Suchergebnisse

The period of the Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258) has long been recognized as the formative period of Islamic civilization with its various achievements in the areas of science, literature, and culture. This history of the Abbasid Caliphate from its foundation in 750 and golden age under Harun al-Rashid to the conquest of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258 examines the Caliphate as an empire and institution, and probes its influence over Islamic culture and society. Ranging widely to survey the entire five-century history of the Abbasid dynasty, Tayeb El-Hibri examines the resilience of the Caliphate as an institution, as a focal point of religious definitions, and as a source of legitimacy to various contemporary Islamic monarchies. The study revisits ideas of 'golden age' and 'decline' with a new reading, tries to separate Abbasid history from the myths of the Arabian Nights, and shows how the legacy of the caliphs continues to resonate in the modern world in direct and indirect ways.

"The history of the Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258 CE) spans the formative period of Islamic civilization. After the expansion of the Islamic empire under the Rashidun caliphs (632-661) and the Umayyad dynasty (661-750), the Abbasid Caliphate, based in Baghdad (762), presided over the a new era of coalescence in Islamic society, economic integration, and religious ferment on many levels. Although the political and military sway of the Abbasids lasted only in their first century of rule, the caliphate of Baghdad continued to as a focal point of allegiance across the Islamic world throughout the Middle Ages. This book traces the story of the Abbasid state from its imperial age to its continuity as a 'papal' style caliphal institution that provided legitimacy to newly rising Sultans across the Islamic world through investiture and official emblems. The book surveys the golden age of the early period, such as in the reigns of Harun al-Rashid and al-Ma'mun, examines the issue of decline in nuanced terms, and sheds light on the long-neglected story of Abbasid revival under caliphs, such as al-Qadir, al-Qa'im, and al-Nasir in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The intellectual, scientific, and literary vigor of Abbasid society continued up until the eve of the Mongol conquest of Baghdad in 1258. As the Abbasid Caliphate ended in the capital, a shadow caliphate survived with Mamluk support as an honorific institution in Egypt until the Ottoman conquest in 1517. The achievements of the Abbasids left not only a durable stamp on Islamic cultural definitions but arguably touched world history through the patronage of the caliphs for the Graeco-Arabic translation movement, and their stimulation for scholarly activity. Whether through their actual historical role as organizers of government or through legend, such as in The Thousand and One Nights, the caliphs, and the memory of medieval Baghdad, continued to inspire the life and imagination of Islamic and Western society from the medieval to the modern period"--

"The story of the succession to the Prophet Muhammad and the rise of the Rashidun Caliphate (632-661 AD) is familiar to historians from the political histories of medieval Islam, which treat it as a factual account. The story also informs the competing perspectives of Sunni and Shri Islam, which read into it the legitimacy of their claims. Yet while descriptive and varied, these approaches have long excluded a third reading, which views the conflict over the succession to the Prophet as a parable. From this vantage point, the motives, sayings, and actions of the protagonists reveal profound links to previous texts, not to mention a surprising irony regarding political and religious issues." "In a controversial break from previous historiography, Tayeb El-Hibri privileges the literary and artistic triumphs of the medieval Islamic chronicles and maps the origins of Islamic political and religious orthodoxy. Considering the patterns and themes of these unified narratives, including the problem of measuring personal qualification according to religious merit, nobility, and skills in government, El-Hibri offers an insightful critique of both carly and contemporary Islam and the concerns of legitimacy shadowing verious rulers. In building an argument for reading the texts as parabolic commentary, he also highlights the Islamic reinterpretation of biblical traditions, both by Quraanic exegesis and historical composition."--Jacket

The author applies a new literary-critical reading of the early Islamic sources to demonstrate how medieval narrators devised elusive ways of shedding light on the political, social and religious debates of the 'Abbasid' period. This book represents a landmark in the field of early Islamic historiography

In his recent review of my book, Parable and Politics in Early Islamic History, in the August 2011 issue of IJMES, Fred Donner provides several opinions that are in need of correction. His initial impression that the "basic point of Parable and Politics" follows previous scholarship "in an attempt to work out how much is 'fact' and how much is literary invention" (p. 570) sets the wrong tone for evaluating studies on historiography. Far from being merely an opposition between true and false, the study of "fiction" in historiography is actually an analysis of construction not of truthfulness. The complexity of doing this lies in reaching for a multifaceted commentary that was originally intended not only in the individual reports but also through a process of intertextuality, which casts implications on a range of issues and on the representation of characters across a cluster of reports.

The story of the Zanj revolt in Basra and Khuzistan against the Abbasid caliphate between the years 869 and 883 has received little extensive study by historians. This is not unusual given that, as with other important political events of this period, the information we have in the medieval sources is scarce. Alexandre Popovic makes a significant attempt to provide a comprehensive outline of the Zanj revolt and stress its social and political dimensions. This book, originally a French doctoral thesis submitted in the early 1960s, was first published in 1976. Now, with a grant from the French Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, the book has been translated into English.

The succession crisis and civil war that followed the death of Caliph Harun alRashid in 809 is a gloomy chapter in the history of the Abbasid caliphate in its prime that captured the attention of later medieval Muslim scholars. Their main challenge lay in trying to find an appropriate rationale for justifying the conflict between the caliph's sons, al-Amin and al-Maʾmun, and the fate of the community under a caliphate seized by force for the first time in the Abbasid era. The destruction wrought by the civil war on the capital, Baghdad, combined with the spread of factional strife to other provinces of the caliphate, presented an ethical and religious dilemma reminiscent to contemporaries of the early Islamic fitnas. Conscious of this parallel, the chronicler al-Tabari, writing a century later, devotes considerably more space to the years of the civil war than he does to the reigns of al-Rashid and al-Maʾmun that bracketed it.