The Study of Islamic Historiography: a Progress Report

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  • CRChase F. Robinson
    Chase F. Robinson
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Abstract
Writing in theSupplementto the first edition of theEncyclopaedia of Islamin 1938, Gibb began his article on “Ta’rikh” by volunteering that the “[t]he problem of the origins of Arabic historiography is not yet finally solved.” It was an astonishing thing to write. For equipped as he was with al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādi, Ibn al-Nadīm, Ḥajjī Khalifa, Yāqūt'sIrshād, the first volume of al-Ṣafadī, with Wiüstenfeld'sDie Geschichtschreiber der Araber und ihre Werke, as well as with all butSupplementband IIIof Brockelmann, Gibb certainly knewhow little of the early historical tradition had survived. He was very much working in the dark. It may be hard to imagine now, but of al-Balādhurī'sAnsāb al-ashrāfhe was probably then familiar only with Ahlwardt's slim volume, and the final volume of Ibn Sa‘d had not yet appeared. Meanwhile al-Wāqidī'sMaghāzī(which he knew of), Ibn A‘tham'sFutūḥ, ‘Abd al-Malik b. Ḥab7īb'sTa’rikh, ‘Umar b. Shabba'sTa’rikh al-madīna al-munauwara, Ya‘qūb b. Sufyān al-Fasawī'sal-Ma‘rifa wa’l-ta’rikh, Abū Zur’a al-Dimashqī'sTa’rikh, and finally Khalifa b. Khayyāṭ'sTa’rikhandTabaqāt(all of which he did not), remained inaccessible – and this is just to mention some third-century examples.

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