The Times Of History
Universal Topics in Islamic Historiography
Aziz Al-Azmeh, Central European University,
Budapest
This is a collection of essays on current questions
of historiography, illustrated with reference to Islamic
historiography. The main concerns are conceptions of
time and temporality, the uses of the past, historical
periodisation, historical categorisation, and the constitution
of historical objects, not least those called "civilisation"
and "Islam". One of the aims of the book is
to apply to Islamic materials the standard conceptual
equipment used in historical study, and to exercise
a large-scale comparativist outlook.
"Aziz Al-Azmeh's collection of essays on the historiography
of the Near East, Muslim religiosity, and the problems
raised by the effort to specify the nature of 'Islam'
(is) illuminating, full of learning, and intimately
relevant to the understanding of current conflicts throughout
the Arab world" – from the Foreword by Hayden White.
Contents
Foreword: Beyond Orientalism, by Hayden White;
Preface; I. Historical Categorization; 1. Tropes and Temporalities
of Historiographic Romanticism, Modern and Islamic;
2. Islam and the History of Civilizations; II. Typological
Time, Patterning and the Past Appropriated 3. Chronophagous
Discourse: A Study of the Clerico-Legal Appropriation
of the World in an Islamic Tradition; 4. The Muslim
Canon from Late Antiquity to the Era of Modernism; III.
History of the Future; 5. God's Chronography and
Dissipative Time; 6. Rhetoric for the Senses: A Consideration
of Muslim Paradise Narratives; IV. Distractions of
Clio: Impasses and Perspectives of Historians' History;
7. Islamic Political Thought:
Current Historiography and the Frame of History; 8.
Monotheistic Monarchy; Acknowledgements; Index
2007
328 pages
ISBN 978-963-7326-73-8 cloth $49.95 / €42.95 / £37.00
ISSN 1786-1438 (Pasts Incorporated: CEU Studies in the Humanities, Volume IV)
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