ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books A History of Muslim Philosophy Volume 2, Book 5 Chapter 60: Historiography The debt that history owes to the efforts of Muslim writers is generally recognized by Orientalists, but the consciousness of the value and significance of the Muslim contribution is rare among Western historians.

Every known sizable collection of Islamic manuscripts includes a good proportion of historical works[^1] which in itself is a fair indication of the importance attached by Muslim scholarship to history. A comparison between the outputs of historical literature by the Muslims before decay set in and the Islamic civilization began to decline and the histories written during or before that period by other peoples will show what great interest was taken by the followers of Islam in history.

A similar comparison in the standards achieved will be equally illuminating. It would be no exaggeration to say that in the Middle Ages, history was very much a Muslim science. Their contribution is even more remarkable in view of the fact that the Muslims had inherited very meagre traditions on which they raised so glorious an edifice. For several decades the Orientalists were not impressed with the Muslim traditions regarding the magnitude of ignorance in pre-Islamic Arabia.

They saw in them an endeavor to exaggerate the achievement of Islam by belittling pre-Islamic Arab effort; even the silence of Muslim writers was suspect. Partly for this reason and partly with the desire to belittle the success of Islam in uplifting the Arabs, the Orientalists made strenuous efforts to find proofs of pre-Muslim attainments, but they did not discover much.

In the words of a recent authority, “the cultural and economic level of the nomad population was, as it has always been, too low to support any literary effort.[^2] The Arabs did produce some poetry, a fact mentioned and recognized by Muslim authorities, but they had little conception of other branches of lite­rature. They do not seem even to have a word for history.

Some of the earlier writers have used the term akhbdr for history; the singular form, khabar, is used even today for a report or information. This has been the meaning of the word in Muslim times; the earlier meaning of this word is obscure.