Scholars

Subjects

E-Books

Towards the Construction of a Contemporary Islamic Educational Theory 
Fathi Malkawi     
  
Islamization of Knowledge: Conceptual Background, Vision and Tasks       
Salisu Shehu

Economic Guidelines in the Qur'an  
S.M. Hasanuz Zaman    

Contribution of Islamic Thought to Modern Economics  
Misbah Oreibi    

An Introduction to Islamic Economics       
Muhammad Akram Khan

Islamic Thought and Culture       
Isma'il R. al Faruqi

Islamization of Knowledge: Background, Models and the Way Forward
Malam Sa'idu Sulaiman

More books... 

Toward the Islamization of History: A Historical Survey PDF Print E-mail

N.M.M.Mahroof

 History, or more properly the writing of history, had been during the times of the ancient Greeks and Romans an elitist activity, meant for glorifying the class of power, position, and birth. Parts of these histories were fabulous in nature. The Muslims (Arabs) introduced the idea of history as factual record. During the Middle Ages, history writing slipped into what it was in the Greco-Roman times. In the 16th century, the middle class, those with accumulated capital, wrote histories. A colonial history, too, developed, enshrining a European view of history that still continues in school curricula. The 20th century saw changes. The writing of history became an imperialist necessity. When imperialism collapsed, the focus disappeared. History became miniaturized and atomized. The entry of television and information technology brought instant histories. Islamic history writing accepts history as an instrument of Allah's will and mode of living the good life. 

Generally, mankind is and has been concerned with history. How could it be otherwise? The desire to be remembered and to shape experience are powerful incentives. Of course, writing from an entirely neutral perspective is not possible. All observers have explicit and implicit agendas. This article's goal is to note and analyze these agendas and to show how the historical slant has grown decidedly Euro-American.

 


The Greeks, the Romans, and All That

It is usual to consider historiography as a distinct discipline, from the times of the ancient Greeks, who considered it part (even as a vulgar part) of their wide-ranging intellectual activities. It is usual, too, to drive a wedge between classical and late-classical Greek history writing. A modern commentator and translator, speaking of Plutarch (100 C.E.), notes:

 Plutarch is, as it were, a backward-looking writer standing on the last range which divided the pagan civilization from the Christian. He lacks the startlingly original and impersonal quality of Periclean literature, just as that literature lacks his intimacy on the one hand and the breadth of his tolerance and philanthropy on the other. He was no Thucydides, applying a ruthlessly objective analysis to uncover the historical process. He was a lover of tradition, and his prime object was at once to cherish and understand the greatness of the past and to reassert it as a living ideal. 

Even Thucydides (460-399 B.C.E.) in the Peloponnesian Wars, however, did not write any neutral history. He wrote from the point of view of an establishment aristocrat, confronting the hoi polloi, where Greek society was essentially that of his own class, and the value system he was advocating was pure elitism. This concern runs through like a gold thread in such breath-taking histories as Xenophon’s (444-359 B.C.E.) Anabasis.

There is not much to differentiate Thucydides from Plutarch, once the variation in style is conceded. Though Plutarch was backward looking, “standing on the last range which divided the pagan civilization from the Christian,” both were standing for a well-read elitist class. And the last range was not all that precipitous. The pagan civilization, through Latin, cognate in time and space with Greek, infiltrated the early Christendom and even the ecclesiastical hierarchy, through the Vagantes, the underground verses of such as the archpoet and the deep concern with Latin and Greek verse and prose, as demonstrated by Helen Waddell in her Wandering Scholars. (The ancient Greeks were xenophobic about others’ languages. For instance, Herodotus, while being expansive about Egyptian and Persian civilizations, was wholly convinced that Greek was effortlessly superior to Egyptian or Persian languages.) Ancient Greek history, along with its successors, was a class (elitist) history, written by and for the members of that class and unrufulled by involvement with serfs, slaves, helots, and plebs.

Roman or Latin history took after its Greek ancestor. Its histories were either self-congratulatory or offered an elitist view of life. The former type was often written by successful generals, as Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars. (Histories written by politicians or generals, while they give immediacy not available elsewhere, usually suffer from a personalized view of everything. This is just as true of modern histories, such as that of Sir Winston Churchill, particularly his Hinge of Fate.)
The second kind of Roman history was written by poets, orators, and government officials, all of whom were members of the Roman establishment. And the views of that class and group were retained by those historians. For instance, Suetonius (Gaius Tranqillus) (fl. 99 C.E.), a son of a Roman knight and himself chief secretary to Emperor Hadrian, approvingly cites one of Augustus Caesar's policies. He wrote, in his history The Twelve Caesars:

 Augustus thought it most important not to let the native Roman stock be tainted with foreign or servile blood, and was therefore very unwilling to create new Roman citizens, or to permit the manumission of more than a limited number of slaves. . . . (Not only did he make it extremely difficult for slaves to be freed, and still more difficult for them to attain full independence.) 

Suetonius was equally supportive of the class (group) distinctions which Augustus maintained. Referring to the same emperor, Suetonius noted, with scandalized admiration, that he treated the lower orders with excessive kindness.

 It will be enough to record that a fine was the sole punishment he awarded Junius Novatus, plebian, for circulating a most damaging libel on him under the name of Agrippa Postumus . . . [Augustus's] morning audiences were open to commoners as well as knights and senators, and he behaved very sociably to all who came with requests. 

As the early Middle Ages faded away, European historiography turned upon itself. With the breakdown of civil administration and the rise of warlords (as kings) in many parts of Europe, consequent to the collapse of the Roman Empire, the ruling elite became less educated than it was. Learning became a clerical (ecclesiastical) monopoly. Historiography split into two categories. One kind was regional and parochial histories written by abbeys and convents. An important example of this genre was the history of England by the venerable Bede. Though anecdotal in part, it is suffused with the immediacy of life in Jarrow. The other kind was history as a collection of adventurous episodes, with a strong slant toward Christianity and a looking down on other peoples. They easily passed into ballads and folktales and connected up with tales of chivalry, as associated with the mythical King Arthur's Round Table and the quest for the Grail. Equally mythical figures such as Prestor John, king of Africa, were employed as part of the universal over-arching reach of Christianity.


click for a full paper in pdf 

.