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SAPPING THE NARRATIVE: IBN KATHIR’S ACCOUNT OF THE SHŪRĀ OF ʿUTHMAN IN KITAB AL-BIDAYA WA-L-NIHAYA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2015

Aaron M. Hagler
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Abstract

One mission of Ibn Kathir's Kitab al-Bidaya wa-l-Nihaya fi al-Taʾrikh (The Book of the Beginning and the End in History) is to provide a Sunni answer to a generally ʿAlid-legitimizing corpus of early Islamic historical accounts. Part of the 13th- and 14th-century movement that sought to rehabilitate the image of Syria and the otherwise reviled Umayyad dynasty (r. 661–750), Ibn Kathir's grand work of history cleverly reframes the early Islamic narrative to fit into what he considers a more “properly” Sunni framework than his sources provided. This article focuses on Ibn Kathir's presentation of the shūrā, the council appointed by ʿUmar and charged with choosing from among its six members his successor. It identifies the literary tools Ibn Kathir employed and offers a framework for his strategy of employing them. Whether through narrative aside or criticism of other historians, Ibn Kathir's recasting of a pro-ʿAlid grudge story as an Umayyad apologetic highlights moments of sectarian contention and emphasizes the evolution of Sunni opinion on ʿAli and ʿUthman.

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Articles
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International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , May 2015 , pp. 303 - 321
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

NOTES

Author's note: I thank Paul Cobb, James Lindsay, and Catherine Bronson for their comments and assistance in the preparation of this article. I am also grateful to the anonymous IJMES reviewers, whose critiques and suggestions were quite valuable, and to the editors of IJMES. Of course, I retain full responsibility for any errors.

1 For an in-depth study of the social history of Damascus of the era, including a discussion of social divides, power structures, and patterns of patronage, see Chamberlain, Michael, Knowledge and Social Practice in Medieval Damascus, 1190–1350 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), esp. 27–107Google Scholar.

2 See Tabbaa, Yasser, The Transformation of Islamic Art During the Sunni Revival (New York: I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., 2001), 3Google Scholar. Tabbaa's study traces the development of the forms of calligraphy, arabesque, geometric patterns, maqarnas, and symmetrical plan at the time of the Sunni revival.

3 See Chamberlain, Knowledge and Social Practice, 69–90.

4 For a detailed list of Mamluk-era Syrian historians, see Little, Donald P., “Historiography of the Ayyūbid and Mamlūk Epochs,” in The Cambridge History of Egypt, vol. 1, ed. Petry, Carl F. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 412–44Google Scholar; and Li Guo, “The Middle Bahrī Mamlūks in Medieval Syrian Historiography: The Years 1297–1302 in the Dhayl Mirʿāt al-Zamān Attributed to Quṭb al-Dīn Mūsā al-Yūnīnī: A Critical Edition with Introduction, Annotated Translation, and Source Criticism” (PhD diss. Yale University, 1994), 105–13.

5 My use of the term muʾarrikhī derives from Robinson, Chase, Islamic Historiography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), esp. 18–54Google Scholar. For a discussion of the development of historiographical writing styles in Arab/Islamic history, see Donner, Fred M., The Early Arabic Historical Tradition: A Source-Critical Survey (Princeton, N.J.: Darwin Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Donner, Narratives of Islamic Origins (Princeton, N.J.: Darwin Press, 1998); Rosenthal, Franz, A History of Muslim Historiography (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1952)Google Scholar; and Duri, A. A., The Rise of Historical Writing Among the Arabs (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

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8 Ibid., 149.

9 For more discussion of the relationships between Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn Kathir, al-Mizzi, and others, see Roy Young Muhammad Mukhtar Curtis, “Authentic Interpretation of Classical Islamic Texts: An Analysis of the Introduction of Ibn Kathīr's Tafsīr al-Qurʾān” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1989), 17–73.

10 Ohlander, “Ibn Kathīr,” 149.

11 Ibid., 154.

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15 See Hirschler, Konrad, Medieval Arabic Historiography: Authors as Actors (London: Routledge, 2006), 1–4Google Scholar. Hirschler primarily credits the scholarship of G. M. Spiegel, on Medieval European historiography, emphasizing her analysis of the relationship between text and context. See Spiegel, ed., The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). For further examples of various types of literary approaches, see Khalidi, Tarif, Arabic Historical Thought in the Classical Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; el-Hibri, Tayeb, Reinterpreting Islamic Historiography: Hārūn al-Rashīd and the Narrative of the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and el-Hibri, Parable and Politics in Early Islamic History: The Rashidun Caliphs (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010). See also Khalek, Nancy, Damascus after the Muslim Conquest: Text and Image in Early Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Robinson, Islamic Historiography.

16 See Chamberlain, Knowledge and Social Practice, 11–21. As Hirschler (2n3) points out, it is in the 14th century that other kinds of material become increasingly available; yet, this in no way diminishes the value of Ibn Kathir's text as a window into the intellectual life of 14th-century Damascus.

17 See, for example, Donner, Narratives of Islamic Origins; and Robinson, Islamic Historiography.

18 It is this unoriginality that leads Little to dismiss his history of the Mamluk era as derivative of the work of al-Birzali (d. 1339), al-Yunini (d. 1326), and al-Jazari (d. 1338). See Little, “Historiography of the Ayyūbid and Mamlūk epochs,” esp. 427–29. However, Little is not concerned with the early Islamic narrative, and it is Ibn Kathir's popularity, rather than his originality, that makes him noteworthy.

19 For example, ʿImad al-Din Ismaʿil ibn Kathir, Kitab al-Bidaya wa-l-Nihaya, 2nd ed. (Beirut: Dar al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2003), 143.

20 For more on the distinctions between “pro-ʿAlid” sentiment and Shiʿism, see Hodgson, Marshall, “How Did the Early Shiʿa Become Sectarian?” Journal of the American Oriental Society 75 (1955): 1–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Husain, S. and Jafri, M., Origins and Development of Shiʿa Islam (London: Longman, 2000), 211–16Google Scholar. Note especially his discussion of Ibn Kathir, which corroborates this article's assertions of Ibn Kathir's treatment of pro-Alid material, 213–15.

21 Keaney, Medieval Islamic Historiography, 104–33.

22 Lindsay, James E., “Caliphal and Moral Exemplar? ʿAli Ibn ʿAsakir's Portrait of Yazid b. Muʿawiya,” Der Islam 74 (1997): 252CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Fred M. Donner, “ʿUthmān and the Rāshidūn Caliphs in Ibn ʿAsākir's Taʾrīkh Madīnat Dimashq: A Study in Strategies of Compilation,” in Lindsay, ed., Ibn ʿAsakir and Early Islamic History, 44–61.

23 Lindsay, “Ibn ʿAsākir, His Taʾrīkh Madīnat Dimashq and Its Usefulness for Understanding Early Islamic History,” 1–23. See also Lindsay, “Caliphal and Moral Exemplar”; Khalek, Damascus after the Muslim Conquest, esp. 3–23; Eddé, Anne-Marie, “Les Sources de L’Histoire Omeyyade dans l’œvre d’Ibn al-ʿAdīm,” in Umayyad Legacies: Medieval Memories from Syria to Spain, ed. Borrut, Antoine and Cobb, Paul M. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2010), 131–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Hirschler, Medieval Arabic Historiography, 3.

25 Ibid., 3.

26 Leder, Stefan, “The Paradigmatic Character of Madāʾinī's ‘shūrā-Narration,’” Studia Islamica 88 (1998): 42Google Scholar.

27 Keaney, Medieval Islamic Historiography, 7.

28 The utility of the shūrā as a “parable” episode of the early Islamic narrative has not disappeared. Modern historians, particularly in Egypt, have discussed the shūrā as emblematic of a type of Islamic democracy, the particular dynamics of which Egyptian political culture is currently in the process of attempting to resolve. See Keaney, Heather, “Ṭaha Ḥusayn, al-Ṭabarī, and the Future of History in Egypt,” Historical Dimensions of Islam: Essays in Honor of R. Stephen Humphreys, ed. Lindsay, James E. and Armajani, Jon (Princeton, N.J.: Darwin Press, 2008), 245–56Google Scholar. For a broader discussion of the political uses of the early Islamic narrative, see Ess, Josef Van, “Political Ideas in Early Islamic Religious Thought,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 28 (2001): 151–64Google Scholar; and Yazigi, Maya, “Ḥadīth al-ʿAshara or the Political Uses of a Tradition,” Studia Islamica no. 86 (1997): 159–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Ibid., 45–50.

30 Ibid., 52–54.

31 Keaney, Medieval Islamic Historiography, 120.

32 See n. 5. While there is no rigid “age of akhbārīs” that gives way to an “age of muʾarrikhīs,” the distinction remains valid. Because of the conventions of the genre, it was often impossible to determine who is speaking: an akhbārī historian or his source.

33 Hodgson, Marshall G. S., The Venture of Islam, vol. 1, The Classical Age of Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 354–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a dissenting view of Sayf and his reliability, cf. Landau-Tasseron, Ella, “Sayf ibn ʿUmar in Medieval and Modern Scholarship,” Der Islam 67 (1990): 1–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 el-Hibri, Tayeb, Parable and Politics in Early Islamic History: The Rashidun Caliphs (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 122CrossRefGoogle Scholarff.

35 Ibid., 133.

36 Ibn Kathir, al-Bidaya wa-l-Nihaya, 142.

37 Keaney, Medieval Islamic History, 91–93.

38 Ibid., 115.

39 Smith, G. Rex, trans., and Yar-Shater, Ehsan, ed., The History of al-Tabari, vol. 14, The Conquest of Iran (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1994), 160–61Google Scholar.

40 Ibn Kathir, al-Bidaya wa-l-Nihaya, 141.

41 Smith, The History of al-Tabari, 149.

42 Aaron Hagler, “The Echoes of Fitna: Developing Historiographical Interpretations of the Battle of Ṣiffīn” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2011).

43 Ibn Kathir, al-Bidaya wa-l-Nihaya, 142–43.

44 Qurʾan, XLVIII: 10.

45 Smith, The History of al-Tabari, 160–61.

46 Ibn Kathir, al-Bidaya wa-l-Nihaya, 142.

47 Ibid.,143.

48 These “other” sources are not, of course, difficult to discern; Ibn Kathir relied on pro-Sunni sources such as Ibn ʿAsakir and Ahmad ibn Hanbal. See Keaney, Medieval Islamic Historiography, 115.

49 Qurʾan, XLVIII: 10.

50 Ibn Kathir, al-Bidaya wa-l-Nihaya, 143.

51 This may be a veiled insult directed at al-Waqidi, whose sources were criticized, in particular by Sunni historians, as suspect. Yahya ibn Maʿin had accused him of constructing false asānīd, and Ahmad ibn Hanbal—a contemporary foe of al-Tabari's—was critical of al-Waqidi's combination of several akhbār into a single tradition, introduced by a collective isnād, which was considered a scholarly gaffe at the time.

52 Ibn Kathir, al-Bidaya wa-l-Nihaya, 143.

53 Ibid., 141.

54 Keaney, Medieval Islamic Historiography, 118–21.

55 See Keaney, Medieval Islamic Historiography; Eddé, “Les Sources de L’Histoire Omeyyade dans l’œvre d’Ibn al-ʿAdīm”; Lindsay, “Ibn ʿAsākir, His Taʾrīkh Madīnat Dimashq and Its Usefulness for Understanding Early Islamic History”; and Shahin, Aram, “In Defense of Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān: Treatises and Monographs on Muʿāwiya from the 8th to the 16th Centuries,” in The Lineaments of Islam: Studies in Honor of Fred M. Donner, ed. Cobb, Paul M. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2012), 177–208CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 Although Fred Donner's chapter, “ʿUthmān and the Rāshidūn Caliphs in Ibn ʿAsākir's Taʾrīkh Madīnat Dimashq: A Study in Strategies of Compilation,” in Ibn ʿAsakir and Early Islamic History, ed. Lindsay, 44–61, is an important, and utterly a propos, overview.