As the name implies...

As the name implies, akhbdr is generally understood to mean a string, a collec­tion, or, at best, a connected sequence of reports, and only in the last form does it achieve the form of a historical narration of events. The origin of the word tdrikh, which is now generally used for history, is even more difficult to trace.

Its root form perhaps came to be used in the Yaman in the pre­Islamic days, but, in all probability, it referred to time, not to history.[^3]3 This significance of the word has not yet been lost; indeed, the word tdrikh is used more often in the meaning of a date than of history. It is obvious that with­out even a proper word for it, the Arabs could have little conception of history before the advent of Islam.

They had a few stories of what they had considered to have been important or interesting events and vague, probably untrue, legends of the peoples who had inhabited the old ruins that were scattered in some parts of the peninsula. They lacked even a proper epic; indeed, they were a people with no consciousness of history. The Muslims, therefore, could not have drawn any inspiration for the development of a tradition of historiography from the pre-Islamic Arabs.

The Greek sciences made a most significant contribution to Islamic culture, but in the field of history, the Greek influence is difficult to trace. No classical Greek history ever reached the Arabs; the Greek and the Latin annalistic literature has been lost and is not available even to the modem scholar.[^4] History, however, was a much less important sector of Greek and Latin scholar­ ship; it was not considered of sufficient merit to be included in the curriculum of regular studies.

The Muslims adopted the branches of learning that were considered to possess sufficient importance in the eyes of the Greeks themselves; the Greek tradition was kept alive in these subjects. One of the reasons for the loss of classical Greek historical literature may be the fact that the Arabs showed no interest in its preservation.

The Byzantines had traditions of historiography and it is not beyond the range of possibility that some of their works came into the hands of the Arabs through Syrian Christians and converts to Islam. They might have contributed some techniques, but these techniques could not have been important.[^5] In any case, the Arabs could not have derived their historical sense from the Byzantines.