Mediaval Muslims

            The Mediaval Muslims produced remarkable literature on geography and travel that contained significant material of historical interest. The widest nature of the Islamic empire, the universal practice of pilgrimage to Mecca, trade and commerce and the necessities of administration and diplomacy were some prominent influences for the history of Muslim world. The postal system the Abbasid empire was a cpmtomiatopm pf the fpr,er [ersoam amd Byzantine system  and it really facilitated communication between countries and people. With the travel, the development of a considerable geographical and ethnotgraphical literature flourished in the form of travelogues. Among the travelers, Ibn Batuta was the prominent one. His travels covered all over theAsia. Hi wrote about Muhammad Tughlak. He had included his personal knowledge and experience to writer about Tughlak monarch in his Pihla.

            Ibn Khaldoun was the most celebrated thinker and historian of the Islamic world. He wrote a famous book- Kitab-al-Ibal ( Universal History) which dealt with civilization and its essential characteristics and its influence upon human beings. The book mentioned the story of the Arabs. He expounded his philosophy of the author rather his sociological view of history. He used his subtle genius which remained a masterpiece.

Ibn focused on the historian’s craft for the simple reason that the knowledge of the past might be untrue. He lay down the principles of  historical criticism like Vico. Ibn had not included the supernatural elements in his writing. So, he  dismissed a thousand stories as being incompatible. Ibn pointed the lack of  historical insight of annalists and historians to think and to check. He focused on the skeptical mind of historians. He explained the source of error that made objective history impossible. The first error of historians, he pointed was partiality and the second error was the ignorance. These two errors made any historians uncritical. He was in favour of the application of knowledge of the state of society to history could distinguish truth from falsehood.

In the Muqaddima, Ibn studied the genetal laws of historical development and cause of historical changed and he presented a cyclic view of history. For him, history was information about human social organization and history was the seience of culture. According to him, culture was generated by material cause, formal cause, deeicient cause and final cause. He propounded his idea that culture was the subject to the laws of birth, growth and decay. He explained the historical process in terms of the sociological phenomenos and he asserted the science of human society. The center of his world was man.

            As Herbert Butterfield writes that The first detailed studies on the subject of historiography itself and the first critiques on historical methods appeared in the works of the Arab Muslim historian and historiographer Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), who is regarded as the father of historiography, cultural history,  and thephilosophy of history, especially for his historiographical writings in theMuqaddimah (Latinized as Prolegomena) and Kitab al-Ibar (Book of Advice). His Muqaddimah also laid the groundwork for the observation of the role ofstate, communication, propaganda and systematic bias in history,  and he discussed the rise and fall of civilizations.

Ibn Khaldoun stood alone among Islamic writers in his attempt to connect history with political science and forms of sociological inquiry. On the other hand, he was a good economist. He analyzed the role of labor and he observed that when population increased, the amount of labor increased with surplus and this surplus was channeled to luxuries. He used discursive method in all his work that was useful only in the classroom than for a general reading public. Ibn’s scheme was fit for the circumstances of North Africa but it was not for universal application. He brought a religious and theocratic atmosphere- rational, scientific and secular views which were expressed later by Vico and Machiavelli. Writer Y. Lacoste “ If Thucydides is the inventor of history , Ibn introduces history as a science.”

            The method of source criticism in Islamic historiography is called Isnad-as a method tries to ascertain on event by tracing it to the person who actually participated in it. The Islamic historical tradition was a chain of authorities. The Muslim history was the recollection of the sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad.