Islamic Historiography

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.

The importance of Muslim historical writing in the medieval period and the fact that few detailed studies exist, make Professor Khalidi's book of special importance both to Arabists and to medievalists. It may be read both as a source for Muslim and non-Muslim history and for the light it sheds on Arabic/Islamic civilization in its prime.

Studies in Islamic Historiography: Essays in Honour of Professor Donald P. Little examines historiographical production in a variety of milieus and traditions, from the classical to the early modern periods.

The book originally a thesis which was submitted to the University of Kashmir for the award of Ph.D degree in Islamic studies in the year 2017 deals with one of the important component of Islamic Social Science namely Islamic historiography. It explores the concept of History in Islam, Qur’anic concept of History and the History-consciousness of the prominent Muslim Historians by highlighting their contributions to History writing. The prominent scholars discussed in this book are: Shibli Numani

The importance of Muslim historical writing in the medieval period and the fact that few detailed studies exist, make Professor Khalidi's book of special importance both to Arabists and to medievalists. It may be read both as a source for Muslim and non-Muslim history and for the light it sheds on Arabic/Islamic civilization in its prime.

Historical categorization -- Tropes and temporalities of historiographic romanticism, modern and Islamic -- Islam and the history of civilizations -- Typological time, patterning and the past appropriated -- Chronophagous discourse: a study of the clerico-legal appropriation of the world in an Islamic tradition -- The muslim canon from late antiquity to the era of modernism -- History and narration in Arab historiography -- History of the future -- God's chronography and dissipative time -- Rhetoric for the senses: a consideration of Muslim paradise narratives -- Distractions of Clio: impasses and perspectives of historians' history -- Islamic political thought: current historiography and the frame of history -- Monotheistic monarchy -- Acknowledgements -- Index

This book exposes the mimetic assumption involved in early Islamic historiography, its literary practice and whatever subverts it as reflected in Ṭabarī's History. Four major events in the history of early Islam are then subject to analysis based on literary criticism and are shown to produce a new meaning.