Historiography of early Islam


The historiography of early Islam is the secular scholarly literature on the early history of Islam during the 7th century, from Muhammad's first purported revelations in 610 until the disintegration of the Rashidun Caliphate in 661,
and arguably throughout the 8th century and the duration of the Umayyad Caliphate, terminating in the incipient Islamic Golden Age around the beginning of the 9th century.
Muslims developed methodologies such as the "science of biography" and the "science of hadith" to evaluate the reliability of these narratives, while prominent figures like Ibn Khaldun introduced critical historiographical methods, emphasizing the importance of context and the systematic evaluation of historical data.

Primary sources

7th-century Islamic sources

  • Birmingham Quran manuscript. Between c. 568 and 645 CE
  • . Radiocarbon dated between c. 649 and 675 CE
  • Sanaa manuscript. Between c. 578 and 669 CE
  • Qur'anic Mosaic on the Dome of the Rock. 692 CE
  • The Book of Sulaym ibn Qays. The work is an early Shia hadith collection, attributed to Sulaym ibn Qays, and it is often recognised as the earliest such collection. There is a manuscript of the work dating to the 10th century. Some Shia scholars are dubious about the authenticity of some features of the book, and Western scholars are almost unanimously sceptical concerning the work, with most placing its initial composition in the eighth or ninth century. The work is generally considered pseudepigraphic by modern scholars.

    7th-century non-Islamic sources

There are numerous early references to Islam in non-Islamic sources. Many have been collected in historiographer Robert G. Hoyland's compilation Seeing Islam As Others Saw It. One of the first books to analyze these works was Hagarism authored by Michael Cook and Patricia Crone. Hagarism contends that looking at the early non-Islamic sources provides a much different picture of early Islamic history than the later Islamic sources do. The date of composition of some of the early non-Islamic sources is controversial. Hagarism has been widely dismissed by academics as being too conjectural in its hypothesis and biased in its sources.
According to archaeologists Yehuda D. Nevo and Judith Koren, there are thousands of pagan and monotheist epigraphs or rock inscriptions throughout the Arabian peninsula and in the Syro-Jordanian desert immediately north, many of them dating from the 7th and 8th century. According to historian Leor Halevi, Muslim tombstones from 30-40 AH / 650-660 CE named Allah and referred to the names of the months of the Hijri calendar, but showed few other indications of Islamization. From 70-110 AH/690-730 CE, Muslim tombstones began to reveal deeper signs of Islamization, invoking Muhammad and quoted from the Quran.
Some epigraphs found from the first century of Islam include:
  • Analysis of a sandstone inscription found in 2008 determined that it read: "In the name of Allah/ I, Zuhayr, wrote at the time 'Umar died/year four/And twenty." It is worthwhile pointing out that caliph Umar bin al-Khattāb died on the last night of the month of Dhūl-Hijjah of the year 23 AH, and was buried next day on the first day of Muharram of the new year 24 AH/644 CE. Thus the date mentioned in the inscription conforms to the established and known date of the death of ʿUmar bin al-Khattāb.
  • Jerusalem 32 – An Inscription unearthed at the south-west corner of the Ḥaram al-Sharīf in Jerusalem during excavations conducted by Professor Benjamin Mazar of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1968 from 32 AH / 652 CE mentions, "In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful... the protection of Allah and the guarantee of His Messenger... And witnessed it ʿAbd al-Raḥmān bin ʿAwf al-Zuhrī, and Abū ʿUbaydah bin al-Jarrāḥ and its writer—Muʿāwiya... the year thirty two"
  • An Inscription, at Taymāʾ, Saudi Arabia, c. 36 AH / 656 CE reads, "I am Qays, the scribe of Abū Kutayr. Curse of Allah on who murdered ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān and have led to the killing without mercy." Greek Inscription In The Baths Of Hammat Gader, 42 AH / 662-63 CE mentions, "In the days of the servant of God Muʿāwiya, the commander of the faithful the hot baths of the people there were saved and rebuilt."
  • Tombstone of a woman named ʿAbāssa Bint Juraij, kept in Museum of Islamic Art Cairo, from 71 AH / 691 CE mentions,"In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. The greatest misfortune for the people of Islām is the death of Muḥammad the Prophet, Peace be upon him."
  • An Inscription at Ḥuma al-Numoor, near Ṭāʾif from 78 AH / 697–698 CE mentions, "This was written in the year the Masjid al-Ḥarām was built in the seventy eighth year."

    Traditional Muslim historiography

Religious sciences of biography, hadith, and Isnad

s believe that the historical traditions first began their development in the early 7th century with the reconstruction of Muhammad's life following his death. Because narratives regarding Muhammad and his companions came from various sources and a great many contradicted each other, it was necessary to verify which sources were more reliable. In order to evaluate these sources, various methodologies were developed, such as the "science of biography", "science of hadith" and "Isnad". These methodologies were later applied to other historical figures in the Muslim world.
Ilm ar-Rijal is the "science of biography" especially as practiced in Islam, where it was first applied to the sira, the life of the prophet of Islam, Muhammad, and then the lives of the four Rightly Guided Caliphs who expanded Islamic dominance rapidly. Since validating the sayings of Muhammad is a major study, accurate biography has always been of great interest to Muslim biographers, who accordingly attempted to sort out facts from accusations, bias from evidence, etc. The earliest surviving Islamic biography is Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah, written in the 8th century, but known to us only from later quotes and recensions.
The "science of hadith" is the process that Muslim scholars use to evaluate hadith. The classification of Hadith into Sahih, Hasan and Da'if was firmly established by Ali ibn al-Madini. Later, al-Madini's student Muhammad al-Bukhari authored a collection that he believed contained only Sahih hadith, which is now known as the Sahih Bukhari. Al-Bukhari's historical methods of testing hadiths and isnads is seen as the beginning of the method of citation and a precursor to the scientific method. I. A. Ahmad writes:
Other famous Muslim historians who studied the science of biography or science of hadith included Urwah ibn Zubayr, Wahb ibn Munabbih, Ibn Ishaq, al-Waqidi, Ibn Hisham, al-Maqrizi, and Ibn Hajar Asqalani, among others.

Historiography, cultural history, and philosophy of history

The first detailed studies on the subject of historiography itself and the first critiques on historical methods appeared in the works of the Arab Muslim historian and historiographer Ibn Khaldun, who is regarded as the father of historiography, cultural history, and the philosophy of history, especially for his historiographical writings in the Muqaddimah and Kitab al-Ibar. His Muqaddimah also laid the groundwork for the observation of the role of state, communication, propaganda and systematic bias in history, and he discussed the rise and fall of civilizations.
Franz Rosenthal wrote in the History of Muslim Historiography:
In the Muqaddimah, Ibn Khaldun warned of seven mistakes that he thought that historians regularly committed. In this criticism, he approached the past as strange and in need of interpretation. The originality of Ibn Khaldun was to claim that the cultural difference of another age must govern the evaluation of relevant historical material, to distinguish the principles according to which it might be possible to attempt the evaluation, and lastly, to feel the need for experience, in addition to rational principles, in order to assess a culture of the past. Ibn Khaldun often criticized "idle superstition and uncritical acceptance of historical data." As a result, he introduced a scientific method to the study of history, which was considered something "new to his age", and he often referred to it as his "new science", now associated with historiography. His historical method also laid the groundwork for the observation of the role of state, communication, propaganda and systematic bias in history, and he is thus considered to be the "father of historiography" or the "father of the philosophy of history".

World history

is known for writing a detailed and comprehensive chronicle of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern history in his History of the Prophets and Kings in 915. Abu al-Hasan 'Alī al-Mas'ūdī, known as the "Herodotus of the Arabs", was the first to combine history and scientific geography in a large-scale work, Muruj adh-dhahab wa ma'adin al-jawahir, a book on world history.
Until the 10th century, history most often meant political and military history, but this was not so with Central Asian historian Biruni. In his Kitab fi Tahqiq ma l'il-Hind, he did not record political and military history in any detail, but wrote more on India's cultural, scientific, social and religious history. Along with his Researches on India, Biruni discussed more on his idea of history in his chronological work The Chronology of the Ancient Nations.