Medieval Arabic Historiography
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Konrad-Fm.qxd 25/2/06 4:43 PM Page i MEDIEVAL ARABIC HISTORIOGRAPHY Medieval Arabic Historiography is concerned with social contexts and narrative structures of pre-modern Islamic historiography written in Arabic in thirteenth-century Syria and Egypt. Taking up recent theoretical reflections on historical writing in the European Middle Ages, the study combines approaches drawn from social sciences and literary studies and focuses on two well-known texts by Abn Shmma (d. 1268), The Book of the Two Gardens, and Ibn Wmxil (d. 1298), The Dissipater of Anxieties. Both texts describe events during the life of the sultans Nnr al-Dln (d. 1174) and Xalm. al-Dln (d. 1193), who are primarily known as the champions of the anti-Crusade movement. This book shows that the two authors were active interpreters of their societies and had considerable room for manoeuvre in both their social environment and the shaping of their texts. Through the use of a new theoretical approach to pre-modern Arabic historiography, this book presents an original reading of the texts. Medieval Arabic Historiography provides a significant contribution to the burgeoning field of historiographical studies and is essential reading for those with interests in Middle Eastern Studies and Islamic and Arabic History. Konrad Hirschler gained his PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. He is Lecturer in Islamic Studies at the University of Kiel, Germany. His main research interests include modern and medieval historiography, as well as social and cultural history. Konrad-Fm.qxd 25/2/06 4:43 PM Page ii SOAS/ROUTLEDGE STUDIES ON THE MIDDLE EAST Series Editors Benjamin C. Fortna, SOAS, University of London Ulrike Freitag, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany This series features the latest disciplinary approaches to Middle Eastern Studies. It covers the Social Sciences and the Humanities in both the pre-modern and modern periods of the region. While primarily interested in publishing single-authored studies, the series is also open to edited volumes on innovative topics, as well as textbooks and reference works. 1 ISLAMIC NATIONHOOD AND COLONIAL INDONESIA The Umma below the winds Michael Francis Laffan 2 RUSSIAN-MUSLIM CONFRONTATION IN THE CAUCASUS Alternative visions of the conflict between Imam Shamil and the Russians, 1830–1859 Thomas Sanders, Ernest Tucker and G.M. Hamburg 3 LATE OTTOMAN SOCIETY The intellectual legacy Edited by Elisabeth Özdalga 4 IRAQI ARAB NATIONALISM Authoritarian, Totalitarian and pro-Fascist inclinations, 1932–1941 Peter Wien 5 MEDIEVAL ARABIC HISTORIOGRAPHY Authors as actors Konrad Hirschler Konrad-Fm.qxd 25/2/06 4:43 PM Page iii MEDIEVAL ARABIC HISTORIOGRAPHY Authors as actors Konrad Hirschler I~ ~~o~!!~n~~;up LONDON AND NEW YORK Konrad-Fm.qxd 25/2/06 4:43 PM Page iv First published 2006 by Routledge Published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2006 Konrad Hirschler Typeset in Garamond by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd, Chennai, India The Open Access version of this book, available at www.tandfebooks.com, has been made a vailable under a Creative Commons Attribution -Non Commercial- No Derivatives 4.0 license. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN13: 978–0–415–38377–6 (hbk) iv Konrad-Fm.qxd 25/2/06 4:43 PM Page v CONTENTS List of illustrations vi Acknowledgements vii Notes on romanization and terminology viii 1 Introduction 1 2 Historical and historiographical background 7 3 Social contexts 15 4 Intellectual contexts 43 5 Textual agency I: titles, final sections and historicization 63 6 Textual agency II: micro-arrangement, motifs and political thought 86 7 Reception after the seventh/thirteenth century 115 8 Conclusion 122 Appendix 124 Notes 127 Bibliography 159 Index 173 v Konrad-Fm.qxd 25/2/06 4:43 PM Page vi ILLUSTRATIONS Figures 1 Network Ibn Wmxil 124 2 Ibn Wmxil in Egypt (643–early 660s) 126 Tables 1 Arrangement ‘Campaign to Mosul’ 89 2 Translation ‘Siege of Castle Ja^bar’ 94 3 Arrangement ‘Siege of Castle Ja^bar’ 98 4 Arrangement ‘Conquest of Bmniyms’ 104 vi Konrad-Fm.qxd 25/2/06 4:43 PM Page vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This study developed out of a PhD thesis on Arabic historical writing submitted to the School of Oriental and African Studies. I would like to express my gratitude in the first place to Ulrike Freitag. My discussions with her were a constant source of inspiration and her support, even in rather extraordinary circumstances, was crucial in many regards. I am indebted to Gerald Hawting for following this project through to completion with much care. Peter Holt and Carole Hillenbrand helped me to sharpen the argument with their detailed and thorough critique. I wish also to thank those people who were kind enough to read parts or all of the manuscript and to make encouraging and helpful comments: Benjamin Fortna, Stefan Conermann, Edwin Towill, Achim Rohde, Joachim Hirschler and Albrecht Hirschler. Furthermore, I wish to thank Stefan Sperl, Guido Steinberg and Stefan Heidemann, who provided me with copies of unpublished work or helped with other information. Michael Brett supported me in a variety of ways and the conversations with him were always especially enlightening. As I complete this study, I am prompted to express gratitude for guidance received at different stages from two people to whom I owe in very large measure my interest in historiography: Richard Rathbone and the late Albrecht Noth. Drafts of some chapters were presented at the Tenth Colloquium on the History of Egypt and Syria in the Fatimid, Ayyubid and Mamluk Eras, Leuven, 9–11 May 2001, the XXVIII Deutscher Orientalistentag, Bamberg, 26–30 March 2001, the Eleventh Colloquium on the History of Egypt and Syria in the Fatimid, Ayyubid and Mamluk Eras, Leuven, 16/17 May 2002 and the First World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies, Mainz, 8–13 September 2002. Those present helped me with their insight- ful comments and their questions to rethink aspects of the argumentation. I am indebted to the SOAS History Department and the Evangelisches Studienwerk Villigst – Germany for their financial support. And finally, I wish to thank especially my parents, my brothers, my wife and my children who have supported me in a variety of ways during the last years. vii Konrad-Fm.qxd 25/2/06 4:43 PM Page viii NOTES ON ROMANIZATION AND TERMINOLOGY Romanization Terms commonly used in English, such as amir, caliph, fatwa, imam, Quran, Shiite, sultan, Sunni, Sufism and vizier are reproduced without diacritics and are not formatted in italics. Similarly, proper nouns are never formatted in italics. For those referring to well-known places/regions and dynasties diacritics are omitted, except the letter ^ayn in the beginning, that is Damascus, Cairo, and Syria; ^Abbasids, Fatimids, Zangids, Saljuqs, Ayyubids and Mamluks. Other proper nouns are romanized with full diacritics: al-Jazlra, >arrmn. All other terms from foreign languages are formatted in italics and, if applicable, fully romanized according to the ALA-LC Romanization Tables for Arabic (Transliteration Schemes for Non-Roman Scripts, approved by the American Library Association and the Library of Congress) with two changes. First, the final inflection of verbs, pronouns, pronominal suffixes and demonstratives is also retained in pause, for example, .aymtuhu wa-^axruhu instead of .aymtuhu wa-^axruh. Second, the ‘h’ for tm6marbnya at the end of nouns and adjectives, which are either indefinite or preceded by the definite article, is omitted, for example, madrasa and al-rismla instead of madrasah and al-rismlah.1 In order to facilitate the text for readers who are not acquainted with Arabic, terms in plural are generally given in the singular form with an English plural, that is, ^mlim/^mlims not ^ulamm6, .adlth/.adlths not a.mdlth. References Primary and secondary sources are referred to in the footnotes with dissimilar systems in order to facilitate a clear differentiation. Primary sources are cited with ‘author, title, page’, for example, Abn Shmma, Dhayl, 50. Secondary sources are cited with ‘author (year), page’, for example, Watt (1968), 86–7. Volume numbers are given in Roman numbers, for example Hodgson (1974), I, 233–40 and al-Xafadl, Wmfl, XVIII, 113–16. Footnotes referring to individuals do not provide all the available primary sources, but only those relevant for the argumentation. Readers looking for a more comprehensive list of the available sources should consult al-Dhahabl’s Ta6rlkh al-islmm, which is indicated whenever a reference exists. viii Konrad-Fm.qxd 25/2/06 4:43 PM Page ix NOTES ON ROMANIZATION AND TERMINOLOGY Periodization The terms ‘Middle Ages’ and ‘medieval’, which are the terms most currently employed for the period dealt with in this study, are obviously neither neutral in a geographical nor in a chronological sense. For the European context they generally exclude certain regions, such as the Baltic and the Slavic parts, implying distinctively what is perceived to be the centre of Europe. Furthermore, the terms imply clear periods of break, which are mainly linked to the function of the Middle Ages as the scorned or romanticized Other of modernity. Nevertheless, the terms remain widely used, which is probably due to a further – sometimes quite helpful – characteristic: the fuzziness of their exact delimitation in space and time.2 The terms become even more problematic for the region called presently ‘Middle East’. Although the terms are widely used, one finds only rarely reflections on what period of Arab history can be seen as ‘medieval’ and what the characteristics of such a ‘Middle Age’ would be.3 The traditional periodization according to ruling dynasties is not very helpful, although it reflects to a large degree the schemes chosen by medieval Arab historians themselves.