Islamic Historiography

Chase F Robinson author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:11th Dec '02

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Islamic Historiography cover

An accessible guide into the complex field of Islamic historiography.

Chase Robinson's book offers a well-composed and timely introduction to Islamic historiography from its origins in the seventh century to the fifteenth. The book covers the rise of the tradition, the historians' principal genres, assumptions and methods, and stresses the social and political functions of historical writing.How did Muslims of the classical Islamic period understand their past? What value did they attach to history? How did they write history? How did historiography fare relative to other kinds of Arabic literature? These and other questions are answered in Chase F. Robinson's Islamic Historiography, an introduction to the principal genres, issues, and problems of Islamic historical writing in Arabic, that stresses the social and political functions of historical writing in the Islamic world. Beginning with the origins of the tradition in the eighth and ninth centuries and covering its development until the beginning of the sixteenth century, this is an authoritative and yet accessible guide through a complex and forbidding field, which is intended for readers with little or no background in Islamic history or Arabic.

'He is to be commended for the outstanding effort he has invested and the solid scholarship he exhibits in this work, which earns his Islamic Historiography a place beside distinguished recent studies on the subject … Robinson's notes are exceptionally informative, and offer a rich guide to further specialized readings on a wide range of topics not at all restricted to Islam. It makes an outstanding textbook for students of Islamic studies, at both undergraduate and graduate levels.' Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations

ISBN: 9780521629362

Dimensions: 234mm x 166mm x 16mm

Weight: 380g

264 pages