Medieval Islamic Historiography

Remembering Rebellion

Heather N. Keaney

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415828529
• eBook ISBN: 9781134081066
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

This book is a comparative analysis of the medieval Sunni historiography of the caliphate of Uthman b. Affan and the revolt against him. By comparing treatments of Uthman in pietistic literature and universal chronicles, the work traces the gradual silencing of more critical accounts in favor of those that portray Uthman as a saintly companion of the Prophet Muhammad. Through a comparative analysis of authors between genres and time periods, this book shows how authors were able to convey their personal perspectives on important religio-political tensions that emerged through the revolt against Uthman, namely the tension between Sunnis and Shiis, religious and political authority and appeals to maintain stability and unity vs. appeals for greater justice. This last debate, which in many ways began with the revolt against Uthman, has been repeated most recently in the Arab Spring. This work therefore provides readers with helpful historical context for important contemporary debates.

1 Introduction

Narrating ʿUthman

The attackers entered his room and one stabbed him in the face with a stake and ʿUthman said, “In the name of God! I put my trust in Him.” And then the blood flowed down onto his beard and trickled onto the Qurʾan that was between his hands. For he had been reading the Qurʾan and saying, “Praise God the Almighty” when the blood flowed onto the Qurʾan and gurgled up and stopped his speech. The Qurʾan closed and together they struck him as a group. God have mercy upon him.¹

The revolt against the third successor to the Prophet Muhammad, the caliph ʿUthman ibn ʿAffan, in 35/656 was a cataclysmic event in Islamic history. It marked the end of the religio-political balance established by Muhammad and inaugurated the debate over and quest for authentic Islamic government. It was the first revolt against a Muslim ruler and opened the door to Muslims killing other Muslims. It set in motion a chain of events that brought about the end of the period of the Rāshidūn (the first four “rightly guided”) Caliphs and shifted the office of the caliphate toward hereditary kingship. The revolt also contributed to the permanent division between Sunni and Shiʿi Muslims. Finally, the two sides in the revolt came to represent in Islamic collective memory and political discourse some of the key tensions in the pursuit of Islamic government—namely, religious versus political authority and preserving unity versus pursuing justice. These tensions have been debated ever since and indeed have yet to be resolved.

This study argues that medieval Muslim historians debated the tensions arising from competing religio-political ideals and the disparity between these ideals and contemporary realities by continually reinterpreting the the early Islamic period in light of their present. The common perception has been that historians in the formative third/ninth century failed to reconcile competing religio-political principles, or principles and practice, and as a result subsequent historians gave up the effort and simply abridged the ninth-century narratives, in particular al-Tabari’s (d. 310/923) universal history Taʾrikh al-rusul wa’l-muluk (The History of Prophets and Kings). The contention of this book is first, that just as ninth-century historians selected, edited, and arranged earlier sources in order to create distinct historical narratives communicating specific religio-political positions, so too later chroniclers continued to creatively summarize sources such as al-Tabari. Second, later historians’ use of al-Tabari and other third/ninth-century chroniclers, rather than being a sign of historiographic conservatism, can be seen as a bold move as the more critical accounts found in the third/ninth-century sources often contradicted the hagiographic image of Muhammad’s Companions (ṣaḥāba) promoted and propagated by the fadāʾil and manāqib (“virtues” and “praises”) literature that proliferated in subsequent centuries. Finally, a noteworthy aspect of medieval Islamic historiography is not the reliance on al-Tabari, but the degree to which the historical narratives of the third/ninth-century largely disappear from the discourse in the fifth/eleventh and sixth/twelfth centuries as sacred biographies replace universal chronicles as the preferred means of remembering the early Islamic period, only to have the genre of universal chronicle re-emerge in the seventh/thirteenth and eighth/fourteenth centuries with their controversial content intact.

In an effort to better understand these historiographic developments and the trends behind them, I trace a single narrative—the revolt against the third caliph ʿUthman ibn ʿAffan—from the earliest extant sources of the third/ninth century through to the end of the fourteenth century. By comparing authors within a particular time period and from one period to another, as well as between different genres, it is clear that the historical literature continued to reflect the opinions of individual authors as well as changes in historical context. I explore how writers expressed an authorial voice by choosing one genre over another and then, through carefully selecting, editing, and arranging their sources, how these authors engaged in ongoing religio-political debates.

The focus on particular texts as well as a comparison among different periods highlights how certain historical moments encourage different types of historical remembering. The first half of the third/ninth century marked the apogee of the Abbasid Caliphate, but was a time in which the relationship between religious and political authority, Sunni and Shiʿi Islam, history and hagiography, was still inchoate, and the volume and variety of the histories from this period reflects this. In contrast, the religious and political fragmentation and weakness of the fifth/eleventh and sixth/twelfth centuries reduced the need for the grand narratives that powered the universal chronicles of the third/ninth century. The highly idealized and ahistorical image of the Companions presented in manāqib/fadāʾil literature made it an ideal vehicle for encouraging first Sunni religious solidarity and then political reform. Moreover, based on the form and content of histories before and after the fall of Baghdad and the Abbasid Caliphate in 656/1258, it seems likely that the challenges of the seventh/thirteenth century created a crisis of legitimacy that in turn encouraged renewed interest in and re-evaluation of competing Islamic principles such as preserving unity and pursuing justice, and the first crisis that brought them into question—namely, the revolt against ʿUthman ibn ʿAffan.

That medieval writers debated these competing religio-political principles and that they tried to reconcile these principles with contemporary political realities through how they interpreted and re-interpreted past events, like the revolt against ʿUthman, is a relatively new and growing field in Islamic historiography. Failure to detect these debates was due in part to the very nature of Arabic historical writing. The earliest accounts are 150 years removed from the actual events, and most of these sources only survive in redactions found in the first universal chronicles of the third/ninth and fourth/tenth centuries. These accounts often are kept as isolated reports (khabar, pl., akhbār) with their chain of transmission (isnād, pl., asānīd) back to the eye witness rather than integrated into a single, smooth, coherent narrative. Moreover, chroniclers included variant and indeed contradictory accounts of an incident so that for a long time their collating was seen as comprehensive and indiscriminate. Modern historians concluded that there was no authorial intent in the chronicles; indeed, historians were referred to as compilers rather than authors.² However, the scholarship of the last twenty years has entirely altered this perspective, and it is now accepted that third/ninth-century Abbasid chroniclers were engaged in “unavowed authorship” through their “strategies of compilation.”³

Numerous studies have uncovered the literary, political, and ideological concerns that appear to have inspired and informed third/ninth-century chroniclers and biographers.⁴ After previously trying to wade through perceived unintentional Sunni or Shiʿi bias in order to determine the historical facts of early Islam, scholars now focus on these details in hopes of tracing the evolution of Sunni and Shiʿi ideologies and identities.⁵ The same applies to debates about the religious and political authority of the caliph generally and the Abbasid Caliphs specifically.⁶ Much greater appreciation now exists for the Abbasid chroniclers’ ability to give their own views greater legitimacy by appearing to rely on earlier authorities through their use of the isnād/khabar format while engaging in contemporary debates and responding to contemporary concerns through subtly editing those same authoritative accounts.⁷

So much work has been done on early Islamic historiography in the Abbasid sources that it is now universally recognized that “a methodological reading of an event discloses the intentions and strategies of an astute Muslim historian such as Tabari.”⁸ But actual scholarship suggests that few medieval historians, especially later ones, are believed to be as “astute” as al-Tabari.⁹ This fact is due, in part, once again, to unique aspects of medieval Arab historical writing. As the historians of the ninth and tenth centuries appeared to be primarily compilers, so those of the later medieval period appeared merely to paraphrase and summarize the syntheses of al-Tabari and his confreres while focusing their attention on more contemporary events. However, just as ninth-century historians could convey distinct interpretations of the past while maintaining the guise of authority through the isnād/khabar format, so too could later historians find legitimacy as well as contemporary relevance through their creative “summaries” of al-Tabari.

But when Abbasid chroniclers were shown to be more than compilers, why weren’t the same methods applied to reveal later chroniclers as more than “summarizers”? The answer lies in the explanations given as to why chroniclers chose to summarize al-Tabari in the first place. In part this was attributed to al-Tabari’s superiority as a historian and to legitimacy based on past authorities. However, it was also believed that al-Tabari was one of the last historians to wrestle in a dynamic way with the tensions arising from early Islamic history, and that subsequent scholars could not resolve the tensions and therefore chose not to engage them.¹⁰ As the contemporary situation became further and further removed from the founding principles of justice and unity, and religious and political authority were effectively divided between the ʿulamaʾ and the sultans, and Sunni and Shiʿi Islam became established and mutually exclusive positions, the tensions that had motivated the third/ninth-century debates and chroniclers disappeared. Scholars, it was presumed, surrendered extreme idealism for extreme pragmatism as they turned to regional and dynastic histories guided by extra-Qurʾanic and pre-Islamic political values and criteria.¹¹

There is some truth in this as historiography after the third/ninth century largely bifurcates between chronicles that focus on particular regions or dynasties that consequently ignore the early Islamic period, and biographies in which sacred biographies, or fadāʾil/manāqib, become the primary vehicle for remembering the early Islamic period.¹² Chronicles had a clear political focus and were often written by and for the court. As historical works, they relied on akhbār and were concerned with questions of causation and human agency; as political works, they were designed to strengthen legitimacy and draw relevant lessons from the past.¹³ Increasingly, these lessons were found and framed as much in pre-Islamic as Islamic categories, contributing to the formation of what has been called Perso-Islamic kingship. The preference for dynastic over universal histories, however, does not have to be seen as strictly ideological. Chase Robinson has shown that regimes that made claims to universal legitimacy, such as the Abbasids, encouraged the writing of universal histories to support those claims. In contrast, regimes with more limited aspirations tended to sponsor regional and dynastic histories.¹⁴ While this factor is certainly important, writing universal histories was not only a matter of patronage. One needs to look at what an author tried to convey in his history, particularly when this challenged the collective memory promoted by the fadāʾil/manāqib tradition.

In contrast to the historical, political, and human focus of chronicles, faādʾil/manāqib present highly idealized individuals as exemplars of eternal religious virtues.¹⁵ The interest is not with historical causation or accountability but timeless character traits.¹⁶ They are hagiographic in nature and bear similarities to sacred biographies in other traditions.¹⁷ They tend to be community centered rather than author or text, regime or region, centered. Indeed, as in other hagiographic traditions, the community could be regarded as the collective author as the narrative was evaluated based on how it reflected the shared tradition of the community.¹⁸ This meant illustrating the exemplary behavior and ethical dimension that the community expected to be the outcome of the biography.¹⁹ In the case of Islamic sacred biographies of the Companions of the Prophet, the community came to have clear expectations. The content is based overwhelmingly on hadith (reports of the words and deeds of Muhammad) rather than akhbār; it is Muhammad’s purported assessment of the individual’s character that is most important.²⁰ As a result, a Companion’s career after the death of Muhammad must, of necessity, be largely ignored, even if he became a caliph. When it cannot be ignored, prophetic utterances by Muhammad are used to interpret and contextualize it. Moreover, a key point of personal piety is loyalty to the community. The sacred memory of the individual and the collective are mutually reinforcing.²¹

The memory of the Companions and the early community presented in the fadāʾil/manāqib literature came to dominate the Islamic collective memory in the fourth/tenth century and has continued to do so down to the present. This presents even more reason to pay attention to universal chronicles from later periods to see how their portrayals of the same individuals and time period could act as a potentially powerful counter-narrative. This has historiographic as well as religious and political ramifications. To treat the Companions as human beings within history, subject to historical forces and human limitations, could have far-reaching implications. Fadāʾil/manāqib literature tends to silence or sidestep political debates arising from competing Islamic principles as well as between principles and practice by largely ignoring the political careers of Companions who became caliphs, the so-called Rāshidūn Caliphs. Universal Chronicles, on the other hand, that address the Rāshidūn Caliphs as rulers, situate these tensions squarely within the foundations of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Maps
• List of Abbreviations
• Note on Transliteration and Dating
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction: Narrating ‘Uthman
• 2 Representation: ‘Uthman in theThird/Ninth-Century Syntheses
• 3 Reaction: ‘Uthman in the Fourth/Tenth to Sixth/Twelfth-Century Fadā’il and Chronicles
• 4 Retrenchment: ‘Uthman in the Seventh/Thirteenth-Century Fadā’il and Chronicles
• 5 Re-evaluation: ‘Uthman in the Eighth/Fourteenth-CenturyUniversal Chronicles
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index