The historiography of early Islam is the secular
scholarly literature on the early
history of Islam
The history of Islam is believed, by most historians, to have originated with Muhammad's mission in Mecca and Medina at the start of the 7th century CE, although Muslims regard this time as a return to the original faith passed down by the Abr ...
during the
7th century, from
Muhammad
Muhammad (8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious and political leader and the founder of Islam. Muhammad in Islam, According to Islam, he was a prophet who was divinely inspired to preach and confirm the tawhid, monotheistic teachings of A ...
's first purported revelations in 610 until the disintegration of the
Rashidun Caliphate
The Rashidun Caliphate () is a title given for the reigns of first caliphs (lit. "successors") — Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali collectively — believed to Political aspects of Islam, represent the perfect Islam and governance who led the ...
in 661,
and arguably throughout the 8th century and the duration of the
Umayyad Caliphate
The Umayyad Caliphate or Umayyad Empire (, ; ) was the second caliphate established after the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and was ruled by the Umayyad dynasty. Uthman ibn Affan, the third of the Rashidun caliphs, was also a member o ...
, terminating in the incipient
Islamic Golden Age
The Islamic Golden Age was a period of scientific, economic, and cultural flourishing in the history of Islam, traditionally dated from the 8th century to the 13th century.
This period is traditionally understood to have begun during the reign o ...
around the beginning of the 9th century.
Muslims developed methodologies such as the "science of biography" and the "
science of hadith
Hadith sciences ( ''ʻilm al-ḥadīth'' "science of hadith")
consists of several religious scholarly disciplines used by Muslim scholars in the study and evaluation of the hadith. ("Science" is used in the sense of a field of study, not to be ...
" to evaluate the reliability of these narratives, while prominent figures like Ibn Khaldun introduced critical
historiographical methods, emphasizing the importance of context and the systematic evaluation of historical data.
Primary sources
7th-century Islamic sources

*
Birmingham Quran manuscript
The Birmingham Quran manuscript comprises two leaves of parchment from an early Quranic manuscript or muṣḥaf. In 2015, the manuscript, which is held by the University of Birmingham in England, was radiocarbon dated to between 568 and 6 ...
. Between
c. 568 and 645 CE
Tübingen fragment Radiocarbon dated between c. 649 and 675 CE (though written in the post-8th century
Kufic script)
*
Sanaa manuscript. Between c. 578 and 669 CE
*
Qur'an
The Quran, also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation directly from God ('' Allāh''). It is organized in 114 chapters (, ) which consist of individual verses ('). Besides ...
ic Mosaic on the
Dome of the Rock
The Dome of the Rock () is an Islamic shrine at the center of the Al-Aqsa mosque compound on the Temple Mount in the Old City (Jerusalem), Old City of Jerusalem. It is the world's oldest surviving work of Islamic architecture, the List_of_the_ol ...
. 692 CE
*
The Book of Sulaym ibn Qays. The work is an early
Shia
Shia Islam is the second-largest branch of Islam. It holds that Muhammad designated Ali ibn Abi Talib () as both his political successor (caliph) and as the spiritual leader of the Muslim community (imam). However, his right is understood ...
hadith
Hadith is the Arabic word for a 'report' or an 'account f an event and refers to the Islamic oral tradition of anecdotes containing the purported words, actions, and the silent approvals of the Islamic prophet Muhammad or his immediate circle ...
collection, attributed to
Sulaym ibn Qays (death 694–714), and it is often recognised as the earliest such collection.
There is a manuscript of the work dating to the 10th century. Some Shia scholars are dubious about the authenticity of some features of the book, and Western scholars are almost unanimously sceptical concerning the work, with most placing its initial composition in the eighth or ninth century. The work is generally considered
pseudepigraphic by modern scholars.
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'' 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.
* 634
Doctrina Iacobi
* 636
Fragment on the Arab Conquests
* 639
Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem
* 640
Thomas the Presbyter
* 643
PERF 558
* 644 ''
Coptic Apocalypse of Pseudo-Shenute''
* 648 Life of
Gabriel of Qartmin
* 650
Fredegar
The ''Chronicle of Fredegar'' is the conventional title used for a 7th-century Franks, Frankish chronicle that was probably written in Burgundy. The author is unknown and the attribution to Fredegar dates only from the 16th century.
The chronic ...
* 655
Pope Martin I
Pope Martin I (, ; between 590 and 600 – 16 September 655), also known as Martin the Confessor, was the bishop of Rome from 21 July 649 to his death 16 September 655. He had served as Pope Theodore I's ambassador to Constantinople, and was pap ...
* 659
Isho'yahb III of Adiabene
* 660
Sebeos, Bishop of the Bagratunis
* 660 ''
Khuzistan Chronicle''
* 662
Maximus the Confessor
Maximus the Confessor (), also spelled Maximos, otherwise known as Maximus the Theologian and Maximus of Constantinople ( – 13 August 662), was a Christianity, Christian monk, theologian, and scholar.
In his early life, Maximus was a civil se ...
* 665
Benjamin I
* 670
Arculf, a pilgrim
* 676 Synod of
Giwargis I
* 680
George of Resh'aina
* 680
The Secrets of Rabbi Simon ben Yohai
* 680
Bundahishn
The ''Bundahishn'' (Middle Persian: , "Primal Creation") is an encyclopedic collection of beliefs about Zoroastrian cosmology written in the Book Pahlavi script. The original name of the work is not known. It is one of the most important extant ...
* 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
Epigraphy
According to archaeologists
Yehuda 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.
[ Neva & Koren, "Methodological Approaches to Islamic Studies", 2000: p.437-8] According to historian
Leor 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.
[Halevi, Leor. “The Paradox of Islamization: Tombstone Inscriptions, Qurʾānic Recitations, and the Problem of Religious Change.” History of Religions 44, no. 2 (2004): 120–52. https://doi.org/10.1086/429230.]
Some epigraphs found from the first century of Islam include:
*Analysis of a sandstone inscription found in 2008 determined that it read: "In the name of
Allah
Allah ( ; , ) is an Arabic term for God, specifically the God in Abrahamic religions, God of Abraham. Outside of the Middle East, it is principally associated with God in Islam, Islam (in which it is also considered the proper name), althoug ...
/ I, Zuhayr, wrote (this) at the time 'Umar died/year four/And twenty." It is worthwhile pointing out that
caliph
A caliphate ( ) is an institution or public office under the leadership of an Islamic steward with Khalifa, the title of caliph (; , ), a person considered a political–religious successor to the Islamic prophet Muhammad and a leader of ...
Umar
Umar ibn al-Khattab (; ), also spelled Omar, was the second Rashidun caliph, ruling from August 634 until his assassination in 644. He succeeded Abu Bakr () and is regarded as a senior companion and father-in-law of the Islamic prophet Mu ...
bin al-Khattāb died on the last night of the month of Dhūl-Hijjah of the year 23
AH, and was buried next day on the first day of Muharram of the new year 24 AH/644 CE. Thus the date mentioned in the inscription (above) conforms to the established and known date of the death of ʿUmar bin al-Khattāb.
*Jerusalem 32 - An Inscription unearthed at the south-west corner of the
Ḥaram al-Sharīf in Jerusalem during excavations conducted by Professor
Benjamin Mazar of the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; ) is an Israeli public university, public research university based in Jerusalem. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann in July 1918, the public university officially opened on 1 April 1925. ...
in 1968 from 32 AH / 652 CE mentions, "In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful...the protection of Allah and the guarantee of His
Messenger
Messenger, Messengers, The Messenger or The Messengers may refer to:
People
* Courier, a person or company that delivers messages, packages, or mail
* Messenger (surname)
* Bicycle messenger, a bicyclist who transports packages through cities
* M ...
... And witnessed it ʿ
Abd al-Raḥmān bin ʿAwf al-Zuhrī, and
Abū ʿUbaydah bin al-Jarrāḥ and its writer -
Muʿāwiya....the year thirty two"
*An Inscription, at
Taymāʾ, Saudi Arabia, c. 36 AH / 656 CE reads, "I am Qays, the scribe of Abū Kutayr. Curse of Allah on
hosewho murdered ʿ
Uthmān ibn ʿAffān and
hose whohave led to the
killing without mercy." Greek Inscription In The Baths Of
Hammat Gader, 42 AH / 662-63 CE mentions, "In the days of the servant of God
Muʿāwiya (''abdalla Maavia''), the commander of the faithful (''amēra almoumenēn'') the hot baths of the people there were saved and rebuilt..."
*Tombstone of a woman named ʿAbāssa Bint Juraij, kept in Museum of Islamic Art Cairo, from 71 AH / 691 CE mentions,"In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. The greatest misfortune for the people of Islām (''ahl al-Islām'') is the death of
Muḥammad the Prophet,
Peace be upon him..."
*An Inscription at Ḥuma al-Numoor, near
Ṭāʾif from 78 AH / 697-698 CE mentions, "This was written in the year the
Masjid al-Ḥarām was
built in the seventy eighth year."
Traditional Muslim historiography
Religious sciences of biography, hadith, and Isnad
Muslim
Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...
s believe that the historical traditions first began their development in the early 7th century with the reconstruction of
Muhammad
Muhammad (8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious and political leader and the founder of Islam. Muhammad in Islam, According to Islam, he was a prophet who was divinely inspired to preach and confirm the tawhid, monotheistic teachings of A ...
's life following his death. Because narratives regarding Muhammad and his
companions 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 of
biography
A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or curri ...
", "
science of hadith
Hadith sciences ( ''ʻilm al-ḥadīth'' "science of hadith")
consists of several religious scholarly disciplines used by Muslim scholars in the study and evaluation of the hadith. ("Science" is used in the sense of a field of study, not to be ...
" and "
Isnad" (chain of transmission). These methodologies were later applied to other historical figures in the
Muslim world
The terms Islamic world and Muslim world commonly refer to the Islamic community, which is also known as the Ummah. This consists of all those who adhere to the religious beliefs, politics, and laws of Islam or to societies in which Islam is ...
.
Ilm ar-Rijal (
Arabic
Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
) is the "science of biography" especially as practiced in Islam, where it was first applied to the
sira, the life of the
prophet
In religion, a prophet or prophetess is an individual who is regarded as being in contact with a divinity, divine being and is said to speak on behalf of that being, serving as an intermediary with humanity by delivering messages or teachings ...
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 attempted to sort out facts from accusations, bias from evidence, etc. The earliest surviving Islamic biography is Ibn Ishaq's ''
Sirat Rasul Allah'', written in the 8th century, but known to us only from later quotes and recensions (9th–10th century).
The "
science of hadith
Hadith sciences ( ''ʻilm al-ḥadīth'' "science of hadith")
consists of several religious scholarly disciplines used by Muslim scholars in the study and evaluation of the hadith. ("Science" is used in the sense of a field of study, not to be ...
" is the process that Muslim scholars use to evaluate
hadith
Hadith is the Arabic word for a 'report' or an 'account f an event and refers to the Islamic oral tradition of anecdotes containing the purported words, actions, and the silent approvals of the Islamic prophet Muhammad or his immediate circle ...
. The classification of Hadith into
Sahih
Hadith terminology () is the body of terminology in Islam which specifies the acceptability of the sayings (''hadith'') attributed to the Prophets in Islam, Islamic prophet Muhammad by other early Islamic figures of significance such as the compa ...
(sound),
Hasan (good) and
Da'if (weak) was firmly established by
Ali ibn al-Madini (778CE/161AH – 849CE/234AH). Later, al-Madini's student
Muhammad al-Bukhari
Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl ibn Ibrāhīm al-Juʿfī al-Bukhārī (; 21 July 810 – 1 September 870) was a 9th-century Persian Muslim '' muhaddith'' who is widely regarded as the most important ''hadith'' scholar in the histor ...
(810–870) authored a collection that he believed contained only Sahih hadith, which is now known as the ''
Sahih Bukhari
() is the first hadith collection of the Six Books of Sunni Islam. Compiled by Islamic scholar al-Bukhari () in the format, the work is valued by Sunni Muslims, alongside , as the most authentic after the Qur'an.
Al-Bukhari organized the bo ...
''. Al-Bukhari's
historical method
Historical method is the collection of techniques and guidelines that historians use to research and write histories of the past. Secondary sources, primary sources and material evidence such as that derived from archaeology may all be draw ...
s of testing hadiths and
isnads is seen as the beginning of the method of
citation
A citation is a reference to a source. More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression embedded in the body of an intellectual work that denotes an entry in the bibliographic references section of the work for the purpose o ...
and a precursor to the
scientific method
The scientific method is an Empirical evidence, empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has been referred to while doing science since at least the 17th century. Historically, it was developed through the centuries from the ancient and ...
. I. A. Ahmad writes:
Other famous Muslim historians who studied the science of biography or science of hadith included
Urwah ibn Zubayr (died 712),
Wahb ibn Munabbih (died 728),
Ibn Ishaq
Abu Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Ishaq ibn Yasar al-Muttalibi (; – , known simply as Ibn Ishaq, was an 8th-century Muslim historian and hagiographer who collected oral traditions that formed the basis of an important biography of the Islamic proph ...
(died 761),
al-Waqidi (745–822),
Ibn Hisham (died 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
Historiography is the study of the methods used by historians in developing history as an academic discipline. By extension, the term ":wikt:historiography, historiography" is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiog ...
itself and the first critiques on
historical method
Historical method is the collection of techniques and guidelines that historians use to research and write histories of the past. Secondary sources, primary sources and material evidence such as that derived from archaeology may all be draw ...
s appeared in the works of the
Arab
Arabs (, , ; , , ) are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in West Asia and North Africa. A significant Arab diaspora is present in various parts of the world.
Arabs have been in the Fertile Crescent for thousands of years ...
Muslim
Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...
historian and historiographer
Ibn Khaldun
Ibn Khaldun (27 May 1332 – 17 March 1406, 732–808 Hijri year, AH) was an Arabs, Arab Islamic scholar, historian, philosopher and sociologist. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest social scientists of the Middle Ages, and cons ...
(1332–1406), who is regarded as the father of
historiography
Historiography is the study of the methods used by historians in developing history as an academic discipline. By extension, the term ":wikt:historiography, historiography" is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiog ...
,
cultural history
Cultural history records and interprets past events involving human beings through the social, cultural, and political milieu of or relating to the arts and manners that a group favors. Jacob Burckhardt (1818–1897) helped found cultural history ...
, and the
philosophy of history
Philosophy of history is the philosophy, philosophical study of history and its academic discipline, discipline. The term was coined by the French philosopher Voltaire.
In contemporary philosophy a distinction has developed between the ''specul ...
, especially for his historiographical writings in the ''
Muqaddimah'' (
Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
ized as ''Prolegomena'') and ''Kitab al-Ibar'' (''Book of Advice''). His ''Muqaddimah'' also laid the groundwork for the observation of the role of
state
State most commonly refers to:
* State (polity), a centralized political organization that regulates law and society within a territory
**Sovereign state, a sovereign polity in international law, commonly referred to as a country
**Nation state, a ...
,
communication
Communication is commonly defined as the transmission of information. Its precise definition is disputed and there are disagreements about whether Intention, unintentional or failed transmissions are included and whether communication not onl ...
,
propaganda
Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded l ...
and
systematic bias
Systematic may refer to:
Science
* Short for systematic error
* Systematic fault
In engineering, a fault is a defect or problem in a system that causes it to fail or act abnormally. An example of this is the Windows fault screen, commonly r ...
in history,
[H. Mowlana (2001). "Information in the Arab World", ''Cooperation South Journal'' 1.] and he discussed the rise and fall of
civilization
A civilization (also spelled civilisation in British English) is any complex society characterized by the development of state (polity), the state, social stratification, urban area, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyon ...
s.
Franz Rosenthal wrote in the ''History of Muslim Historiography'':
In the ''Muqaddimah'', 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 a
scientific method
The scientific method is an Empirical evidence, empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has been referred to while doing science since at least the 17th century. Historically, it was developed through the centuries from the ancient and ...
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 with
historiography
Historiography is the study of the methods used by historians in developing history as an academic discipline. By extension, the term ":wikt:historiography, historiography" is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiog ...
. His historical method also laid the groundwork for the observation of the role of
state
State most commonly refers to:
* State (polity), a centralized political organization that regulates law and society within a territory
**Sovereign state, a sovereign polity in international law, commonly referred to as a country
**Nation state, a ...
,
communication
Communication is commonly defined as the transmission of information. Its precise definition is disputed and there are disagreements about whether Intention, unintentional or failed transmissions are included and whether communication not onl ...
,
propaganda
Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded l ...
and
systematic bias
Systematic may refer to:
Science
* Short for systematic error
* Systematic fault
In engineering, a fault is a defect or problem in a system that causes it to fail or act abnormally. An example of this is the Windows fault screen, commonly r ...
in history,
[ and he is thus considered to be the "father of historiography"] or the "father of the philosophy of history
Philosophy of history is the philosophy, philosophical study of history and its academic discipline, discipline. The term was coined by the French philosopher Voltaire.
In contemporary philosophy a distinction has developed between the ''specul ...
".[Dr. S. W. Akhtar (1997). "The Islamic Concept of Knowledge", ''Al-Tawhid: A Quarterly Journal of Islamic Thought & Culture'' 12 (3).]
World history
Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari (838–923) is known for writing a detailed and comprehensive chronicle
A chronicle (, from Greek ''chroniká'', from , ''chrónos'' – "time") is a historical account of events arranged in chronological order, as in a timeline. Typically, equal weight is given for historically important events and local events ...
of Mediterranean
The Mediterranean Sea ( ) is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern ...
and Middle Eastern
The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq.
The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...
history in his '' History of the Prophets and Kings'' in 915. Abu al-Hasan 'Alī al-Mas'ūdī (896–956), known as the "Herodotus
Herodotus (; BC) was a Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus (now Bodrum, Turkey), under Persian control in the 5th century BC, and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria, Italy. He wrote the '' Histori ...
of the Arabs", was the first to combine history
History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the Human history, human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some t ...
and scientific
Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...
geography
Geography (from Ancient Greek ; combining 'Earth' and 'write', literally 'Earth writing') is the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding o ...
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 was not so with Central Asian historian Biruni (973–1048). In his ''Kitab fi Tahqiq ma l'il-Hind'' (''Researches on India''), he did not record political and military history in any detail, but wrote more on India
India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...
's cultural
Culture ( ) is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, Attitude (psychology), attitudes ...
, scientific
Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...
, social and religious
Religion is a range of social- cultural systems, including designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relate humanity to supernatural ...
history.[M. S. Khan (1976). "al-Biruni and the Political History of India", ''Oriens'' 25, p. 86-115.] Along with his ''Researches on India'', Biruni discussed more on his idea of history in his chronological
Chronology (from Latin , from Ancient Greek , , ; and , ''wikt:-logia, -logia'') is the science of arranging events in their order of occurrence in time. Consider, for example, the use of a timeline or sequence of events. It is also "the deter ...
work ''The Chronology of the Ancient Nations''.[
]
Famous Muslim historians
* Urwah ibn Zubayr (died 712)
** Hadith of Umar's speech of forbidding Mut'ah
* Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri (died 742)
** Hadith of Umar's speech of forbidding Mut'ah
** Hadith of prohibition of Mut'ah at Khaybar
* Ibn Ishaq
Abu Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Ishaq ibn Yasar al-Muttalibi (; – , known simply as Ibn Ishaq, was an 8th-century Muslim historian and hagiographer who collected oral traditions that formed the basis of an important biography of the Islamic proph ...
(died 761)
** '' Sirah Rasul Allah''
* Imam Malik (died 796)
** '' Al-Muwatta''
* Al-Waqidi (745–822)
** ''Book of History and Campaigns''
* Ali ibn al-Madini (777–850)
** '' The Book of Knowledge about the Companions''
* Ibn Hisham (died 834)
** '' Sirah Rasul Allah''
* Dhul-Nun al-Misri
Dhūl-Nūn Abū l-Fayḍ Thawbān b. Ibrāhīm al-Miṣrī (; d. Giza, in 245/859 or 248/862), often referred to as Dhūl-Nūn al-Miṣrī or Zūl-Nūn al-Miṣrī for short, was an early Egyptian Muslim mysticism, mystic and ascetic.Mojaddedi, ...
(died 859)
* Muhammad al-Bukhari
Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl ibn Ibrāhīm al-Juʿfī al-Bukhārī (; 21 July 810 – 1 September 870) was a 9th-century Persian Muslim '' muhaddith'' who is widely regarded as the most important ''hadith'' scholar in the histor ...
(810–870)
** ''Sahih Bukhari
() is the first hadith collection of the Six Books of Sunni Islam. Compiled by Islamic scholar al-Bukhari () in the format, the work is valued by Sunni Muslims, alongside , as the most authentic after the Qur'an.
Al-Bukhari organized the bo ...
''
* Muslim b. al-Hajjaj (died 875)
** ''Sahih Muslim
() is the second hadith collection of the Six Books of Sunni Islam. Compiled by Islamic scholar Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj () in the format, the work is valued by Sunnis, alongside , as the most important source for Islamic religion after the Q ...
''
* Ibn Majah (died 886)
** '' Sunan Ibn Majah''
* Abu Da'ud (died 888)
** '' Sunan Abi Da'ud''
* Al-Tirmidhi
Muhammad ibn Isa al-Tirmidhi (; 824 – 9 October 892 CE / 209–279 AH), often referred to as Imām at-Termezī/Tirmidhī, was an Islamic scholar, and collector of hadith from Termez (early Khorasan and in present-day Uzbekistan). He w ...
(died 892)
** ''Sunan al-Tirmidhi
''Sunan al-Tirmidhi'' () is the fourth hadith collection of the Six Books of Sunni Islam. It was compiled by Islamic scholar al-Tirmidhi in (250–270 AH).
Title
The full title of the compilation is (). It is shortened to , , , or .
The t ...
''
* 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
Al-Nasāʾī (214 – 303 Islamic calendar, AH; 829 – 915 CE), full name Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Aḥmad ibn Shuʿayb ibn ʿAlī ibn Sinān ibn Baḥr ibn Dīnar al-Khurasānī al-Nasāʾī (), was a noted collector of hadith (sayin ...
(died 915)
** ''Sunan al-Sughra
''Sunan al-Sughra'' (), also known as ''Sunan al-Nasa'i'' (), is one of the Kutub al-Sittah (six major hadith collections), and was collected by al-Nasa'i (214 – 303 AH; c. 829 – 915 CE).
Description
Sunnis regard this collection as the t ...
''
* Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari (838–923)
** '' History of the Prophets and Kings''
** '' Tafsir al-Tabari''
* Al-Baladhuri
ʾAḥmad ibn Yaḥyā ibn Jābir al-Balādhurī () was a 9th-century West Asian historian. One of the eminent Middle Eastern historians of his age, he spent most of his life in Baghdad and enjoyed great influence at the court of the caliph al ...
(died 892)
** '' Kitab Futuh al-Buldan''
** '' Genealogies of the Nobles''
* Hakim al-Nishaburi (died 1014)
** '' Al-Mustadrak alaa al-Sahihain''
* 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 (died 1310/1320)
** '' Rawd al-Qirtas''
* Al-Dhahabi
Shams ad-Dīn adh-Dhahabī (), also known as Shams ad-Dīn Abū ʿAbdillāh Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿUthmān ibn Qāymāẓ ibn ʿAbdillāh at-Turkumānī al-Fāriqī ad-Dimashqī (5 October 1274 – 3 February 1348) was an Atharism, Athari ...
(1274–1348)
** '' Major History of Islam''
** '' Talkhis al-Mustadrak''
** '' Tadhkirat al-huffaz''
** '' Al-Kamal fi ma`rifat al-rijal''
*Ibn Kathir
Abu al-Fida Isma'il ibn Umar ibn Kathir al-Dimashqi (; ), known simply as Ibn Kathir, was an Arab Islamic Exegesis, exegete, historian and scholar. An expert on (Quranic exegesis), (history) and (Islamic jurisprudence), he is considered a lea ...
(1300-1373)
**''Al-Bidāya wa-n-Nihāya''
**''Al-Sira Al-Nabawiyya''
* Ibn Khaldun
Ibn Khaldun (27 May 1332 – 17 March 1406, 732–808 Hijri year, AH) was an Arabs, Arab Islamic scholar, historian, philosopher and sociologist. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest social scientists of the Middle Ages, and cons ...
(1332–1406)
** '' Muqaddimah'' (1377)
** ''Kitab al-Ibar''
* Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani
Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī (; 18 February 1372 – 2 February 1449), or simply ibn Ḥajar, was a classic Islamic scholar "whose life work constitutes the final summation of the science of hadith." He authored some 150 works on hadith, history, ...
(1372–1449)
** '' Fath al-Bari''
** '' Tahdhib al-Tahdhib''
** '' Finding the Truth in Judging the Companinons''
** '' Bulugh al-Maram''
Modern academic scholarship
The earliest academic scholarship on Islam in Western countries tended to involve Christian and Jewish translators and commentators. They translated the readily available Sunni
Sunni Islam is the largest branch of Islam and the largest religious denomination in the world. It holds that Muhammad did not appoint any successor and that his closest companion Abu Bakr () rightfully succeeded him as the caliph of the Mu ...
texts from Arabic
Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
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:
* William Muir
Sir William Muir (27 April 1819 – 11 July 1905) was a Scottish oriental studies, Orientalist, and colonial administrator, Principal of the University of Edinburgh and Lieutenant Governor of the North-Western Provinces of British Raj, Brit ...
(1819–1905)
* Reinhart Dozy
Reinhart Pieter Anne Dozy (Leiden, Netherlands, 21 February 1820 – Leiden, 29 April 1883) was a Dutch scholar of French (Huguenot) origin, who was born in Leiden. He was an Orientalist scholar of Arabic language, history and literature.
Biogr ...
(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 centuries.
Another pioneer of Islamic studies, Abraham Geiger (1810–1874), a prominent Jewish
Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
rabbi
A rabbi (; ) is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi—known as ''semikha''—following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form of t ...
, approached Islam from that standpoint in his '' Was hat Mohammed aus dem Judenthume aufgenommen?'' (''What did Muhammad borrow from Judaism?'') (1833). Geiger's themes continued in Rabbi Abraham I. Katsh's "Judaism and the Koran" (1962)
Establishment of academic research
Other scholars, notably those in the German tradition, took a more neutral view. (The 19th-century scholar Julius Wellhausen
Julius Wellhausen (17 May 1844 – 7 January 1918) was a German biblical scholar and orientalist. In the course of his career, his research interest moved from Old Testament research through Islamic studies to New Testament scholarship. Wellhau ...
(1844–1918) offers 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 as pious fiction. Such scholars included:
* Michael Jan de Goeje (1836–1909)
* Theodor Nöldeke (1836–1930)
* Ignaz Goldziher (1850–1921)
* Henri Lammens (1862–1937)
* Arthur Jeffery
Arthur Jeffery (18 October 1892 in Melbourne, Australia – 2 August 1959 in South Milford, Canada) was a Protestant Australian professor of Semitic languages from 1921 at the School of Oriental Studies in Cairo, and from 1938 until his death ...
(1892–1959)
* H. A. R. Gibb (1895–1971)
* Joseph Schacht (1902–1969)
* Montgomery Watt (1909–2006)
The revisionist challenge
In the 1970s the Revisionist School of Islamic Studies, or what has been described as a "wave of sceptical scholars", 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 religious ''evolution''".[ 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".
The oldest of this group was John 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". Nonetheless, his scepticism influenced a number of younger scholars, including:
* Martin Hinds (1941–1988)
* Patricia Crone (1945-2015)
* Michael Cook (1940- )
In 1977 Crone and Cook published '' Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World'', which argued that the traditional early history of Islam is a ]myth
Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is very different from the vernacular usage of the term "myth" that refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the ...
, generated ''after'' 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 the ''cause'', rather than the ''consequence'', 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 o the conquering Muslimsand 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."[Crone, P., ''Slaves on Horses'', Cambridge, 1980, 15-16]
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''
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.)
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.”
In 1972 construction workers discovered a cache of ancient Qur'ans – commonly known as the Sana'a manuscripts – in a mosque in Sana'a
Sanaa, officially the Sanaa Municipality, is the ''de jure'' capital and largest city of Yemen. The city is the capital of the Sanaa Governorate, but is not part of the governorate, as it forms a separate administrative unit. At an elevation ...
, 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, 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 were palimpsests which had been reused. Puin believed that this implied an evolving text as opposed to a fixed one.
Karl-Heinz Ohlig has also researched Christian/Jewish roots of the Qur'an
The Quran, also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation directly from God ('' Allāh''). It is organized in 114 chapters (, ) which consist of individual verses ('). Besides ...
and its related texts. He sees the name ''Muhammad'' itself ("the blessed", as in Benedictus qui venit) as part of that tradition.
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—scholars Albrecht Noth and Lawrence 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.
Contemporary scholars have tended 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
Wilferd Ferdinand Madelung FBA (26 December 1930 – 9 May 2023) was a German author and scholar of Islamic history widely recognised for his contributions to the fields of Islamic and Iranian studies. He was appreciated in Iran for his "know ...
* Gerald Hawting
* Jonathan Berkey
Jonathan Porter Berkey is a historian specializing in Islam and the Middle East. He is currently professor of history at Davidson College.
He received a bachelor's degree from Williams College, and his doctorate from Princeton University
Pr ...
* Andrew Rippin
An alternative postrevisionist approach has made use of ''hadith'' of uncertain authenticity to tell a history of early Islam after the death of Muhammad. Here the key has been to analyze ''hadith'' 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 by Leor Halevi is an example of this approach.[Halevi, Leor. Muhammad's Grave : Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society. New York (N.Y.): Columbia University Press, 2007 and 2011.]
Scholars combining traditional and academic scholarship
A few scholars have attempted to bridge the divide between Islamic and Western-style secular scholarship.
* Joel Hayward
* Sherman Jackson
Sherman A. Jackson, also known as Abdul Hakim Jackson (born 1956) is an American scholar of Islam.
Career
Jackson is the King Faisal Chair of Islamic Thought and Culture and Professor of Religion and American Studies and Ethnicity at the Univers ...
* Fazlur Rahman
They have completed both Islamic and Western academic training.
See also
* Succession to Muhammad
* Timeline of early Islamic history
* Timeline of 7th-century Muslim history
A timeline is a list of events displayed in chronological order. It is typically a graphic design showing a long bar labelled with dates paralleling it, and usually contemporaneous events.
Timelines can use any suitable scale representing t ...
* Timeline of 8th-century Muslim history
* List of biographies of Muhammad
* Early Muslim conquests
The early Muslim conquests or early Islamic conquests (), also known as the Arab conquests, were initiated in the 7th century by Muhammad, the founder of Islam. He established the first Islamic state in Medina, Arabian Peninsula, Arabia that ...
* Classical Islam
References
Bibliography
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External links
Muslim historiography
an article by online Britannica
{{Islamic studies
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Medieval Islamic world