Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 April 2015
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.
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.
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3 See Chamberlain, Knowledge and Social Practice, 69–90.
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10 Ohlander, “Ibn Kathīr,” 149.
11 Ibid., 154.
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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.
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21 Keaney, Medieval Islamic Historiography, 104–33.
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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.
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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.
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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.