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Thehistoriography of early Islam is the secularscholarly literature on the earlyhistory of Islam during the7th century, fromMuhammad's first purported revelations in 610 until the disintegration of theRashidun Caliphate in 661, and arguably throughout the 8th century and the duration of theUmayyad Caliphate, terminating in the incipientIslamic Golden Age around the beginning of the 9th century.
Muslims developed methodologies such as the "science of biography" and the "science of hadith" to evaluate the reliability of these narratives, while prominent figures like Ibn Khaldun introduced criticalhistoriographical methods, emphasizing the importance of context and the systematic evaluation of historical data.
There are numerous early references to Islam in non-Islamic sources. Many have been collected in historiographerRobert G. Hoyland's compilationSeeing Islam As Others Saw It. One of the first books to analyze these works wasHagarism authored byMichael Cook andPatricia Crone.Hagarism contends that looking at the early non-Islamic sources provides a much different picture of early Islamic history than the later Islamic sources do. The date of composition of some of the early non-Islamic sources is controversial.Hagarism has been widely dismissed by academics as being too conjectural in its hypothesis and biased in its sources.[8][9]
According to archaeologistsYehuda D. Nevo and Judith Koren, there are thousands of pagan and monotheist epigraphs or rock inscriptions throughout the Arabian peninsula and in the Syro-Jordanian desert immediately north, many of them dating from the 7th and 8th century.[11] According to historianLeor Halevi, Muslim tombstones from 30-40 AH / 650-660 CE named Allah (Arabic for God) and referred to the names of the months of the Hijri calendar, but showed few other indications of Islamization. From 70-110 AH/690-730 CE, Muslim tombstones began to reveal deeper signs of Islamization, invoking Muhammad and quoted from the Quran.[12]
Some epigraphs found from the first century of Islam include:
Muslims believe that the historical traditions first began their development in the early 7th century with the reconstruction ofMuhammad's life following his death. Because narratives regarding Muhammad and hiscompanions came from various sources and a great many contradicted each other, it was necessary to verify which sources were more reliable. In order to evaluate these sources, various methodologies were developed, such as the "science ofbiography", "science of hadith" and "Isnad" (chain of transmission). These methodologies were later applied to other historical figures in theMuslim world.
Ilm ar-Rijal (Arabic) is the "science of biography" especially as practiced in Islam, where it was first applied to thesira, the life of theprophet of Islam, Muhammad, and then the lives of the fourRightly 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 attempted to sort out facts from accusations, bias from evidence, etc. The earliest surviving Islamic biography is Ibn Ishaq'sSirat Rasul Allah, written in the 8th century, but known to us only from later quotes and recensions (9th–10th century).
The "science of hadith" is the process that Muslim scholars use to evaluatehadith. The classification of Hadith intoSahih (sound),Hasan (good) andDa'if (weak) was firmly established byAli ibn al-Madini (778CE/161AH – 849CE/234AH). Later, al-Madini's studentMuhammad al-Bukhari (810–870) authored a collection that he believed contained only Sahih hadith, which is now known as theSahih Bukhari. Al-Bukhari'shistorical methods of testing hadiths andisnads is seen as the beginning of the method ofcitation and a precursor to thescientific method. I. A. Ahmad writes:[19]
"The vagueness of ancient historians about their sources stands in stark contrast to the insistence that scholars such as Bukhari andMuslim manifested in knowing every member in a chain of transmission and examining their reliability. They published their findings, which were then subjected to additional scrutiny by future scholars for consistency with each other and the Qur'an."
Other famous Muslim historians who studied the science of biography or science of hadith includedUrwah ibn Zubayr (died 712),Wahb ibn Munabbih (died 728),Ibn Ishaq (died 761),al-Waqidi (745–822),Ibn Hisham (died 834),al-Maqrizi (1364–1442), andIbn Hajar Asqalani (1372–1449), among others.
The first detailed studies on the subject ofhistoriography itself and the first critiques onhistorical methods appeared in the works of theArabMuslim historian and historiographerIbn Khaldun (1332–1406), who is regarded as the father ofhistoriography,cultural history,[20] and thephilosophy of history, especially for his historiographical writings in theMuqaddimah (Latinized asProlegomena) andKitab al-Ibar (Book of Advice).[21] HisMuqaddimah also laid the groundwork for the observation of the role ofstate,communication,propaganda andsystematic bias in history,[22][incomplete short citation] and he discussed the rise and fall ofcivilizations.
Franz Rosenthal wrote in theHistory of Muslim Historiography:
"Muslim historiography has at all times been united by the closest ties with the general development of scholarship in Islam, and the position of historical knowledge in MusIim education has exercised a decisive influence upon the intellectual level of historicai writing....The Muslims achieved a definite advance beyond previous historical writing in the sociology
— sociological understanding of history and the systematisation of historiography. The development of modern historical writing seems to have gained considerably in speed and substance through the utilization of a Muslim Literature which enabled western historians, from the seventeenth century on, to see a large section of the world through foreign eyes. The Muslim historiography helped indirectly and modestly to shape present day historical thinking."[23]
In theMuqaddimah, Ibn Khaldun warned of seven mistakes that he thought that historians regularly committed. In this criticism, he approached the past as strange and in need of interpretation. The originality of Ibn Khaldun was to claim that the cultural difference of another age must govern the evaluation of relevant historical material, to distinguish the principles according to which it might be possible to attempt the evaluation, and lastly, to feel the need for experience, in addition to rational principles, in order to assess a culture of the past. Ibn Khaldun often criticized "idle superstition and uncritical acceptance of historical data." As a result, he introduced ascientific method to the study of history, which was considered something "new to his age", and he often referred to it as his "new science", now associated withhistoriography.[24] His historical method also laid the groundwork for the observation of the role ofstate,communication,propaganda andsystematic bias in history,[22][incomplete short citation] and he is thus considered to be the "father of historiography"[25][26] or the "father of thephilosophy of history".[27]
Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari (838–923) is known for writing a detailed and comprehensivechronicle ofMediterranean andMiddle Eastern history in hisHistory 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 combinehistory andscientificgeography in a large-scale work,Muruj adh-dhahab wa ma'adin al-jawahir (The Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems), a book onworld history.
Until the 10th century, history most often meant political and military history, but this was not so with Central Asian historianBiruni (973–1048). In hisKitab fi Tahqiq ma l'il-Hind (Researches on India), he did not record political and military history in any detail, but wrote more onIndia'scultural,scientific, social andreligious history.[28] Along with hisResearches on India,Biruni discussed more on his idea of history in hischronological workThe Chronology of the Ancient Nations.[28]
The earliest academic scholarship on Islam in Western countries tended to involve Christian and Jewish translators and commentators. They translated the readily availableSunni texts fromArabic into European languages (including German, Italian, French, and English), then summarized and commented in a fashion that was often hostile to Islam. Notable Christian scholars included:
All these scholars worked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Another pioneer of Islamic studies,Abraham Geiger (1810–1874), a prominentJewishrabbi, approached Islam from that standpoint in hisWas hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen? (What did Muhammad borrow from Judaism?) (1833). Geiger's themes continued in RabbiAbraham I. Katsh's "Judaism and the Koran" (1962)[29]
Other scholars, notably those in the German tradition, took a more neutral view. (The 19th-century scholarJulius Wellhausen (1844–1918) offers a prime example.) They also started, cautiously, to question the truth of the Arabic texts. They took asource-critical approach, trying to sort the Islamic texts into elements to be accepted as historically true, and elements to be discarded as polemic or aspious fiction. Such scholars included:
In the 1970s theRevisionist School of Islamic Studies, or what has been described as a "wave of sceptical scholars",[32] 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 found coins, inscriptions, and non-Islamic sources of that era. They argue that contrary to Islamic historical tradition, "Islam was like other religions, the product of a religiousevolution".[33] The idea that there was an abrupt "discontinuity between the pre-Islamic and Islamic worlds" — i.e. between Persian and Byzantine civilization and Islamic religion, governance, culture — "strains the imagination". But if "we begin by assuming that there must have been some continuity, we need either go beyond the Islamic sources" which indicate abrupt change, or "reinterpret them".[34]
The oldest of this group wasJohn Wansbrough (1928–2002). Wansbrough's works were widely noted, but not necessarily widely read, owing to (according to Fred Donner), his "awkward prose style, diffuse organization, and tendency to rely on suggestive implication rather than tight argument".[35] Nonetheless, his scepticism influenced a number of younger scholars, including:
In 1977 Crone and Cook publishedHagarism: The Making of the Islamic World, which argued that the traditional early history of Islam is amyth, generatedafter the Arab conquests of Egypt, Syria, and Persia to give a solid ideological foundation to the new Arab regimes in those lands.Hagarism suggests that the Qur'an was composed later than the traditional narrative tell us, and that the Arab conquests may have been thecause, rather than theconsequence, of Islam. The main evidence adduced for this thesis consisted of contemporary non-Muslim sources recording many early Islamic events. If such events could not be supported by outside evidence, then (according to Crone and Cook) they should be dismissed as myth.
Crone defended the use of non-Muslim sources saying that "of course these sources are hostile [to the conquering Muslims] and from a classical Islamic view they have simply got everything wrong; but unless we are willing to entertain the notion of an all-pervading literary conspiracy between the non-Muslim peoples of the Middle East, the crucial point remains that they have got things wrong on very much the same points."[33]
Crone and Cook's more recent work has involved intense scrutiny of early Islamic sources, but not their total rejection. (See, for instance, Crone's 1987 publications,Roman, Provincial, and Islamic Law[36]andMeccan Trade and the Rise of Islam,[37]both of which assume the standard outline of early Islamic history while questioning certain aspects of it; also Cook's 2001Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought,[38]which also cites early Islamic sources as authoritative.)
Both Crone and Cook have later suggested that the central thesis of their book"Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World" was mistaken because the evidence they had to support the thesis was not sufficient or internally consistent enough. Crone has suggested that the book was “a graduate essay" and "a hypothesis," not "a conclusive finding.”[39]
In 1972 construction workers discovered a cache of ancient Qur'ans – commonly known as theSana'a manuscripts – in a mosque inSana'a, Yemen. The German scholarGerd R. Puin has been investigating these Qur'an fragments for years. His research team made 35,000 microfilm photographs of the manuscripts, which he dated to the early part of the 8th century. Puin has not published the entirety of his work, but has noted unconventional verse orderings, minor textual variations, and rare styles of orthography. He has also suggested that some of the parchments werepalimpsests which had been reused. Puin believed that this implied an evolving text as opposed to a fixed one.[40]
Karl-Heinz Ohlig has also researched Christian/Jewish roots of theQur'an and its related texts. He sees the nameMuhammad itself ("the blessed", as inBenedictus qui venit) as part of that tradition.[41][42]
In their study of the traditional Islamic accounts of the early conquest of different cities—Damascus and Caesarea in Syria, Babilyn/al-Fusat and Alexandria in Egypt, Tustar in Khuzistan and Cordoba in Spain—scholarsAlbrecht Noth andLawrence Conrad find a suspicious pattern whereby the cities "are all described as having fallen into the hands of the Muslims in precisely the same fashion". There is a
"traitor who, ... points out a weak spot in the city's fortification to the Muslim besiegers; a celebration in the city which diverts the attention of the besieged; then a few assault troops who scale the walls, ... a shout of Allahu akbar! ... from the assault troops as a sign that they have entered the town; the opening of one of the gates from inside, and the onslaught of the entire army."
They conclude these accounts can not be "the reporting of history" but are instead stereotyped story tales with little historical value.[43]
Contemporary scholars have tended to use the histories rather than thehadith, 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:
An alternative postrevisionist approach has made use ofhadith of uncertain authenticity to tell a history of early Islam after the death of Muhammad. Here the key has been to analyzehadith as collective memories that shaped the culture and society of urban Muslims in the late seventh and eighth centuries CE.Muhammad′s Grave: Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society byLeor Halevi is an example of this approach.[44]
A few scholars have attempted to bridge the divide between Islamic and Western-style secular scholarship.
They have completed both Islamic and Western academic training.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) cited inIbn Warraq, ed. (2000). "1. Studies on Muhammad and the Rise of Islam".The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. Prometheus. pp. 53-4.ISBN 9781573927871.
