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"Insight into the origins and early development of Islam has become relevant not only to the specialist, but underlies a thorough understanding of debates relating to Islam and the Middle East in the contemporary period. Over the past decades, the field has seen the publication of some excellent in-depth studies on aspects of Islamic history 600-1000 CE, and has also undergone a revision of its own boundaries. Some studies have thus placed the origins of Islam in the wider context of Late Antiquity, and argued for an examination of the development of Islam as a religion and civilization in a broader monotheistic and Mediterranean context. Moreover, the historiographic debates of the 1970s are far from resolved: in the seventies a new critical approach to the study of early Islamic history emerged, often described as the sceptical or revisionist approach. Questioning the reliability of the Muslim tradition about Islamic origins, the 'revisionists' also at times suggested that it is impossible to recover any kernel of historical truth (what 'actually happened'). Their assumptions and findings have been (and continue to be) criticized in numerous works, though not often in sustained or comprehensive manners. More recently, the field has witnessed a return to more 'conventional' approaches, where attempts are made to recover and reconstruct aspects of early Islamic history by analysis of the transmission history of hadith traditions and their chains of narrators. An understanding of the sources and the historiography thus remains pivotal to discussions of early Islamic history. This important issue is addressed particularly in the first volume, and in a thorough introduction which draws together the main themes and developments of the period. Early Years of Islam provides excellent reference work and very useful teaching material for a number of different university level courses, in subjects including History, Area Studies, Religious Studies, and Islamic Studies."-
"Insight into the origins and early development of Islam has become relevant not only to the specialist, but underlies a thorough understanding of debates relating to Islam and the Middle East in the contemporary period. Over the past decades, the field has seen the publication of some excellent in-depth studies on aspects of Islamic history 600-1000 CE, and has also undergone a revision of its own boundaries. Some studies have thus placed the origins of Islam in the wider context of Late Antiquity, and argued for an examination of the development of Islam as a religion and civilization in a broader monotheistic and Mediterranean context. Moreover, the historiographic debates of the 1970s are far from resolved: in the seventies a new critical approach to the study of early Islamic history emerged, often described as the sceptical or revisionist approach. Questioning the reliability of the Muslim tradition about Islamic origins, the 'revisionists' also at times suggested that it is impossible to recover any kernel of historical truth (what 'actually happened'). Their assumptions and findings have been (and continue to be) criticized in numerous works, though not often in sustained or comprehensive manners. More recently, the field has witnessed a return to more 'conventional' approaches, where attempts are made to recover and reconstruct aspects of early Islamic history by analysis of the transmission history of hadith traditions and their chains of narrators. An understanding of the sources and the historiography thus remains pivotal to discussions of early Islamic history. This important issue is addressed particularly in the first volume, and in a thorough introduction which draws together the main themes and developments of the period. Early Years of Islam provides excellent reference work and very useful teaching material for a number of different university level courses, in subjects including History, Area Studies, Religious Studies, and Islamic Studies."--
This book will be immensely helpful to those who wish to orient themselves to what has become a very large body of literature on medieval Islamic history. Combining a bibliographic study with an inquiry into method, it opens with a survey of the principal reference tools available to historians of Islam and a systematic review of the sources they will confront. Problems of method are then examined in a series of chapters, each exploring a broad topic in the social and political history of the Middle East and North Africa between A.D. 600 and 1500. The topics selected represent a cross-section of Islamic historical studies, and range from the struggles for power within the early Islamic community to the life of the peasantry. Each chapter pursues four questions. What concrete research problems are likely to be most challenging and productive? What resources do we possess for dealing with these problems? What strategies can we devise to exploit our resources most effectively? What is the current state of the scholarly literature for the topic under study?
How did Muslims of the classical Islamic period understand their past? What value did they attach to history? How did they write history? How did historiography fare relative to other kinds of Arabic literature? These and other questions are answered in Chase F. Robinson's Islamic Historiography, an introduction to the principal genres, issues, and problems of Islamic historical writing in Arabic, that stresses the social and political functions of historical writing in the Islamic world. Beginning with the origins of the tradition in the eighth and ninth centuries and covering its development until the beginning of the sixteenth century, this is an authoritative and yet accessible guide through a complex and forbidding field, which is intended for readers with little or no background in Islamic history or Arabic.
"Insight into the origins and early development of Islam has become relevant not only to the specialist, but underlies a thorough understanding of debates relating to Islam and the Middle East in the contemporary period. Over the past decades, the field has seen the publication of some excellent in-depth studies on aspects of Islamic history 600-1000 CE, and has also undergone a revision of its own boundaries. Some studies have thus placed the origins of Islam in the wider context of Late Antiquity, and argued for an examination of the development of Islam as a religion and civilization in a broader monotheistic and Mediterranean context. Moreover, the historiographic debates of the 1970s are far from resolved: in the seventies a new critical approach to the study of early Islamic history emerged, often described as the sceptical or revisionist approach. Questioning the reliability of the Muslim tradition about Islamic origins, the 'revisionists' also at times suggested that it is impossible to recover any kernel of historical truth (what 'actually happened'). Their assumptions and findings have been (and continue to be) criticized in numerous works, though not often in sustained or comprehensive manners. More recently, the field has witnessed a return to more 'conventional' approaches, where attempts are made to recover and reconstruct aspects of early Islamic history by analysis of the transmission history of hadith traditions and their chains of narrators. An understanding of the sources and the historiography thus remains pivotal to discussions of early Islamic history. This important issue is addressed particularly in the first volume, and in a thorough introduction which draws together the main themes and developments of the period. Early Years of Islam provides excellent reference work and very useful teaching material for a number of different university level courses, in subjects including History, Area Studies, Religious Studies, and Islamic Studies."-
Of the available sources for Islamic history between the seventh and eighth centuries CE, few are of greater importance than al-Baladhuri's Kitab Futu? al-buldan (The Book of the Conquest of Lands). Written in Arabic by a ninth-century Muslim scholar working at the court of the 'Abbasid caliphs, the Futu?'s content covers many important matters at the beginning of Islamic history. It informs its audience of the major events of the early Islamic conquests, the settlement of Muslims in the conquered territories and their experiences therein, and the origins and development of the early Islamic state. Questions over the text's construction, purpose, and reception, however, have largely been ignored in current scholarship. This is despite both the text's important historical material and its crucial early date of creation. It has become commonplace for researchers to turn to the Futu? for information on a specific location or topic, but to ignore the grander – and, in many ways, more straightforward – questions over the text's creation and limitations. This book looks to correct these gaps in knowledge by investigating the context, form, construction, content, and early reception history of al-Baladhuri's text.
Donner challenges the scholarly assumption that the earliest Muslim believers wanted to write history out of "idle curiosity" and suggests that Islamic historical tradition resulted from a variety of challenges facing the community during the seventh to tenth centuries, C.E. He identifies the intellectual context in which Muslims began to think and write historically; sketches the issues, themes, and forms of the early Islamic historiographical tradition; considers the value of some radically revisionist interpretations of early Islam that have appeared in the past 20 years; and discusses the problem of sources in studying Islamic origins.
Why did non-Muslims convert to Islam during Muhammad's life and under his immediate successors? How did Muslim historians portray these conversions? Why did their portrayals differ significantly? To what extent were their portrayals influenced by their time of writing, religious inclinations, and political affiliations? These are the fundamental questions that drive this study. Relying on numerous works, including primary sources from over a hundred classical Muslim historians, Conversion to Islam is the first scholarly study to detect, trace, and analyze conversion themes in early Muslim historiography, emphasizing how classical Muslims remembered conversion, and how they valued and evaluated aspects of it. Ayman S. Ibrahim examines numerous early Muslim sources and wrestles with critical observations regarding the sources' reliability and unearths the hidden link between historical narratives and historians' religious sympathies and political agendas. This study leads readers through a complex body of literature, provides insights regarding historical context, and creates a vivid picture of conversion to Islam as early Muslim historians sought to depict it.
The formative period of Islam remains highly contested. From the beginning of modern scholarship on this formative period, scholars have questioned traditional Muslim accounts on early Islam. The scholarly fixation is mirrored by sectarian groups and movements within Islam, most of which trace their origins to this period. Moreover, contemporary movements from Salafists to modernists continue to point to Islam’s origins to justify their positions. This Handbook provides a definitive overview of early Islam and how this period was understood and deployed by later Muslims. It is split into four main parts, the first of which explores the debates and positions on the critical texts and figures of early Islam. The second part turns to the communities that identified their origins with the Qurʾān and Muḥammad. In addition to the development of Muslim identities and polities, of particular focus is the relationship with groups outside or movements inside of the umma (the collective community of Muslims). The third part looks beyond what happened from the 7th to the 9th centuries CE and explores what that period, the events, figures, and texts have meant for Muslims in the past and what they mean for Muslims today. Not all Muslims or scholars are willing to merely reinterpret early Islam and its sources, though; some are willing to jettison parts, or even all, of the edifice that has been constructed over almost a millennium and a half. The Handbook therefore concludes with discussions of re-imaginations and revisions of early Islam and its sources. Almost every major debate in the study of Islam and among Muslims looks to the formative period of Islam. The wide range of contributions from many of the leading academic experts on the subject therefore means that this book will be a valuable resource for all students and scholars of Islamic studies, as well as for anyone with an interest in early Islam.
"Begun in 1134 and completed some four decades later, Ibn 'Asakir's massive Ta'rikh madinat Dimashq ("History of Damascus"), with its 10,226 biographical notices, is a veritable gold mine of information for our understanding of the first five and one-half centuries of Islamic history. Now that it has finally been edited and published in its entirety, scholars will have far greater access to this fundamentally important (and to date little exploited) Syrian source. Ibn 'Asakir and Early Islamic History seeks to demonstrate the kinds of questions that Ibn 'Asakir (d. 571/1176) can answer for us, and highlights Ibn 'Asakir's importance for the study of early Islamic History and historiography, especially in the context of geographic Syria (Bilad al-Sham). Although the essays in this volume do not necessarily represent agreement as to the particulars of Ibn 'Asakir's historiographic agenda(s), each essay addresses important aspects of his methodology in his presentation of his vision of Syria's past. Taken separately, the individual contributions serve as guides through the perils and pitfalls of specific aspects of Ibn 'Asakir's coverage of the early Islamic past. Taken together, they show us how one Crusader-era Muslim envisioned the formative centuries of his own embattled religious and cultural community."--Publisher description.