The Transformation of a Historic Tradition From Khabar to Ta’rikh

Abstract

Introduction
Some idea of the past is present in every culture, and historical
consciousness as an awareness of this past is a distinctive element in total
cultural expression. Hence, it would be a mistake to assume that there was
no historical consciousness among the Arabs predating Islam. However, it
was the religious, political and social transformation of the Arabs through
Islam that motivated an extensive interest in the past and its systematic
recording.
Muslim historians developed the idea of the past they had inherited from
pre-Islamic Arabia and expressed it in an extensive historical literature. The
study of the past in early Islamic history was motivated and determined by
a number of factors. This article seeks to outline some of the important
developments which led to a distinctive Islamic historiography. It seeks to
do so by an examination of studies conducted on the early Islamic historical
tradition. In particular, three fundamental aspects of the different phases of
historical writings from pre-Islamic Arabia through the 2nd and 3rd centuries
of the Hijrah are investigated: the external form of historical recollection;
its subject matter; and the meaning and significance of both the form and
the subject matter of historical recollection in the culture.
1. Pre-Islamic Arabia
The interest in the past among the pre-Islamic Arabs is best exemplified
by the custom of evening tribal gatherings, called majalis, at which the special ...