Arabic Historical Thought in the Classical Period

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

• The first time a study of Arab intellectual historiography has been attempted over such a long period (eight centuries) • Khalidi is a well-known scholar in the field with several books already to his credit • Should provide interdisciplinary interest appealing to Islamicists as well as to European medievalists and historiographers generally

l. The birth of tradition; 2. History and hadith; 3. History and adab; 4. History and hikma; 5. History and siyasa; Conclusion.