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"Prophets -- Islamic Empire -- Historiography"
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Parable and politics in early islamic history
The story of the succession to the Prophet Muhammad and the rise of the Rashidun Caliphate (632-661 AD) is familiar to historians from the political histories of medieval Islam, which treat it as a factual account. The story also informs the competing perspectives of Sunni and Shi'i Islam, which read into it the legitimacy of their claims. Yet while descriptive and varied, these approaches have long excluded a third reading, which views the conflict over the succession to the Prophet as a parable. From this vantage point, the motives, sayings, and actions of the protagonists reveal profound links to previous texts, not to mention a surprising irony regarding political and religious issues.
In a controversial break from previous historiography, Tayeb El-Hibri privileges the literary and artistic triumphs of the medieval Islamic chronicles and maps the origins of Islamic political and religious orthodoxy. Considering the patterns and themes of these unified narratives, including the problem of measuring personal qualification according to religious merit, nobility, and skills in government, El-Hibri offers an insightful critique of both early and contemporary Islam and the concerns of legitimacy shadowing various rulers. In building an argument for reading the texts as parabolic commentary, he also highlights the Islamic reinterpretation of biblical traditions, both by Qur'anic exegesis and historical composition.
eBook
“Do Prophets Come with a Sword?” Conquest, Empire, and Historical Narrative in the Early Islamic World
Sizgorich delves into the conflict between Imperial Rome and emergent Islam. He also offers readers a rare look at both how Islam defined itself as an uncompromising, highly principled faith and how Christmas misinterpreted this attitude for mere militancy. In order to establish this contrast, he reconstructs the patterns of interaction, especially of a military sort, that governed relations between both Roman and Persian imperial forces and Arab peoples before Muhammad.
Journal Article
The Challenge of Periodization
Ottoman historical consciousness and historiographical practices simultaneously underwent significant changes in the nineteenth century. This essay, conceived as the first in a series on new developments in Ottoman historiography during that century, concentrates on changes to Ottoman models of periodization for world history and aims to demonstrate that Ottoman historical consciousness entered a novel phase during the late nineteenth century. According to this new tripartite periodization model, world history was divided into “Ancient,” “Medieval,” and “New” periods, a departure from pre-nineteenth-century world histories, in which accounts of various dynasties had been given in roughly chronological fashion, with loose geographical groupings.
Book Chapter