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Muslim Constructions of Al‐Jāhiliyya and Arab History Webb, Peter A. (2014) Creating Arab origins: Muslim constructions of al‐Jāhiliyya and Arab history. PhD Thesis. SOAS, University of London http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/18551 Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non‐commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this thesis, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full thesis title", name of the School or Department, PhD Thesis, pagination. Creating Arab Origins: Muslim Constructions of al-Jāhiliyya and Arab History Peter A. Webb Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD in Arabic 2014 Department of Near and Middle East SOAS, University of London Declaration for PhD thesis I have read and understood regulation 17.9 of the Regulations for students of the SOAS, University of London concerning plagiarism. I undertake that all the material presented for examination is my own work and has not been written for me, in whole or in part, by any other person. I also undertake that any quotation or paraphrase from the published or unpublished work of another person has been duly acknowledged in the work which I present for examination. Signed: ____________________________ Date: _________________ 2 Abstract The pre-Islamic Arab is a ubiquitous character in classical Arabic literature, but to date, there has been only scant scholarly analysis of his portrayal. In contrast to the dynamic discussions of contemporary Arab identity, the pre-Islamic and early Islamic-era Arabs are commonly treated as a straightforward and culturally homogeneous ethnos. But this simplified ‘original Arab’ archetype that conjures images of Arabian Bedouin has substantial shortcomings. There is almost no trace of ‘Arabs’ in the pre-Islamic historical record, and the Arab ethnos seemingly emerges out of nowhere to take centre-stage in Muslim-era Arabic literature. This thesis examines Arabness and Muslim narratives of pre-Islamic history with the dual aims of (a) better understanding Arab origins; and (b) probing the reasons why classical- era Muslims conceptualised Arab ethnic identity in the ways portrayed in their writings. It demonstrates the likelihood that the pre-Islamic Arabian Peninsula was in fact ‘Arab-less’, and that Islam catalysed the formation of Arab identity as it is familiar today. These Muslim notions of Arabness were then projected backwards in reconstructions of pre-Islamic history (al-Jāhiliyya) to retrospectively unify the pre- Islamic Arabians as all ‘Arabs’. This thesis traces the complex history of Arabness from its stirrings in post-Muslim Conquest Iraq to the fourth/tenth century when urban Muslim scholars crafted the Arab-Bedouin archetype to accompany their reconstructions of al-Jāhiliyya. Over the first four Muslim centuries, Arabness and al- Jāhiliyya were developed in tandem, and this study offers an explanation for how we can interpret early classical-era narratives that invoke the pre-Islamic Arab. 3 Table of Contents Introduction 6 Chapter 1: The Jāhiliyya Paradigm 12 1.1 The Jāhiliyya archetype: origins in Western scholarship 16 1.2 Alternative approaches to the pre-Islamic Arabs and al-Jāhiliyya 20 1.3 Al-Jāhiliyya: development of the modern paradigm 28 1.4 Al-Jāhiliyya in Arabic lexicography 33 1.5 Al-Jāhiliyya in Qurʾān commentaries 37 1.6 Al-Jāhiliyya in third/ninth century discourses on Arabness 44 1.7 The ‘meritorious’ al-Jāhiliyya? 56 Chapter 2: Contested Arabness: Classical Definitions and Genealogy 60 2.1 Problematizing Arabness: scholarly precursors 62 2.2 ‘Arabs’ defined in classical writing 70 2.3 Arab genealogy in early Islam 84 2.4 Arab genealogies: conclusions 115 Chapter 3: Pre-Islamic Arabness 117 3.1 Arabs and the epigraphic record of pre-Islamic Arabia 117 3.2 Pre-Islamic poetry as a source of historical enquiry 120 3.3 The ‘Arab’ in pre-Islamic poetry 123 3.4 Maʿadd and pre-Islamic poetry 126 3.5 The rise of ‘Arab’ poetry 134 3.6 Transition from Maʿadd to Arab: case study of Dhū Qār 138 3.7 The Qurʾān and Arabness 150 3.8 The root ʿ-R-B beyond the Qurʾān 156 3.9 New trajectories for Arabness 162 Chapter 4: The Changing Faces of Arabness (1): Arab Ethnic Development to the mid-third/ninth century 165 4.1 Ethnicity as a process of development 168 4.2 Arabness and Islam in Iraq to the second/eighth century 177 4.3 Arabness in the third/ninth century Iraqi political sphere 204 4 Chapter 5: The Changing Faces of Arabness (2): Philologists, ‘Bedouinisation’ and the ‘Archetypal Arab’ after the mid-third/ninth century 221 5.1 Philologists and Arabness 224 5.2 Arabness and Bedouin-ness 260 5.3 Bedouin Arabness and the emergence of a Jāhiliyya archetype 285 5.4 Conclusions 293 Chapter 6: Creating Jāhiliyya: the Reconstruction of Arab Origins 297 6.1 Resistance to the Arabness archetype 297 6.2 Pre-Islamic poetry and the creation of al-Jāhiliyya 310 6.3 Conclusions: Jāhiliyya, wonderment and Islamic origin myth 344 Conclusions 352 Bibliography 356 5 Introduction Readers of classical Arabic literature are in the constant company of the pre- Islamic Arab. Since the second/eighth century beginnings of the Arabic literary tradition, Muslim writers from the urban centres of the Islamic world have woven memories of pre-Islamic Arabia into almost every conceivable genre of writing: poetry anthologists, classical litterateurs, historians, genealogists, grammarians, lexicographers, Qurʾānic exegetes, jurists, theologians and even collectors of Prophetic hadith each engaged with the veritable pan-cultural reconstruction of ancient Arab life. The appeal of the Arabian pre-Islamic era (al-Jāhiliyya) spread far beyond scholarly writing too: the voluminous hero cycles in popular Arabic literature recounting the fabulous adventures of pre-Islamic Arabs such as ʿAntara, Sayf ibn Dhī Yazan, Zīr Sālim and Ḥamzat al-Bahlawān evidence the Arabian Jāhiliyya’s allure across the entire gamut of pre-modern Muslim civilisation. In contrast to the pre-Islamic Arab’s iconic status in Muslim culture, however, modern scholarship accords him curiously cursory attention. Perhaps because modern scholars assume classical-era Muslims simply and systematically portrayed al-Jāhiliyya as the pagan antithesis of Islam;1 perhaps because pre-Islamic Arabs are assumed to have been unsophisticated Bedouin whose nomadic wanderings in far-away desert Arabia produced no written history;2 or perhaps because classical Arabic writing purports to present such a complete, comprehensive and consistent picture of pre-Islamic Bedouin life,3 there seems to be little cause for and only scant benefit in close study of Arabic writings about pre- Islamic Arabs. But on the contrary, there is much to be gained from reappraising 1 Goldziher (1889-1890) 1:201-208; Khalidi (1994) 1-3; Hawting (1999) 2-5. 2 Robinson (2003) 8-10 and Duri (1962) 46 accept that the past was important to pre-Islamic Arabians as a plastic oral tradition, but both consider this unlike written, empirical ‘history’. 3 The apparent explanatory power of the Bedouin archetype has been used to explain concepts such as the putative Arab character (Polk (1991)) and the original message of the Qurʾān (Izutsu (1966)). 6 what we think we know about pre-Islamic Arabica. From a historical perspective, critical scrutiny of the narratives of pre-Islamic Arab history will shed clearer light on the genesis of Islam. Since the Arabs are represented as Islam’s original believers, the conquerors of the Middle East, and the creators of the Caliphate, the study of Arab origins takes us to the heart of Islam’s historical origins. And from a literary perspective, a more sensitive appraisal of the imaging of the pre-Islamic Arab will unlock meanings embedded in those myriad references to Arabs and al-Jāhiliyya across classical Arabic writing that enable us to better appraise why Muslim cultural producers so consistently summoned memories of the pre-Islamic Arabs. This thesis engages with the historical and literary questions of Arabness and early Muslim civilisation together to ask both ‘who were the original Arabs’ and ‘why did Muslim writers describe those Arabs in the particular ways they did’? The two investigations are inseparable because (a) Muslim-era literature constitutes the vast majority of the now available sources for early Arab history; and (b) the ‘Arab’, as both a historical identity and as a literary figure is depicted as an archetype. We conceptualise the pre-Islamic Arab today as an Arabian Bedouin tribesman primarily because Muslim-era writings depict him in that guise, and we almost invariably speak of the historical pre-Islamic Arabs as a cohesive ethnicity with uniform cultural traits because many Muslim-era writings present the literary persona of pre-Islamic Arabness in homogenised, stereotyped images. Arabic literature seems to bequeath a tidy representation of the original Arab Jāhiliyya, and scholars today seek to fit that literary creation into modern reconstructions of the Late Antique Near East. The classical, foundational model of Arab Jāhiliyya, is, however, riddled with difficulties. Modern anthropologists demonstrate that ethnicities are not monoliths: racial purities are myths and peoples across the world engage in a constant process 7 of redefining themselves. The very use of ‘the Arab’ to describe the populations of pre-Islamic Arabia and the early Islamic Near East is accordingly specious. By treating Arabness as a static phenomenon, we prevent ourselves from probing the actual process of Arab ethnogenesis and we uncritically adopt the common narrative that Arabs emerged from a pagan and ‘barbarous’ Jāhiliyya.
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