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Anne Sofie Roald

Malmoe Univerity, Sweden
doi:10.1093/jis/eti178

Poetics of Islamic Historiography: Deconstructing Fabar; s History

By BOAZ SHOSHAN (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2004). 309 pp. Price HB
$150.00. ISBN 9004137939.
Abu
Ja6far al-Fabar; justly occupies a commanding position amongst
pre-modern Arab historians; only such later figures as Ibn 6As:kir and Ibn
al-6Ad;m wrote on a comparable scale for the histories of their home towns,
Damascus and Aleppo, and they were more literary and historical biographers
than historians proper. Al-Fabar;s ambition was apparently to write a history
of humanity, and the part of his History up to the coming of Islamin fact,
a fairly modest proportion of the wholecan fairly be so described. But with
the Prophets advent, the focus narrows to the history of the only religious
community that, for al-Fabar;, mattered in the sight of God, the house of Islam.
These changes of emphasis are reflected in the sources of the History: JudaeoChristian apocrypha and legend, tales of the prophets literature, the Iranian
national epic tradition, etc., for the first part; then akhb:r, historical narratives
by Muslim authors, for the real meat, the most detailed part of the work, the
century and a half or so dealing with the Prophets life, the consolidation of
the community and the conquests; and finally, a distinct diminution of detail
for the 6Abb:sid period, tailing off into a rather perfunctory treatment of the

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Abbas describes the various forms of Sufi poetry, especially the qaww:l;
which is devotional verse or chants, sung with music and instruments, and the


Bufiy:na-kal:m
which is Islamic mystical poetry. She states that Sufi poetry in
Pakistan and India was sometimes composed in opposition to the religious
establishment. It becomes rather obvious that she herself, even as a researcher,
tends to regard Muslim orthodoxy and Sufism as opposed to each other. Like
Smith, she does not define which form of Sufism she is referring to: the sober
form of Sufism might be regarded as an aspect of madhhab; or orthodox Islam.
When strict adherence to a school of doctrine (law) is part of the Sufi path to
God, it is difficult to talk about orthodox Islam as opposed to Sufism, as is
the tendency in Abbas book. Indeed, Abbas use of orthodox suggests that
she confuses following a madhhab with a more or less Wahh:b;-oriented Islam
(see for instance pp. xix, 14).
The book has a glossary at the end, but in the main text there is some
inconsistency in the translation of terms. The helpful device of providing
a translation with the first occurrence of a term is not followed. Similarly,
explanatory material about individuals mentioned (e.g. the poet Am;r
Khusraw) is not given at first occurrence of their names. However, despite
these minor failings, the book is informative and will improve our understanding and appreciation of female Sufi singers and female Sufi activities in the
Subcontinent.

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decades forming al-Fabar;s own lifetime, one based on sources that are often
anonymous but do not seem to have been professional ruw:t like those
supplying material for the earlier Islamic period.
Thus far, what we have said is accepted and common knowledge. The
History is clearly a complex compilation, and Shoshan has set himself the task
of going beyond a conventional examination of the History as a vehicle for the
purveying of historical facts, the past as texts, the basis for a reconstruction of
the past. Instead, inspired by recent scholars, mostly American and German
ones, who have emphasized how the ideological and literary assumptions of
historians affect their writing, he seeks here a deconstructionist approach,
emphasizing the value of a literary, even a psychological, approach to reading
the History. This procedure he regards as perfectly proper, since there are
no rules of criticism written in stone for all time: Of whatever period
and provenance, texts designed as history cannot be treated simply as
databanks, but are legitimate candidates for linguistic enquiries and literary
analyses (p. xxiv).
The authors approach is thus revisionist when measured against much of the
writing on the History that went before the later twentieth century, but it is one
tempered by judiciousness and a recognition that medieval authors (whether
Islamic or e.g. Christian) were bound by the limits of their knowledge and by a
familiarity with their own culture. Thus he finds Tayeb El-Hibris eager search,
in his Reinterpreting Islamic Historiography (1999), for symbolic meanings,
or for examples of irony and determinism in the depicting of events, as
obscuring the fact that, for the most part, historical narratives do purport to
tell us about the past and how events occurred. Only when this basic fact has
been recognized can one venture beyond into a critical and deconstructionist
examination of the texts. Shoshan adduces such historical techniques
as flashbacks (analepsis) in the chronology of events in order to explain
them, and the foreshadowing of events (prolepsis) to play down suspense or to
explain how some threat or wish has already been fulfilled. Thus the quite
considerable quantity of poetry in the History is often an explanation of events
or a retrospective reflecting on what is happening, and not necessarily
contemporary comment on it. He further considers the theological and
ideological assumptions underlying the History, reviewing previous writers
ideas, and himself highlights al-Fabar;s continual emphasis in the History on
Gods working and intervention in history as a demonstration of His
omnipotence. Especially interesting is Shoshans Chapter 4 Fabar;s voice
and hand on the historians methodology: whether al-Fabar; did compose his
work according to consistent, structured principles, and why his own voice in
the History seems so subdued. He pertinently observes that the absence of an
explicit authorial voice is no guarantee of a constantly neutral stand, when
other mechanisms of representation, such as the very selection . . . and (which
is the other side of the coin) suppression of information, are at work (p. 120),
concluding that al-Fabar; does subtly intervene in the narrative, and he
illustrates this point by a detailed examination of al-Fabar;s treatment of
6Uthm:ns murder (pp. 173208), one of four considerations in depth of key
events of the early caliphate.

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These are but a few of the stimulating points and arguments raised and
discussed in this book, with impressive documentation and insight. A whole
review article is called for, rather than a succinct review like the present one,
but one can imagine that this analytical structuralist approach will lead


to studies on other leading pre-modern Islamic historians; al-Mas6ud;
and Miskawayh would be obvious candidates here. Finally, a word of praise
for this work as an attractive piece of book production. It has footnotes
and not endnotes, and a good index. It seems to be virtually devoid of
printing errors, unless one includes here the curious transformation on p. 63
of the Greeks from Pale Ones (banu
l-asfar) into Possessors of Writings,
Books (banu
l-asf:r).

doi:10.1093/jis/eti179

Cartas Marruecas: Documentos de Marruecos en archivos espanoles

(siglos XVIXVII)
By MERCEDES GARCIA-ARENAL, FERNANDO RODRIGUEZ MEDIANO and
RACHID EL HOUR (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones
Cientficas, Estudios Arabes e Islamicos, Monografas 3, 2002).
432 pp. HB E26.00. ISBN 8400080750.
The monumental series of the Sources inedites de lHistoire du Maroc
(S.I.H.M.) edited by H. de Castries (and others), Paris 190561, was the
result of a great trawl through the major archives of most Western European
countries in search of materials for Moroccan history, so that one is at first
surprised that Dr. Garca-Arenal and her colleagues have found so much fresh
material in Spain (103 documents) to bring to our attention in this volume.
We ought not to be, for they are in the middle of a close and careful fresh
search through the Spanish archives in pursuit of Arabic documentation
(treaties, official and diplomatic correspondence etc.). The effort is clearly
proving to be fully justified.
As Garca-Arenal points out in her introduction, the volumes of the S.I.H.M.
relating to Spain cut off at 1578. Accordingly in the volume under review she
picks up at about that date, and continues up to 1644. The core of what is
presented comes, not surprisingly, from Simancas, to which are added texts
from the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, the Archivo Historico Nacional and
the Archivo Ducal de Medina Sidonia. The scholarship is of that high standard
we have come to expect from the Consejo Superior: one cannot praise
sufficiently the care with which the texts, Arabic and Spanish, have been edited,
or the clarity and fullness of the introductory remarks. There are, however, just
two defectsin presentation, not in substanceto which I must point. The first
is a major one: the absence of any table or list of the documents published. The
books Table of Contents (Sumario) pp. 4312 does provide a helpful guide to

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C. Edmund Bosworth
Castle Cary, Somerset