The Arabs and Islam in late antiquity
Subtitle: a critique of approaches to Arabic sources
By: Aziz Al-Azmeh
Contributors: ʻAẓmah, ʻAzīz
Series: Theories and paradigms of Islamic studies; Theories and paradigms of Islamic studies
Publisher: Gerlach Press
Published: 2014
Place of publication: Berlin, Germany
Language: eng
Number of pages: 155
ISBN-13: 9783940924421; 9783940924438
Subjects: Historiography; Literature and history; Quelle; Arabic literature; Arabs; History and criticism; Textgeschichte; Literatur; Arabisch; History
Description: This work provides a critique of Arabic textual sources for the history of the Arabs in late antique times, during the centuries immediately preceding Muhammad and up to and including the Umayyad period. Aziz Al-Azmeh considers the value and relevance of a range of literary sources, including orality and literacy, ancient Arabic poetry, the corpus of Arab heroic lore (ayyam), the early narrative, and the Qur'an, for the reconstruction of the social, political, cultural and religious history of the Arabs.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 125-147) and index.
Table of contents: title: Divergence of source interpretation: the Methodenstreit; title: Literary transmission: authors, genres, traditions; title: Credibility and factual confirmation; title: Genres, authors and antiquarians revisited: the snares of narrative; title: Fact, fiction and narrative patterns: ways of reading; title: Transmission of testimony: the voice, the pen, and the author; title: The pertinence of poetical evidence; title: Preliminaries to the use of the Qurʼān as an historical source.