Abstract The Qurʾān, as a sacred text, poses distinctive challenges for the historian. The talk will begin by addressing briefly some of these challenges, in particular the limits of what the historian can say about sacred texts like the Qurʾān. The bulk of the talk will then discuss the challenges historians face in understanding the text’s transmission, as revealed both by Muslim tradition and from the evidence of the material record, and what implications the historian might draw from the Qurʾān’s content.

In the half-millennium between 400 and 900 CE, the Near East underwent a profound transformation, the impact of which is still with us today. It involved a reordering of the politicalmap but also a vast cultural changemarked especially by the rise of Arabic as a new literary language in the region, replacing Greek, Syriac, Coptic, and Pahlavi; the emergence and flourishing of the civilization of Islam; and the gradual erosion of the Christian communities of the Near East. It has also attracted the attention of many eminent historians, from Gibbon and Pirenne down to writers of our own day. It remains one of the greatest and most enduring puzzles of world history. The book under review, Jack Tannous’s The Making of the Medieval Middle East, is a noteworthy and welcome contribution to this historical literature. Most works that address the historical transformation in question do not attempt to offer a fully comprehensive treatment of it, because it has so many different facets that to treat them all might be considered too much to handle effectively. Rather, most works tend to single out for analysis one aspect or component of the transformation or a few, which they describe in detail, and which they take to be in some way central to the larger evolution. Although its title might suggest otherwise, The Making of the Medieval Middle East follows this pattern. It focuses in particular on the character and evolution of the Christian communities of the Near East in Late Antiquity, especially the SyriacandGreek-speaking communities of geographical Syria and Mesopotamia, of which it must be said at the outset that it provides a truly masterful portrait. This focus is an important one, for several reasons: first, because Christians were the overwhelming majority of the population in these areas in the centuries before, and for a long time after, the rise of Islam; second, because their history is well documented in a rich array of texts in Syriac, Greek, and Arabic, which Tannous exploits with consummate skill; and third, because this region became, soon after the appearance of Islam, the seat of the new Islamic political order and hence the very center of the nascent “Islamic world.” It thus provides perhaps the best context on the

How and why did Muslims first come to write their own history? The author argues in this work that the Islamic historical tradition arose not out of idle curiosity, or through imitation of antique models, but as a response to a variety of challenges facing the Islamic community during its first several centuries (ca. seventh to tenth centuries CE). The narratives that resulted focused on certain themes of Islamic origins, selected to legitimise particular aspects of the Islamic community and faith in one or another. These included the need to establish the status of Muhammad (d. 632) as prophet, to affirm that the community to which they belonged was the direct descendant of the original community founded by the Prophet, to explain Muslim hegemony over vast populations of non-Muslims in the rapidly growing Islamic empire, and to articulate different positions in the ongoing debate with the Islamic community itself over political and religious leadership. An examination of these key themes of early Islamic historiography and the issues generating them is placed in the context of other styles of legitimisation in the early Islamic community, including such methods as appeals to piety and genealogy. Narratives of Islamic Origins is a ground-breaking work that represents the first comprehensive tradition -- critical account of the origins and rise of Arab-Islamic historiography, and is essential reading for all historians of medieval Islamic history and civilisation, and for all those interested in the historiography of comparative civilisations.

Neither of the terms commonly used to describe the seventh-century expansion of the movement that comes to be called Islam - "the Islamic conquests" or "the Arab conquests" - is satisfactory; both terms are anachronistic and in some ways misleading; yet there is, at present, no clear candidate for an alternative terminology. This article discusses the weaknesses of existing nomenclatures, with reference to relevant primary sources, and the conceptual problems the traditional nomenclatures pose in the context of an extensive review of scholarly literature from roughly 1900 to the present. It offers a few suggestions for possible new terminologies, but essentially opens the question for further discussion.

The article identifies several issue surrounding the early Ibadiyya, high-lighted in the subsequent chapters, that are particularly worthy of further investigation: problems with the sources for the early Ibadiyya; inconsistencies and contradictions in reports about the early Ibadiyya; the actual character of early movements identified by our sources as "Ibadi"; the religious environment from which the Ibadiyya first emerged; the attitude of the Ibadiyya to the question of free will vs. predestination; the question of how the boundaries of the early Ibad' community were defined; the Ibadi tradition's understanding of the opposition to 'Uthman during the first fitna or civil war; and the degree to which the early Ibadi' imams actually exercised centralized authority over the broad community.

Contents: Introduction The art of war of the Arabs, and the supposed religious fervour of the Arab conquerors, Leone Caetani Some critical and sociological remarks on the Arab conquest and the theories proposed on this, G.H. Bousquet Observations on the nature and causes of the Arab conquest, G.H. Bousquet The nomad as empire builder: a comparison of the Arab and Mongol conquests, John J. Saunders The Arab expansion: the military problem, Marius Canard The first expansion of Islam: factors of thrust and containment, Gustave E. von Grunebaum The conquest, Christian DA(c)cobert Another orientalist's remarks concerning the Pirenne thesis, Andrew S. Ehrenkreutz Initial Byzantine reactions to the Arab conquest, Walter E. Kaegi Only a change of masters? The Christians of Iran and the Muslim conquest, Stephen GerA An apocalyptic vision of Islamic history, Bernard Lewis The legendary Futuh literature, Rudi Paret On the relationship in the Caliphate between central power and the provinces: the 'Sulh'-Anwa' traditions in Egypt and Iraq, Albrecht Noth Ibn Abdelhakam and the conquest of North Africa, Robert Brunschwig The birth of Islam in the Holy Land, Moshe Sharon Isfahan-Nihawand. A source-critical study of early Islamic historiography, Albrecht Noth Centralized authority and military autonomy in the early Islamic conquests, Fred McGraw Donner The conquest of Khuzistan: a historiographical reassessment, Chase F. Robinson Syriac views of emergent Islam, S.P. Brock Index.

The article discusses periodization and spatialization - delimiting a particular length of time, a particular region of the globe, or both - as necessary strategems for studying history, since the seamless web of human life cannot be analyzed in toto. It discusses different notions of periodization, in particular those advanced by Fernand Braudel and others of the Annales School and the concept of "Zeitschichten" proposed by Reinhart Koselleck. It surveys some of the periodizations that have traditionally been applied specifically in the realm of the history of the Islamic Near East and a number of essays discussing the periodization of Islamic history (especially those of S. D. Goitein and M. Morony). It argues that the notion of an "ideal" or "perfect" periodization of history (or of any subsection of it) that meets all needs is futile. Periodization must be seen, rather, as a tool employed by the historian that highlights a particular set of developments in a society, so that many different periodizations are possible and, indeed, desirable depending on what the historian wishes to understand. The historian must consider what development she wishes to articulate from the past and choose or fashion a periodization that most clearly illuminates that development.

Documentary and literary evidence suggests that during the Umayyad period, institutions and practices central to the operation of the state were renamed using terms from the Qur'an. The goal of this process was to legitimate the Umayyad state and government by linking them with the divine revelation and the person of the prophet Muhammad. It also helped to define Islam as a tradition focused on the prophet and the Qur'an.