ISLAMIC & WESTERN HISTORIOGRAPHY

ISLAMIC STUDIES, 25: 4 (1986) 427
graplly which had developed from the late Middle Ages upto the 18th century
and to Hegel's Philosophy ofHistoy.[jl For instance. a sound appreciation of
lslain has been incorporated into the story of the "People of salvation" i.e. thc
"old" lsrael and the "new" lsrael of the Christian Church) who through all
the vicissitudes would alone be ultimately favoured, as Jacques Benigne
Bossuet [k 1 had told it in his "Discours sur l'histoire ur~iversellc" (1 68
The European world was not able in such circumstances to find a place for
anti-Christian Islam in its view of the world. What had happened in the domain
of Islam did not fit into the divine plan of salvation and. therefore. was
excluded from consideration. There were also language probleins and other
practical difficulties which impeded understanding. In this respect the two
trends which we have tried to describe were identical. The Christian view of
the world was no better ahre than the Islamic view to penetrate beyond its self-
mposed tenets. The historiographies of these two cultural spheres developed
in complete independence of each other, without any apparent inlluence on
each other's method and outlooks (unless we include here the above-mentioned
traces of Byzantine annalistic forms).-Islam took over from late antiquity only
those sciences which could be utilized in conformity with its religious view of
the world and late medieval Western Europe took over from Islam, particularly
in Spain and Southern ltaly[ll after 1100 A.D., only those sciences which
could somehow be fitted into the Christian world-view. To those belonged, for
example, the natural sciences of all kinds, certain types of philosophical
thought, inspiration for the fine arts and probably also for poety (if, as is
probably the case, the work of the 7koubadours["'l was inspired and influenc-
ed by Spanish Arabic poetry.[n1 History, however, was excluded from any
borrowing or influence in either direction and we believe that we have estab-
lished the reasons for this.
Thus, when Western Europeans deliberately set out in the 18th century
to study other cultures, they encountered amongst other things the historical
writings of the Muslims which they had previously needed only when these
had had some practical value, for example, when Hans Lowenklau Lounclavius[Ol
translated Turkish ~hronicles[~l from intermediary versions into
German and Latin between 1588 and 1595 because the Turkish empire was
then very important for the Habsburgs and for Germany in general.25 Furthermore,
it is significant that one of the first Arabic historical works which
appeared in Latin (in 1625) was a work of the Coptic Christian al-bIakinIql
(d. 671 11 273 A.D.).~~ From the second half of the 17th century, however,
the Europeans began to take an interest in Islamic history for its own sake just
when they began to occupy themselves with the study of all existing things.
The new European historiography, however, started from a fresh intellectual
position whch was quite different from the still prevalent Islamic position.