Martin Hinds (10 April 1941 – 1 December 1988) was a British scholar of the

Middle East 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 ...

and

historiographer Historiography is the study of the methods used by historians in developing history as an academic discipline. By extension, the term "historiography" is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific to ...

of early Islamic history who was born in

Penarth Penarth ( , ) is a town and Community (Wales), community in the Vale of Glamorgan, Wales, approximately south of Cardiff city centre on the west shore of the Severn Estuary at the southern end of Cardiff Bay. Penarth is a Seaside resort#Brit ...

Wales Wales ( ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by the Irish Sea to the north and west, England to the England–Wales border, east, the Bristol Channel to the south, and the Celtic ...

Life

Dr. Hind's interest in Islamic culture began as early as the year 1960 when he was a student of Arabic at the

School of Oriental and African Studies The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS University of London; ) is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the federal University of London. Founded in 1916, SOAS is located in the Bloomsbury area ...

SOAS where he developed a number of close friendships with scholars from

North Africa North Africa (sometimes Northern Africa) is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region. However, it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of t ...

. In the summer of 1962, he arrived in

Tunisia Tunisia, officially the Republic of Tunisia, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered by Algeria to the west and southwest, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Tunisia also shares m ...

and visited famous historic places there like the prominent

Carthage Carthage was an ancient city in Northern Africa, on the eastern side of the Lake of Tunis in what is now Tunisia. Carthage was one of the most important trading hubs of the Ancient Mediterranean and one of the most affluent cities of the classic ...

, a suburb of Tunis that was the centre of the

Carthaginian Empire Ancient Carthage ( ; , ) was an Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples, ancient Semitic civilisation based in North Africa. Initially a settlement in present-day Tunisia, it later became a city-state, and then an empire. Founded by the Phoenicians ...

in antiquity. He visited also famous Islamic monuments like

Al-Zaytuna Mosque Al-Zaytuna Mosque, also known as Ez-Zitouna Mosque, and El-Zituna Mosque (, literally meaning ''the Mosque of Olive''), is a major mosque at the center of the Medina of Tunis in Tunis, Tunisia. The mosque is the oldest in the city and covers an a ...

. Built early in the 8th century AD, it is the oldest mosque in the capital of Tunisia and the second to be built in

Ifriqiya Ifriqiya ( '), also known as al-Maghrib al-Adna (), was a medieval historical region comprising today's Tunisia, eastern Algeria, and Tripolitania (roughly western Libya). It included all of what had previously been the Byzantine province of ...

and the Maghreb region after the

Mosque of Uqba The Great Mosque of Kairouan (), also known as the Mosque of Uqba (), is a mosque situated in the UNESCO World Heritage town of Kairouan, Tunisia and is one of the largest Islamic monuments in North Africa. Established by the Arab general U ...

in Al-Kairouan. Dr. Hinds also visited Al-Kairouan and its Mosque of Uqba. He was fascinated by Islamic architecture and by the academic role of the Al-Zaytuna mosque which is known to have hosted one of the first and greatest universities in the history of Islam.Edmund Bosworth
"Martin Hinds 1941-1988"
''Bulletin (British Society for Middle Eastern Studies)'', Vol. 16, No. 1. (1989), pp. 118-120. He also travelled by ordinary citizen mini-bus through Libya to Egypt in 1962 and 1965, and was a welcome visitor for an old English friend en route.

Research

Together with

Patricia Crone Patricia Crone (28 March 1945 – 11 July 2015) was a Danish historian specialising in early Islamic history. Crone was a member of the revisionist school of Islamic studies and questioned the historicity of the Islamic traditions about the be ...

he argues in his book '' God's Caliph : Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam'' that the first Caliphs were heads of state as well as heads of the religious community. Later religious scholars claimed power for themselves on behalf of the communities they represented, thus creating the situation in Sunni Islam where there is no centralized religious power. The Shi'ite system is therefore no deviation but represents the original order of power in early Islam. Martin Hinds adhered to the Revisionist School of Islamic Studies.

Works

* '' God's Caliph : Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam'' (1986), with

. * ''The History of al-Tabari Vol. 23: The Zenith of the Marwanid House'' (1990), as translator.

Papers related to Ibadism

* Hinds, Martin: (1991) ''An early islamic family from Oman: al-''ʿ''Awtabī's account of the Muhallabids''. Manchester: University of Manchester, 1991. Journal of Semitic Studies. Monographs, 17. d. and transl. by Martin Hinds (3, 97 pp., 25 cm.). (pbk). * Hinds, Martin: (1996) ''Studies in early Islamic history''. Ed. by Jere Bacharag, Lawrence I. Conrad and

. With an introduction by G.R. Hawting. Princeton, New Jersey: Darwin Press, 1996, (xix, 262 pp.; ill.; 25 cm.). . * Hinds, Martin: (2010) The Ṣiffīn arbitration agreement. In: Saeed, Abdullah: (ed.) ''Islamic political thought and governance''. London: Routledge, 2010, vol. 1.

References

1941 births 1988 deaths People from Penarth Scholars of medieval Islamic history Fellows of Trinity Hall, Cambridge 20th-century Welsh historians Ibadi studies {{UK-historian-stub