Customer Reviews

Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing (Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, No. 14)

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This work is a key contribution in the debate over the historicity and reliability of the early Islamic tradition. Donner's work provides an alternative, redactionary and critical approach to the rise of narrative and historical texts in early Muslim narratives to the `skeptical' approach-associated primarily with the like of P. Crone, M. Cook, and J. Wansborough among others. In the end, he endorses a critical approach to traditional accounts of Islamic origins but one that does not reject its broad outlines. Though this feature distinguishes and orients the argument of the book, it by no means exhausts the book's contents.

The main aim of the work is to address this straightforward question: "Why did Muslims begin to narrate and eventually compose history?" His argument answers this question by examining the evolution of salient narrative themes that predominately arise as result of efforts to procure legitimacy. Hence, the evolution of historical writing is pushed for by the function it serves for establishing the legitimacy of one or another groups' claim to legitimacy. The resulting picture goes far in helping explain some of the odd idiosyncrasies of early Islamic history-e.g., the absence of chronology.

I found the general outlines of the book to be quite convincing; however, the devil is in the details, as it is said. Critical examination of hadith may lead us to confer that it is plausible that the first four caliphs were Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali in that order, that the Battle of the Camel and Siffin occurred, but the details-copiously provided in Islamic tradition-remain highly dubious. In this sense, the ramifications of the book's arguments, even if valid, are not fully drawn and remain open to investigation.

A very important study that counters much of the arguments put forth by revisionist historians like Wansborough and Crone. He delves into the nature of the sources, the formation of identity during the earliest phases and ways of understanding the nature of the Movement (Islam). His style is refreshingly clear and consice and his scholarship exhaustive. A must read for any student of Islamic history.

The book was received as advertised, and I am happy with it's condition. I am also very pleased at the timely manner in which I received the book. I am very satisfied.