Reinterpreting Islamic Historiography: Harun al-Rashid and the Narrative of the [Abbasid.sup.⊂] Caliphate.

• Author: COBB, PAUL M.
• Position: Review

Reinterpreting Islamic Historiography: Harun al-Rashid and the Narrative of the [Abbasid.sup.[subset]] Caliphate. By TAYEB EL-HIBRI. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. Cambridge: CAMBRIDGE UNIV. PRESS, 1999. Pp. x + 236. $64.95.

The caliphs, finally, have become texts. For all that modern scholarship has recognized the early Islamic chronicles to be literary rather than documentary sources, scholars have until recently been slow to subject these sources to serious literary analysis, and to treat these histories as complex and artful narratives. This is so because early Islamicists have, as a group, been prudent (to say the least) in their response to the "linguistic turn" that has so shaped the study of history and historiography in other disciplines. But it is also so because these texts can be so darn hard to read: compilations of akhbar and poetry seemingly patched together, often using vocabulary that was archaic to the medieval authors and relying on allusive story-lines and inside jokes that leave modern readers puzzled. Seen from the outside these are punitive texts (ask any undergraduate). But once properly read and seen from within they are marvels: epic tales combined with parables of universal humanist themes--power, piet y, tragedy, corruption, justice, regionalism, and honor, just to name a few. If you didn't think al-Tabari and company had it in them, then you need to read Tayeb El-Hibri's book.

El-Hibri focuses on the way in which the diverse Arabic chronicles of the early Islamic period all constructed a (more or less) shared didactic narrative of the caliphate from its revolutionary beginning in 750 to a tragic finale in the early Samarran period (ending in the reign of al-Muntasir, d. 862). Above all, the book centers on the reigns of al-Rashid and his sons, al-Amin and al-[Ma.sup.[contains]]mun, and the war between them that divided the caliphate at al-Rashid's death. Mercifully, El-Hibri's methodology is not informed by the excesses of contemporary literary theory but by a clear and sensible theoretical stance: "that the extant [Abbasid.sup.[subset]] historical narratives were not intended originally to tell facts, but rather to provide commentary" on key controversial issues (p. 13). Within this body of commentary, El-Hibri singles out the lives of the individual early [Abbasid.sup.[subset]] caliphs as the choice vehicles for medieval authors to reflect and discourse upon the political, socia l, and cultural...