"Doing" early Islamic history: Brooklyn baseball, Arabic historiography, and historical memory.

• Author: Lassner, Jacob

Mindful of the historic event that we commemorate this evening, I have chosen for my remarks the subject of history itself. To be more precise, I have decided to speak about "Doing Early Islamic History" with specific references to "Brooklyn Baseball, Arabic Historiography and Historical Memory." The catchy title was deliberately chosen to evoke curiosity among the more dour of our learned colleagues, those individuals once described as waiting laconically for the onset of the twentieth century, or perhaps it was the nineteenth. Be that as it may, in choosing the subject of my presidential address I had no intention of being frivolous. Even the seemingly incongruous reference to baseball has the full support of scholarly precedent, albeit from an unexpected source. The title and style of my remarks are derived from a well-known collection of historiographical essays by Jack Hexter, the former Charles J. Stille Professor of [Modern European] History at Yale.

In less than two hundred pages of neatly crafted prose, Hexter ranged far afield and, with humor worthy of a David Lodge novel, he grappled with the larger problems of the historian's workstyle and workplace, displaying at all times precisely the right mix of scholarship and playful irreverence. In doing that, he managed both to infuriate and disarm critics waiting anxiously to pounce on every word, a trick that occasions the envy of all serious scholars save those for whom to infuriate is sufficient recompense in itself. Although published some twenty years ago, this witty and easily read book remains delightful. And while Hexter's optimistic assessment of understanding the past may find fewer adherents today, his book, Doing History, still gives professional historians of all fields cause to reflect when they themselves attempt to do it.

One of the more compelling aspects of Hexter's analysis was his knowledgeable appeal to baseball. I found particularly poignant his reference to the National League pennant race of 1951, a struggle of life and death that ended dramatically at the Polo Grounds in New York City. In an instant, the barbarians of cognoscenti Bluff, otherwise known as the New York Giants, triumphed over the forces of virtue, the beloved Brooklyn Dodgers. For historians and baseball cognoscenti with residual loyalties to the old Brooklyn team, especially those who, like myself, experienced the event "wie es eigentlich gewesen," the catastrophe that befell the Dodgers on that fateful autumn day may be compared to the destruction of the temples in Jerusalem, the sack of Rome and the Mongol conquest of Baghdad, events indelibly etched in historical consciousness. To be sure, there were future successes, even a world championship, but the Dodgers soon abandoned the fleshpots of Brooklyn for Los Angeles and nouvelle cuisine, and baseball, once a way of life, became, like everything else in Southern California, a business that sustains neither interest nor compels loyalty. For those who were nourished, as I was, by Brooklyn baseball, the world has never been and will never be the same.

I realize that these references to circumstances forty years ago may seem terribly arcane, perhaps puzzling or even irrelevant to the younger or foreign orientalists in our presence. What have pennant races and disenfranchised athletic teams to do with understanding the world of Islam, a civilization far removed in place and time from that of our own? I would contend that for those who remember baseball and the borough of Brooklyn as they once were, there is much in that past celebrated by Hexter which provides historiographical insight. The Brooklyn team was part of narrative history, a wonderful if highly tendentious story made larger than life itself. The Los Angeles Dodgers are part of what Gertrude Himmelfarb disparagingly referred to as "The New History," a rather different story, one that lacks texture and heroic ballast and which explains historical transformations in theoretical terms and with an ideological focus that does not ordinarily grace the lively fact-filled pages of Sports Illustrated or The Sporting News.

The names alone betray the difference between Brooklyn and Los Angeles and the description of historic events framed within larger tales by different generations of historians. The Brooklyn team featured protagonists called Pistol Pete and Pee Wee; and Cookie and Frenchy. One could follow the likes of Buckshot Tommy Brown and Shotgun George Shuba, the Duke of Flatbush and the Reading Rifle, and of Campy, Newk, jackie and the Preacher. The Dodgers of Los Angeles were represented by a Rick and a Ron, that is, Rick Monday and Ron Fairly, honorable sportsmen no doubt--but under no circumstances do they convey images that are useful to understanding a civilization as vibrant as that of Islam.

As historians, the question before us is how to deal with divergent representations of human experience. It is my judgment that the story told by the Muslims about their beginnings is very much like that of the colorful Brooklyn Dodgers, the heroic team of my unsullied youth, and not the ambiguous tale of their California successors, a team representative of historians who paint the past in delicate shades of mauve and taupe. What indeed can one expect from people whose gustatory needs are satisfied by tasteless leafy objects called radicchio and arugula? In sum, the "New Historians" capture none of the richness or flavor that characterizes the resplendent Islamic past. To be sure, this judgment is tendentiously driven by selective memory and by more than a little nostalgia. But, on this night of all nights, nostalgia and historical memory should be the coin of the realm. There is, after all, a certain privilege that comes with being 150 years old.

I turn now to the world of Islam with a reflective comment that is not likely to occasion much dispute. Among the venerable civilizations extending from the Indus to the Nile, none seems to leave a more precise precise and identifiable record of its early development than Islam. There are literally tens of thousands of pages in printed works and as yet unedited manuscripts which record the dramatic events of the first three Islamic centuries, a timespan which we may declare, if somewhat arbitrarily, the formative period of Islamic civilization.

Strewn among the memorabilia of the times, there is, for the historian's pleasure, much compelling material concerning politics and the growth of political institutions. But for all the richness of detail, there is something disquieting about the accounts of the medieval chroniclers. If anything, the tale they tell is too richly textured, and one could argue that it is also too compelling. For, as told, the story of the Muslim polity is a history that has been discovered, embellished, and when necessary, invented in an effort to enhance the public images of generous patrons. These patrons were persons or political factions whose credentials to rule were not generally recognized or those whose credentials were generally recognized but whose rule was not universally accepted. In any case, the portrayal of men and events by apologists cum historians can be so patently tendentious that it raises doubts concerning the basic historicity of specific episodes, if not the larger events that frame them.

Serious scholars who would use these Arabic traditions as historical documents are therefore obliged to ask what, if anything, can be learned from this problematic literature, particularly as there is not enough evidence from archival sources and material culture against which to balance literary accounts. How can texts so contrived be made to shed light on events far removed in time and place, and in a cultural setting so different from our own? The more cautious among us may well conclude that, with the data currently available, it is improbable that anyone can successfully write a comprehensive narrative of early Islamic times, let alone describe the subtle nuances of a more complex story. I refer here to the kind of account favored by historians of Europe and the Americas ever since the Annales school and its various successors took root on the continent and beyond--that is, an effort based on isolating and analyzing minutiae drawn on the broadest historical canvas while examining historical events as the culmination of long-term phenomena. One can still paraphrase the Muslim apologist as a matter of course and, if need be, one can also follow the loose chronology suggested by the more systematic annals, but only naive readers willing to accept traditions at face value, or those compelled to argue on behalf of parochial interests, are likely to undertake or sanction such an effort.

Not surprisingly, the more sophisticated historians, those who think of themselves as methodologically aware, tend to treat their subjects with proper caution. However, all too often, seeming restraint is combined with, or perhaps to be more accurate I should say, is comprised by a measure of self-serving caginess. Having discredited the continuous narratives of the early sources as ahistorical, some scholars continue to hunt randomly through Arabic texts in search of incidental information. Their supposition is that the sum of the parts is contrived, but somehow particular statements lifted out of context may be considered essential truths. Rummaging through difficult sources to ferret out these truths is then justified by the need for raw data with which to erect a theoretical scaffolding that can support complex interpretations of the past.

This linking of text to theory is in part a quest for academic legitimacy. Because historians of the Near East are now trained and employed by departments of history, as opposed to departments of oriental or Near Eastern studies, which was the case not all that long ago, they perceive a need to resonate to the sensibilities of the most powerful...