Medieval Arabic Historiography Authors as Actors [Hardcover]

Medieval Arabic Historiographyis concerned with social contexts and narrative structures of pre-modern Islamic historiography written in Arabic in seventh and thirteenth-century Syria and Eygpt. Taking up recent theoretical reflections on historical writing in the European Middle Ages, this extraordinary study combines approaches drawn from social sciences and literary studies, with a particular focus on two well-known texts: Abu Shamas The Book of the Two Gardens, and Ibn Wasils The Dissipaterof Anxieties. These texts describe events during the life of the sultans Nur-al-Din and Salah al-Din, who are primarily known in modern times as the champions of the anti-Crusade movement. Hirschler shows that these two authors were active interpreters of their society and has considerable room for manoeuvre in both their social environment and the shaping of their texts.

Through the use of a fresh and original theoretical approach to pre-modern Arabic historiography, Hirschler presents a new understanding of these texts which have before been relatively neglected, thus providing a significant contribution to the burgeoning field of historiographical studies.

1. Introduction  2. Historical and Historiographical Background  3. Social Contexts  4. Intellectual Contexts  5. Textual Agency I: Titles, Final Sections and Historicisation  6. Textual Agency II: Micro-Arrangement, Motifs and Political Thought

'Hirschler provides an in-depth study of Ayyubid historiography, concentrating on two historians, Abu Shama and Ibn Wasil, who for several decades observed and participated in the history described in their chronicles.]...[a most welcome contribution to the fields of history and historiography of Syria and Egypt in the twelfth and fifteenth centuries.' - Yehoshua Frenkel, Bulletin of the School of OrientallÓ/