- Title
- On the Significance of Histoire: Employing Modern Narrative Theory in Analysis of Tabari’s Historiography of Islam’s Foundations
- Creator
- Moghadam, Amir; Lovat, Terence
- Relation
- Education, Religion and Ethics: A Scholarly Collection p. 173-183
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24719-4_12
- Publisher
- Springer
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2023
- Description
- Muhammad al-Tabari’s History of the Prophets and Kings, or The History, is one of the earliest and most important of Muslim historiographical works. It provides insight into the early development of Islam, not so much for its history as for the ways it was interpreted and understood. Through modern historiographical analysis and scriptural exegesis, the chapter explores the space between narrative literalism and narrative memory, or what we might call interpretive history. We refer to narrative memory as histoire, a combining of factuality and mythmaking. The focus is especially on the ways in which Tabari himself imagined and interpreted the Islamic past, including Qur’anic evidence, employing it not so much for literal as for political purposes. As such, his work is best understood not as a reliable history in the modern sense but as a politically inspired recollection, revealing how politics were shaping interpretations in Islam’s first three hundred years. Granted the ways in which Tabari’s work has been employed for ongoing political purposes, including to justify violence in modern times, the importance of understanding its original purpose and genre is greater than ever.
- Subject
- Islam; historiography; religious narrative; Tabari; Talbi; Jihadism
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1491995
- Identifier
- uon:53124
- Identifier
- ISBN:9783031247187
- Language
- eng
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