Arabic historical thought in the classical period / Tarif Khalidi.

Includes bibliography (pages 235-242) and index.

1. The birth of a tradition -- 2. History and Hadith. From Hadith to history. Sacred history. Muhammad ibn Ishaq. The isnad debate of the 3rd/9th century. Sacred history continued: the scholarly consensus of Waqidi and Ibn Sad. Tribal history: genealogy. Tribal history continued: genealogy reformulated. The genealogies of al-Baladhuri. Tribal history continued: the conquests. The conquests: three representative histories. The histories of prophets. Tabari, the 'imam' of Hadith historiography. Concluding observations -- 3. History and Adab. The rise of Adab. The Umayyad state secretaries. From Adab to History: 2nd-4th/8th-10th centuries. Adab, Hikma and history: Jahiz. Adab, Hadith and history: Ibn Qutayba. Intention, space, time and number. Intention. Space. Time. Number. Three aspects of historical thought: pattern, argument and style -- 4. History and Hikma. Masudi: Adab, Hikma, history. The khabar: jurists and theologians. The khabar: four formulations of the 5th/11th century. Abd al-Jabbar.

Baghdadi. Basri. Ibn Hazm. The four formulations examined. Miracle and custom. Time and the philosophers. History and the philosophers. History as administrative experience: Miskawayhi. History and natural science: Biruni -- 5. History and Siyasa. The background. Images of a new age. Images of a new society. The institution of rank. Sultans and 'ulama'. Siyasa and sharia. History and self-Consciousness. Biographical dictionaries. Bezels of wisdom, glimpses of the Unseen. Patterns of change. The sense of place. Ibn Khaldun.

Thinking and writing about the past has always been of critical importance to the way that any culture or civilization views itself and its role in the world. In a work which surveys an entire tradition of historical thought and writing across a span of eight hundred years, Tarif Khalidi examines how Arabic-Islamic culture of the pre-modern period viewed the past, how it recorded it, and how it sought to answer the many complex questions associated with the discipline of history.

The author combines a chronological with a topical approach to place the tradition within its wider intellectual context and socio-political environment, while quotations from historians across the period introduce the English-speaking reader to some of the principal intellectual texts of Arabic Islamic culture.