Has the “profession of history” in the Arab Islamic culture acquired the kind of attention it deserves? Many studies have appeared attempting to reveal the extent to which the historical awareness has reached in the Islamic civilization and to explain the different factors that have affected and were affected by the craft of historywriting. I have selected two distinguishing works that match in subject but differ in time, method, and style. The first is by Tarif Al-Khalidi (professor of Arabic Studies at Cambridge University), entitled in its Arabic version The Notion of History According to the Arabs: from “The Book” to “The Introduction” (Cambridge University Press, 1994). The second book, however, is a 15th century work by the well-known Egyptian historian Shams al-Din al- Sakhawi (1428-1496), entitled: The Announcement and Scolding of Those Who Slandered History. Both writers made an effort to draw a nearly complete picture of the development of historical thought in the Arab Islamic tradition.

 

Tarif Al-Khalidi attempts to tour through a whole heritage of historical thought and writing over a period of 800 years, form the 8th until the 15^th century, beginning with The Book (The Holy Qur’an) and ending with The Introduction of Ibn Khaldun, as he thinks that historical thought reaches its peak with Ibn Khaldun. Throughout all this, he examines how the Arab Islamic culture looked at its past and how it was recorded in the pre-modern age. According to his analysis, “the science of history” has been affected by four “epistemological domes” or umbrellas: Hadith, Literature, Wisdom, and Politics.

 

Al-Khalidi divides his book into five chapters and an epilogue. In the first chapter, he discusses the importance of the Qur’an in Islamic history and how the Arabs learned a new history the day they acquired a new religion, as the Qur’an was a source of ideas in history and a “storehouse of historical examples to be reflected upon.” He then moves to the “science of Hadith” which he believes has served the craft of history, writing by equipping it with the most important tools to prove authenticity and verify narration and transmission. History under the “umbrella” of the Hadith meant protecting the nation’s past, with focus on the way the news were transmitted. The Hadith continued to cover history during the period between the 7th and 10th century, until the progress of Muslim conquests in new territories led to the development of history, making it extend beyond the control of Hadith as the inefficiency of its methods in certain situations became clear. And so the need to apply new standards while choosing and evaluating narration emerged. Hence, history began to be influenced by literature and enter under its umbrella, becoming a record of human civilization in including patterns and examples that guide political and moral conduct. It acquired the double role of amusing and entertaining, as well as advising and guiding.

 

Al-Khalidi then moves to the field of wisdom as he explains how it spread its wings over history during both the 10th and 11th centuries, creating histories that are “more accurate, better controlled, more like a law, nearer to scientific benefit, and better in using comparative methods.” The dimension of wisdom within history meant directing interest to the role of reason in accepting news and sifting through myths or superstitions. The fourth dome of knowledge is politics, as during the 12th to the 15th century a new kind of history appeared known as bureaucratic or sultanate historiography.

 

Historical knowledge revolved directly or indirectly around all that concerned the kings’ and official state policies, which meant that knowledge became associated with authority, making diplomatic material and records important sources for history-writing. At the same time, writing biographies intersected with history, so that terms like a biography or life story became synonymous with history. Moreover, most historians of that period came from among scholars or high officials and bureaucrats and were either defenders of the state or beneficiaries from its wealth. In his discussion of history and politics, we find that al-Khalidi reserves a special place for Ibn Khaldun, as he considers him a perfect example of historical writing and criticism, with a political angle or influence.

 

The specification of these four “domes” of knowledge and marking the beginnings and endings of each one do not mean that their influence stops suddenly in a particular century. The aim was to determine the period in which a certain domain reached its highest theoretical point to clarify “the development of historical thought as harmonious with the expansion of Arab Islamic culture.”

 

However, the process of classifying historians strictly according to these domes was a very hard and complicated matter, as these four domes were not completely separate, and many historians were influenced by and worked under more than one umbrella at the same time. In light of this problem, al-Khalidi states: “I do not seek to impose such a classification artificially on all historians; I only try to determine the epistemological framework in which they moved in order to understand the full scope of the variety of their historical styles and methods.” Throughout his work, al-Khalidi was most interested in understanding the social, political, economic, and cultural backgrounds of each historian so as to determine the influencing factor on his work, as well as the way he understood the past, then how he “sifted it through his own special perspective and transmitted it to us.” Thus, we can say that al-Khalidi used the analytical theoretical method in analyzing the backgrounds and contexts of the various historians and their output, as well as the intellectual frameworks (i.e. epistemological domes) under which they operated.

 

Al-Khalidi’s work is quite valuable and full of important information. It is more than just a record of the journey of the great Arab historians, for it presents a complete chronological survey of the developing intellectual climate of historical writings in the Arab/Islamic tradition, which reached its peak with Ibn Khaldun at the end of the 15th century and beginning of the 16th century. I would have preferred it, however, had al- Khalidi stretched his period of study a little further for the “domes” to include the historical works of the following century. It would have been interesting to know his analysis of al- Sakhawi, the Mamluke historian who preceded al-Khalidi in evaluating the “craft of history writing” and in studying the evolution and development of historical consciousness in the Arab civilization. Even in al-Khalidi’s passing opinion, al-Sakhawi never really obtained the degree of interest or attention he deserves. Hence, a brief look at al-Sakhawi’s effort in this field would be appropriate here.

 

Shams al-Din Muhammed Ibn Abd al-Rahman al- Sakhawi (born in Cairo 1428 – 1496) wrote his book The Announcement and Scolding of those who Slandered History, a philosophical study of “apology” about history-writing. Al-Sakhawi attempts to reveal the level of historicism reached in the Islamic civilization, beginning with a definition of the “science of history” and its advantages as a human science, then to an eloquent defense of this field against all those who “slander” it and belittle its value. He lists the conditions and characteristics that should be available in a good historian and mentions the views of several scholars concerning the subject of who was the first to record history. He then devotes a special part of his work to give a classified account of the various history collections, their types, aims, and names of their authors – depending on the information found in the work of the great historian al-Dhahabi. Another kind of classification follows, which goes by an alphabetical list of the names of the historians themselves up to date. Al-Sakhawi states that he is presenting two methods in grouping and recording historians and their work.

 

We notice that al-Sakhawi divided his book into two parts: one dealing with the science of history in all its theoretical and philosophical aspects, and the second an enlisted record of past and contemporary historians. Thus, his work in general gives an overall complete picture of the development of history-writing until his era, as well as – through the element of apology – demonstrates to us the medieval conceptualization of history and the professional debate over its value. Although al-Sakhawi is considered a pioneer in this approach, he fell into a number of mistakes, in his presentation, which were common in this age, such as digression, repetition, excessive elaborateness, and lack of organization. He also emphasizes the compilation of details and narration of sub-issues. His work ends up being an exhaustive and complete account, but without the in-depth analytical dimension found in al-Khalidi.

 One point of interest, however, in al-Sakhawi is that he had given us a record of the classified histories that purported to document the lives of subsidiary groups of society, such as “the weak of character, the abandoned [narrators], the oneeyed, the blear-eyed, the blind, the hunch-backed, the elderly, and the youth”. Al-Sakhawi put these groups in the same list of the other histories and biographies of the elites, princes, eminent scholars and other famous personalities. This is a curious evidence that Arab medieval historians, contrary to common belief, included in their works groups and categories of people who lived on the margins of society. This list makes al- Sakhawi’s book an important source for modern researchers interested in the social history of the marginalized. Moreover, the interest shown by al- Sakhawi in including the titles of these ‘marginal’ histories connects with what al-Khalidi called “the history of the commons,” as he mentions that beginning from the 16th century a new kind of historical writing emerged. Those were written by “common people,” like barbers, in a “naïve apologetic” style; yet they are significant historical sources awaiting “the close examination of anthropologists, sociologists, and contemporary historians of ideas.”

 

A last point worthy of notice is that despite the importance of Ibn Khaldun to al-Khalidi as he called him “the historian of all historians,” al- Sahkawi who came a hundred years after Ibn Khaldun never mentioned him or included his name. This shows us the difference in perspective, standards, and evaluations from one era to the other, as well as leads to a discussion of the re-reading of histories and historical changes in order to analyze these differences in points of view, level of interest or emphasis, and the general discourses.