Early Sunnī Historiography Islamic History and Civilization Studies and Texts

Early Sunnī Historiography Islamic History and Civilization Studies and Texts Editorial Board Hinrich Biesterfeldt Sebastian Günther Honorary Editor Wadad Kadi volume 157 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ihc Early Sunnī Historiography A Study of the Tārīkh of Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ By Tobias Andersson LEIDEN | BOSTON Cover illustration: A copy of a page from the manuscript of the Tārīkh of Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ, National Library of Morocco (Rabat), no. 199, p. 53. Photo by Tobias Andersson. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Andersson, T. S. (Tobias Sahl), author. Title: Early Sunni historiography : a study of the Tarikh of Khalifa b. Khayyat / by Tobias Andersson. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2018. | Series: Islamic history and civilization ; Volume 157 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018035513 (print) | LCCN 2018040103 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004383173 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004383166 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: ʿUṣfūrī, Khalīfah ibn Khayyāṭ, -854. Tārīkh Khalīfah ibn Khayyāṭ. | Umayyad dynasty–History–Early works to 1800. | Islamic Empire–History–661-750–Early works to 1800. Classification: LCC DS38.5.U743 (ebook) | LCC DS38.5.U743 A53 2018 (print) | DDC 956/.013–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018035513 Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill‑typeface. ISSN 0929-2403 ISBN 978-90-04-38316-6 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-38317-3 (e-book) Copyright 2019 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. Contents Acknowledgements vii Note on Conventions viii Introduction 1 1 Subject and Scope 1 2 Previous Studies on Khalīfa’s Tārīkh 10 3 Manuscripts and Published Editions 13 1 The Transmission of Khalīfa’s Tārīkh 15 1 Introduction 15 2 The Transmitters: Baqī b. Makhlad and Mūsā b. Zakariyyā al-Tustarī 16 3 Differences between the Recensions and the Question of Authorship 21 4 Missing Material in Baqī’s Recension 28 5 Conclusion 44 2 Khalīfa’s Life and Works 45 1 Introduction 45 2 Biography 45 3 Works 52 4 Scholarly Reputation 55 5 Khalīfa’s Tārīkh in Later Scholarship 59 6 Conclusion 65 3 Social and Intellectual Context 67 1 Introduction 67 2 Social and Political Context 68 3 Intellectual Context 78 4 Historiographical Context 90 5 Conclusion 103 4 Khalīfa’s Sources 105 1 Introduction 105 2 Main Direct Transmitters (20–110 Citations) 106 3 Less Frequently Cited Direct Transmitters (5–19 Citations) 112 4 Minor Direct Transmitters (1–4 Citations) 120 vi contents 5 Major Indirect Sources 125 6 Analysis of Material 131 7 Conclusion 137 5 Khalīfa’s Methods 139 1 Introduction 139 2 Epistemology of Historical Knowledge 140 3 System of Reference 151 4 Selection and Evaluation of Transmitters 158 5 Conclusion 164 6 Structure and Arrangement of the Tārīkh 166 1 Introduction 166 2 Concept of Chronography 166 3 General Structure: Annalistic and Caliphal Chronology 172 4 Structure of Individual Years and Lists 178 5 Conclusion 193 7 Themes I: Prophethood, Community and Hegemony 195 1 Introduction 195 2 Prophethood 196 3 Community 203 4 Hegemony 209 5 Conclusion 223 8 Themes II: Leadership and Civil War 225 1 Introduction 225 2 The Rāshidūn Period 226 3 The Umayyad Period 250 4 The ʿAbbāsid Period 275 5 Conclusion 279 Conclusion 283 1 Overview 283 2 Methods, Concerns and Contexts of the Early Historians 283 3 Chronography among the Early Ḥadīth Scholars 285 4 Articulations of Sunnī Views in the Early Historical Tradition 286 Appendix: Citations of Khalīfa in al-Bukhārī’s al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ 289 Bibliography 299 Index 317 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my teachers, colleagues and friends for their support during the years spent writing this book. I am particularly grateful to Abdassamad Clarke and Abdussalaam Nordenhök for always providing excellent advice in all matters and for their wonderful company. I would also like to thank my PhD supervisor, Andrew Marsham, for his constant help and beneficial discussions of the thesis upon which this work is based. Lastly, I must thank my wife and family, who have offered their continual support throughout the composition of this book. Note on Conventions The dates in this book follow the Hijrī/Common Era format. Translations of Khalīfa’s Tārīkh are my own, although I have based some parts on Wurtzel’s translation of the section in Khalīfa’sTārīkh on the Umayyad period: Khalifa ibn Khayyat’s History on the Umayyad Dynasty (Liverpool 2015). The phrase “may the peace and blessings of God be upon him (ṣallā Allāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam),” which usually follows the Prophet Muḥammad’s name in the Muslim sources, is abbreviated as (ṣ). Introduction 1 Subject and Scope This is a study of the oldest Islamic chronological history still extant: the Tārīkh (‘Chronicle’) of Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ (d. 240/854).1 Abū ʿAmr Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ al-ʿUṣfurī—also known as Shabāb—was a ḥadīth scholar and historian who lived and worked in the large southern Iraqi city of Basra, which was one of the main centres of learning in the Muslim world at the time. The extant recension of the Tārīkh was transmitted from Khalīfa by the leading ḥadīth scholar of al-Andalus, Baqī b. Makhlad al-Qurṭubī (d. 276/889), during his travels in the East.2 After an introductory section on calendar systems and chronography, Khalīfa’s Tārīkh is arranged annalistically by years of the lunar Hijrī calendar (1–232/622–847 in Baqī b. Makhlad’s recension). It covers the political and administrative history of the Muslim polity from its origins in Medina at the time of the Prophet Muḥammad and the first caliphs that succeeded him up to the Umayyad and ʿAbbāsid caliphates. Despite its early date, Khalīfa’s Tārīkh has received little attention in modern scholarship.3 Previous works on Khalīfa’s Tārīkh are only partial studies or general introductions, without any in-depth analysis of its sources, struc- tures, content and underlying aims and methods.4 These survey and textbook accounts tend to remark on its being the earliest surviving annalistic history in Arabic, in contrast to earlier single-subject texts and Prophetic biographies. Some modern historians have dismissed it as telling us little or nothing that is not known from the later historical tradition,5 although others have pointed out 1 Another chronological history compiled around the same time that might be more or less complete in its extant recension is the Tārīkh of ʿAbd al-Malik b. Ḥabīb (d. 238/853). On the discussions about the state of the surviving version, see Aguadé’s introduction to Ibn Ḥabīb, Tārīkh 77–108. 2 Another recension was transmitted from Khalīfa by Mūsā b. Zakariyyā al-Tustarī (d. before 300/912), but it survives only partially as scattered citations in later sources. On these two recensions, see Chapter 1. 3 Apart from this book, there are so far only a few partial studies. See Roberts, Early Islamic historiography 65–77; ʿĀṣī, Khalīfa; Nawas, An early Muslim philosopher of history; Robinson, Islamic historiography 77–79; Ṣaddām, Tārīkh Khalīfa; Wurtzel, Khalifa ibn Khayyat’s History. The latter is based on Wurtzel’s PhD thesis from 1977, The Umayyads in the “History” of Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ, which was prepared for publication by Robert Hoyland. See also Andersson and Marsham, First Islamic chronicle. 4 See the review of previous studies below. 5 Robinson, Islamic historiography 77. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004383173_002 2 introduction that it contains a good amount of unique and detailed information as well as somewhat different perspectives on certain events.6 Khalīfa’s Tārīkh was also compiled before the reorganisation and standardisation of historical knowledge that took place around the late third/ninth and early fourth/tenth cen- turies, when what Borrut has described as the most successful and enduring of the “early Islamic historiographical filters” was established.7 However, it is not only the early date and some of the information that distinguish Khalīfa’s Tārīkh; the selection and framing of the material (political-administrative history from an early Sunnī perspective) and the context of its compilation (the Basran ḥadīth circles) also set it apart from many other early histories. In that sense, Khalīfa’s Tārīkh is itself a largely overlooked historical fact that helps us better understand the development of Islamic historical writing—especially in the early ḥadīth circles to which Khalīfa belonged and which were crucial in the articulation of Sunnism during the early third/ninth century.8 The purpose of the book is, accordingly, to reassess and reappraise Khal- īfa’s Tārīkh by means of a detailed analysis of both the text and the context of its compilation. Apart from the lack of detailed attention to Khalīfa’s Tārīkh in modern scholarship, there are three principal reasons why this full-length study is important for the wider field of Islamic historiography. First, full- length studies on the works of some early historians have shown the impor- tance of detailed examinations of specific historians for understanding their aims and methods of compilation.

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