ISLAMIC & WESTERN HISTORIOGRAPHY

4 18 ISLAMIC STUDIES, 25:4 (1986)
tan and the Middle lndus Valley, the people who then propagated the faith,
being ir. the great majority Arabs, had no genuine historical consciousness but
possessed a series of tribal and national traditions, which had grown partly
from old legends and fables sometimes having a historical foundation and
partly from stories of famous battles and victories'. Although Muhammad, as
the single-handed founder of a world religion, had in his own lifetime come to
be the ruler of a powerful state having his religion, Islam, as its basis, nevertheless,
during the first Islamic century, it must have seemed as if it would be
the Arab aristocracy, with its feeling of superiority in lineage and way of life
which would assert itself as the decisive force in the creation of the Caliphal
empire. Only after the Abbasid revolution (130-1 321747-750) in the Near East
and North Africa could the Islamic religion, which had meanwhile taken deeper
root, provide an enduring support for the Caliphate. In this way, the gradually
evolving attitude to life became imprinted on the consciousness of the Muslim
community. As this community expanded in an empire where Islam was the
dominant force, the community's history (including matters such as the elimination
of heresies) came to be regarded as nothing other than the unfolding of
the Divine plan of salvation1 in this world.[ B1 Events outside the Muslim
community were i'gnored because they seemed unimportant or rather ungodly,
being in principle unconnected with the basic concept of Islam as God's last
and final manifestation, which is how Muhammad thought of Islam and how
Muslims still think of it today. This meant, firstly, that certain traditions of
ancient Arabia could be preserved in expositions of Islam, for the Qur'in mentions
several Arab Prophets who were sent to Arabia as messengers of God but
whose messages, unlike Muhammad's, had not been accepted by the Arab~.~
Secondly, it meant that a certain status had to be given to the information
handed down in the Old and the New Testaments, if the recognition of the
Tomh, the Balms and the Gospels (to use Muhammad's classification) as earlier
revealed scriptures was really to have any meaning in Islarn. In actual fact, the
contents of those scriptures are generally quite un-known to ~uslims~ and
they play practically no part at all in their religion, in marked contrast to the
part the Old Testament plays in ~hristianit~.[~]
Accordingly, the Islamic historical consciousness was from the outset
confined mainly to the course of events in the history of lslam. Since for
Muslims the only past events worth knowing lay in the history of salvation, the
collection, arrangement and interpretation of these historical materials became
at first a task for theology, and, generally speaking, it arose from the collection
of ethico-religious reports about the life, actions and sayings of the Prophet,
and biographies of his companions and of the transmitters in the following
generations. Thus the first Muslim historiography arose from the science of
traditions called in Arabic &x.fith. The theological criticism of these traditions