Medieval Muslim Historiography

Medieval Muslim Historiography

            In pre-Islamic Arabic, the feeling for the past had expressed itself in ballad and tribes of the Arabian peninsula- half legend and half history. The life of Prophet Muhammad that led the great divine line in Arab history. In Islam, historiography was acquired features as Arabic was only the vehicle of literary expression. The most of the thinking and literature was the Persian mind. Muslim were not historical minded people. Though they had contact with Greeks, they were not influenced by Greek historiography. But the conquest of vast empire played decisive role behind Muslim historiography. Like the ancient Romans, the Arabs built a big empire over Asia, Africa and Europe. With the Arabian Empire, the two  prominent forces played a significant role for the Muslim history. They were the Islamic religion and the Arabic language. The inspiration for history writing had come from Sassanid Persia where tradition of historiography had started with the help of exiled Greek scholars. Sassanid historical sources survived the Muslim conquest of Persia ( the Battle of Nehawand). Book of Kings was the captured copy of Ctesiphon was the most important historical book. Later on , Persian noble translated the book into Arabic in the middle of the eight century. This work developed the interest of Arabs for their past. Other factor that influenced Muslim historiography was chronology that began the migration of the prophet- from Mecca to Medina in AD 622. A common chronology and religious belief were important factors that paved to great influence to the writing history. Muslim historiography developed with the foundation of the Abbasid Khalifate. It established as an independent branch of knowledge in the Islamic world. The variety of Muslim historical literature in the Middle Ages was universal history of huge dimension, history of single country , Muslim domination and travel life.