More than Beast: Muhammad's She-Mule Duldul and Her Role in Early Islamic History

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Taryn Marashi
Keyword(s):  
Political Authority ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Islamic History ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
Medieval Islam ◽  
Early Islamic ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract Duldul, a beloved she-mule of the Prophet Muhammad and ʿAli b. Abi Talib (d. 661), fourth caliph and Muhammad's son-in-law, was a venerated riding beast in early Islamic tradition. The article argues that Duldul reflected the transmission of political authority and became a tool of legitimation for hadith compilers and medieval Muslim writers to use, contest, and navigate an emergent Shiʿa-Sunni rift. Exploring the responsive relationship between hadith construction and the Shiʿa-Sunni polemic, the article first analyzes three literary genres—maghāzī, hadith, and sīra—to describe Duldul and her role in early Islamic history. Second, the article examines the writings of al-Jahiz (d. 868) and al-Damiri (d. 1405) to understand medieval Muslim attitudes toward Duldul and she-mules in general. By taking Duldul more seriously as a historical actor, we can gain deeper insight into the disputes over Muhammad's legacy in medieval Islam.

The Religious and Cultural Roles of Dreams and Visions in Islam

2003 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nile Green
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Islamic History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Characteristic Style ◽  
Cultural Roles ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractSince “visions appear material to spiritual persons only, the vulgar herd of historians and annalists cannot hope to be so favoured by Heaven”. So, in his nineteenth-century account of the sūfīs of Sind, Sir Richard Burton expressed the dilemma of scholars researching Muslim dream and visionary experiences in his characteristic style. But while scholarly discussion of the visionary activities of premodern sūfīs and other Muslims is still no straightforward matter we need no longer be deterred by Burton's sardonic pessimism. Despite the reticence of earlier generations of positivist scholarship, the past two decades have witnessed a flourishing of research into the visionary aspects of Muslim religious and cultural practice, chiefly through the analysis of the extensive literature surrounding the dream and vision in Islam. For, from the very beginning of Islamic history, there has developed a rich and varied discourse on the nature of the imagination and its expression in the form of dreams and waking visions. The theoretical approaches to the imagination developed by early Muslim philosophers and mystical theorists were always accompanied by the activities of a more active sodality of dreamers and vision seekers. For this reason, Islamic tradition is especially rich for its contributions to both theories of the imagination and the description of its expression in dream and visionary experience. The abundant yields from this rich research field in recent years afford new insight into the Muslim past, allowing an often intimate encounter with past individuals and private experiences scarcely granted by the analysis of other kinds of documentation.

Graves and Shrines in Medieval Islam: From Pre-Islamic Times to Ibn Taymiyya’s Legacy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ondřej Beránek ◽  
Pavel Ťupek
Keyword(s):  
Islamic History ◽  
Ibn Taymiyya ◽  
Islamic Identity ◽  
Medieval Islam ◽  
Early Islamic ◽  
The Ideal

This chapter provides an overview of the broader context within which debates regarding graves, funeral architecture and ziyāra have taken place. The early Islamic interdictions against certain funerary structures and grave-related rites did not arise in a vacuum. Therefore, the chapter contextualises these debates and the gap that began to emerge between the traditionalists’ (Ahl al-hadith) vision of ideal Islam and the reality of popular Islam. The chapter also offers a detailed focus on the teachings of Ibn Taymiyya, as it was his narrative of Islamic history and the ideal Islamic community that inspired later Sunni reformists, among them the Salafis, who sought to defend Islamic identity against the incursion of foreign influences and impurities, be they elements of Christianity, Judaism, syncretism or modernity.

Islam: The Arabic and Persian Traditions, Eleventh–Fifteenth Centuries

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Konrad Hirschler
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
The Past ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
Abbasid Caliphate ◽  
Middle Period ◽  
Early Islamic

This chapter deals with how the Islamic historical writing of the Middle Period developed directly from the early Islamic tradition, and its legacy remained deeply inscribed into the ways history was written and represented between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries. However, as historians started to develop new styles and new genres, they turned to previously neglected aspects of the past, their social profile changed, and the writing of history became a more self-conscious, and to some degree self-confident, cultural practice. Most importantly, those issues that had motivated earlier historians, such as the legitimacy of the Abbasid Caliphate, declined in significance and historians of the Middle Period turned to new and more diverse subjects.

Nubian Texts, Nubian Lives

2021 ◽  
pp. 771-786
Author(s):  
Giovanni R. Ruffini
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
World History ◽  
Valuable Insight ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
State Centralization ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Flow Over Time ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Ebb And Flow

Nubian texts provide valuable insight into Nubian social and economic history. Accounts reveal economic priorities both secular and sacred. Documentary evidence hints at the nature of state centralization and the movement of goods and coins in and out of Nubia. Magic reveals Nubia’s deep-seated hopes and fears. Literature shows innovative theology and Nubia’s sense of its place in world history. Funerary inscriptions record the careers of the elite and their sense of their own place in the cosmos. But much is missing from the Nubian textual record as well, suggesting that major literary genres never indigenized in Nubia the way they did in Egypt or Ethiopia. Other genres ebb and flow over time, hinting at the economy of Nubian literacy and the processes through which it ultimately dies.

scholarly journals HADITH DAN SEJARAH

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-214
Author(s):  
Khairul Amal
Keyword(s):  
Islamic History ◽  
Islamic Studies ◽  
Early Islam ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Early Islamic

This paper attempts to discuss the proper methodology in search for the authentic Islamic History. It discusses the relationship between two sister-disciplines, i.e. ?ad?th and History, their likenesses, many problems which the historians of Early Islam have to face in their research and the possibility of employing unique methodology of the study of ?ad?th on the study of Early Islamic History. The paper benefits from a plethora of monographs written by contemporary scholars of Islamic Studies. I conclude that Isn?d-cum-Matn Analysis developed separately by Gregor Schoeler and Harald Motzki seems promising for the study of Early Islam.This paper attempts to discuss the proper methodology in search for the authentic Islamic History. It discusses the relationship between two sister-disciplines, i.e. ?ad?th and History, their likenesses, many problems which the historians of Early Islam have to face in their research and the possibility of employing unique methodology of the study of ?ad?th on the study of Early Islamic History. The paper benefits from a plethora of monographs written by contemporary scholars of Islamic Studies. I conclude that Isn?d-cum-Matn Analysis developed separately by Gregor Schoeler and Harald Motzki seems promising for the study of Early Islam.

scholarly journals VISI ISLAM DALAM AGAMA DAN PERADABAN DALAM PERSPEKTIF MARSHALL G.S HODGSON

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 205-214
Author(s):  
Farida Ulvi Na’imah
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Cultural Continuity ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Islamic History ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Political World ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
History Of ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Islamic Civilization

            This study describes Marshall G. Hodgson's thinking about the study of Islamic history studies in his work entitled The Venture of Islam. The research used in this study is analytical descriptive, which is a study that examines Marshall G.S Hodgson's thinking about Islamic history studies then parses and identifies the patterns of thought. According to Marshall G. S. Hodgson the history of Islam is the result of the ever-changing setting shaped by the Islamic tradition. In addition, it is also the result of a process of accomodation or acculturation from other pre-existing cultural traditions. Based on this view, and in the context of conversations about Islamic civilization, Marshall G. S. Hodgson emphasized the importance of seeing cultural continuity occurring at the level of religion, expressed by Muslims. Marshall G.S. Hudgson in seeing the reality of Islam in the world classifies in three forms of Islamic phenomena as the object of study. First, the phenomenon of Islam as a doctrine (Islamic), second, the phenomenon when the doctrine enters and processes in a cultural society (Islamicate) and manifests itself in a particular social and historical context. And thirdly, when Islam became a phenomenon of the political "world" in state institutions (Islamdom).

Notes on Ṭabarī's History

1993 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence I. Conrad
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Special Interest ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Islamic History ◽  
Valuable Data ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Early Islamic

The caliphate of Hisham ibn ‘Abd al-Malik (105–25/724–43) was undoubtedly one of the most important periods in early Islamic history, and as witness to the history of this era a source of paramount importance is certainly the Ta'rīkh al-rusul wa-l-mulūk of al-Ṭabarī. This in itself makes the publication of Volume xxv of the English translation of this work by Dr Khalid Yahya Blankinship, covering all but the last five years of Hishām's long reign, a matter of special interest to historians of the eastern lands of Islam. The reader will immediately notice that al-Ṭabarī devotes the bulk of his narrative for this period to events in Khurāsān and Transoxania, specifically, to the Umayyad campaigns there and hostilities with the Türgish khāqān Sü-lü Čur. In the course of this narrative one finds not only a wealth of information on military matters, but also much valuable data on the customs of the western Turks and life in Central Asia in general. The author's reasons for giving his work such a markedly eastern emphasis at this point are not unrelated to a desire, as Blankinship observes, to set forth the background for the 'Abbāsid revolution. But most of what al-Ṭabarī reports for this period is in fact not of immediate relevance to the advent of the 'Abbāsids, and indeed, the subject of 'Abbāsid propaganda activities hardly seems to be a prominent one in this volume.

Early Islamic History: Parallels and Problems

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHASE F. ROBINSON
Keyword(s):  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
Research Assistant ◽  
Islamic History ◽  
Historical Figure ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
C 71 ◽  
Early Islamic

In early 2004, a book called ‘Crossroads to Islam’ was written by Yehuda Nevo, an amateur archaeologist, and J. Koren, his research assistant. Early Islamic history shares not only some geography with ancient Israel but also a comparable historical and historiographical trajectory, and at least some of Nevo's (and others') views seem to have been informed by the study of ancient Israel itself. In his book, Nevo reaches four principal conclusions: that the Arabs took over the eastern provinces of the Byzantine empire without a struggle; that the Arabs were pagan at the time of the takeover; that Muhammad is not a historical figure, and enters the official religion only c. 71/690; and that the Qur'an is a late compilation. These radical views subvert the narrative of Islamic origins that prevails not only amongst most Muslims, but also amongst most scholars.

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