd R. Puin has been investigating these Qur'an fragments for years. His research team made 35,000 microfilm photographs of the manuscripts; Puin hasn't published the entirety of his work, but he's stated that there were 2 versions of the text in the manuscript, one written over the other, thus putting into the question the Muslim beliefs in the invariancy of the Qur'an. He has dated the documents to the early part of the 8th century.
Contemporary scholars have begun to turn to the study of the Islamic sources in a sceptical mood. They tend to use the histories rather than the hadith, and to analyze the histories in terms of the tribal and political affiliations of the narrators (if that can be established), thus making it easier to guess in which direction the material might have been slanted. Notable scholars include:
Fred M. Donner
Wilferd Madelung
Gerald Hawting
Jonathan Berkey
Andrew Rippin
G.H.A Juynboll
Bridging the divide
A few scholars have managed to bridge the divide between Islamic and Western-style secular scholarship. They have completed both Islamic and Western academic training.
Fazlur Rahman
Suliman Bashear
Javed Ahmed GhamidiFurther Information
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