Author:
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438402880
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 282
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Book Description
Volume XXI of the History of al-Ṭabarī (from the second part of 66/685 to 73/693) covers the resolution of "the Second Civil War." This conflict, which has broken out in 64/683 after the death of the Umayyad caliph Yazīd I, involved the rival claims of the Umayyads (centered in Syria) and the Zubayrids (centered in the Hijaz), each of whom claimed the caliphal title, Commander of the Faithful. Both parties contented for control of Iraq, which was also the setting for al-Mukhtār's Shīʿite uprising in al-Kūfah during 66/685 and 67/686. Khārijite groups were active in south-western Iran and central Arabia, even threatening the heavily settled lands of Iraq. By the end of 73/692, the Umayyad regime in Damascus, led by Abd-al-Malik, had extinguished the rival caliphate of Ibn al-Zubayr and had reestablished a single, more or less universally acknowledged political authority for the Islamic community. Al-Ṭabarī's account of these years is drawn from such earlier historians as Abu Mikhnaf, al-Madāʾinī , and al-Waqidi and includes eyewitness accounts, quotations from poems, and texts of sermons. Notable episodes include al-Mukhtār's slaying of those who had been involved in the death of al-Husayn at Karbala, the death of al-Mukhtār at the hands of Muṣʿab ibn al-Zubayr, the revolt of Amr ibn Saʿīd in Damascus, the death of Muṣʿab at the Battle of Dayr al-Jathaliq, and al-Hajjaj's siege and conquest of Mecca on behalf of Abd-al-Malik. There are excursuses on the chair that al-Mukhtār venerated as a relic of Ali, the biography of the colorful brigand ʿUbayd Allāh b. al-Ḥurr, and the development of the secretarial office in Islam. The translation has been fully annotated. Parallels in the works of Ibn Sa'd, al-Baladhuri, and the Kitabal-Aghani have been indicated in the notes where these accounts supplement or diverge from that of al-Ṭabarī.
Author:
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438402902
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 243
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Book Description
This volume covers the history of the Muslim community and the biography of Muḥammad in the middle Medinan years. It begins with the unsuccessful last Meccan attack on Medina, known as the battle of the Trench. Events following this battle show the gradual collapse of Meccan resistance to Islam. The next year, when Muḥammad set out on pilgrimage to Mecca, the Meccans at first blocked the road, but eventually a ten-year truce was negotiated at al-Ḥudaybiyah, with Muḥammad agreeing to postpone his pilgrimage until the following year. The Treaty of al-Ḥudaybiyah was followed by a series of Muslim expeditions, climaxing in the important conquest of Khaybar. In the following year Muḥammad made the so-called Pilgrimage of Fulfillment unopposed. Al-Ṭabarī's account emphasizes Islam's expanding geographical horizon during this period. Soon after the Treaty of al-Hudaybiyah, Muḥammad is said to have sent letters to six foreign rulers inviting them to become Muslims. Another example of this expanding horizon was the unsuccessful expedition to Mu'tah in Jordan. Shortly afterward the Treaty of al-Ḥudaybiyah broke down, and Muḥammad marched on Mecca. The Meccans capitulated, and Muḥammad entered the city on his own terms. He treated the city leniently, and most of the Meccan oligarchy swore allegiance to him as Muslims. Two events in the personal life of Muḥammad during this period caused controversy in the community. Muḥammad fell in love with and married Zaynab bint. Jaḥsh, the divorced wife of his adopted son Zayd. Because of Muḥammad's scruples, the marriage took place only after a Qur'anic revelation permitting believers to marry the divorced wives of their adopted sons. In the Affair of the Lie, accusations against Muḥammad's young wife ʿĀʾishah were exploited by various factions in the community and in Muḥammad's household. In the end, a Qur'anic revelation proclaimed ʿĀʾishah's innocence and the culpability of the rumormongers. This volume of al-Ṭabarī's History records the collapse of Meccan resistance to Islam, the triumphant return of Muḥammad to his native city, the conversion to Islam of the Meccan oligarchy, and the community's successful weathering of a number of potentially embarrassing events in Muḥammad's private life.
Author: Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780887065705
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 244
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Book Description
This volume covers the years 96-105 A.H. (A.D. 715-724), describing the final, disastrous Arabic attempt to take Constantinople; the backroom machinations to bring the reformer Umar II to the throne; his brief reign and the abrupt reversal of his policies; the conflicts and revolts of tribal, political, and religious factions; the controversy of non-Arab converts; and the end of Islamic expansion. Paper edition, $16.95 (not seen). Volume 25 covers the Umayyad caliphate at its widest geographical extent, a period of apparent stability that was at nearly the end of the political unity of Islam. The focus is on military and political events in Khurasan and Irag, from where the Abbasids would soon rise to claim the caliphate. Paper edition, (not seen) $19.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Author:
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438408129
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 282
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Book Description
This volume deals with the aftermath of the decisive battle at al-Qādisiyyah described in the previous volume. First, the conquest of southern Iraq is consolidated; in rapid succession there follow the accounts of the battles at Burs and Bābil. Then in 16/637 the Muslim warriors make for the capital al-Mada'in, ancient Ctesiphon, which they conquer after a brief siege. The Persian king seeks refuge in Ḥulwān, leaving behind most of his riches, which are catalogued in great detail. In the same year the Muslim army deals the withdrawing Persians another crushing blow at the battle of Jalūlā'. This volume is important in that it describes how the newly conquered territories are at first administered. As the climate of al-Mada'in is felt to be unwholesome, a new city is planned on the Tigris. This is al-Kūfah, which is destined to play an important role as the capital city of the fourth caliph, 'Alī. The planning of al-Kūfah is set forth in considerable detail, as is the building of its main features--the citadel and the great congregational mosque. After this interlude there follow accounts of the conquests of a string of towns in northern Mesopotamia, which bring the Muslim fighters near the border with al-Jazirah. That region is conquered in 17/638. The history of its conquest is preceded by an account of the Byzantines' siege of the city of Ḥimṣ. Also in this year, 'Umar is recorded to have made a journey to Syria, from which he is driven back by a sudden outbreak of the plague, the so-called Plague of 'Amawās. The scene then shifts back to southwestern Iran, where a number of cities are taken one after another. The Persian general al-Hurmuzān is captured and sent to Medina. After this, the conquest of Egypt--said to have taken place in 20/641--is recorded. The volume concludes with a lengthy account of the crucial battle at Nihawand of 21/642. Here the Persians receive a blow that breaks their resistance definitively. This volume abounds in sometimes very amusing anecdotes of man-to-man battles, acts of heroism, and bizarre, at times even miraculous events. The narrative style is fast-moving, and the recurrence of similar motifs in the historical expose lends them authenticity. Many of the stories in this volume may have begun as yarns spun around campfires. It is not difficult to visualize an early Islamic storyteller regaling his audience with accounts that ultimately found their way to the file on conquest history collected by Sayf ibn 'Umar, al-Ṭabarī's main authority for this volume. A discounted price is available when purchasing the entire 39-volume History of al-Ṭabarī set. Contact SUNY Press for more information.
Author: Ṭabarī
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791406250
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
By 735 an Arab empire stretched from Arles and Avignon in southern France to the Indus River and Central Asia, and a vital young civilization fostered by a new world religion was taking root. Yet the Muslim conquerors were divided by tribal quarrels, tensions among new converts, and religious revolts. In 745 a vigorous new successor to the Prophet took control in Damascus and began to restore the waning power of the Umayyad dynasty. Marwan II's attempts were thwarted, however, by revolts on every hand, even among his own relatives. The main body of dissidents was a well-trained group of revolutionaries in Khurasan, led by the remarkable Abu Muslim. By 748 they had seized control of the province and drive the governor, Nasr b. Sayyar al-Laythi, to his death and were advancing westward. This volume tells of the end of the Umayyad caliphate, the Abbasid Revolution, and the establishment of the new dynasty.
Author: Robert Haug
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 178831722X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 311
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Book Description
Transoxania, Khurasan, and ?ukharistan – which comprise large parts of today's Central Asia – have long been an important frontier zone. In the late antique and early medieval periods, the region was both an eastern political boundary for Persian and Islamic empires and a cultural border separating communities of sedentary farmers from pastoral-nomads. Given its peripheral location, the history of the 'eastern frontier' in this period has often been shown through the lens of expanding empires. However, in this book, Robert Haug argues for a pre-modern Central Asia with a discrete identity, a region that is not just a transitory space or the far-flung corner of empires, but its own historical entity. From this locally specific perspective, the book takes the reader on a 900-year tour of the area, from Sasanian control, through the Umayyads and Abbasids, to the quasi-independent dynasties of the Tahirids and the Samanids. Drawing on an impressive array of literary, numismatic and archaeological sources, Haug reveals the unique and varied challenges the eastern frontier presented to imperial powers that strove to integrate the area into their greater systems. This is essential reading for all scholars working on early Islamic, Iranian and Central Asian history, as well as those with an interest in the dynamics of frontier regions.
Author: Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791423929
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 274
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Book Description
This volume 16 of Tabari's great 40-volume history of the Arabs treats the Caliphate of 'Ali I, 656-651
Author: F. E. Peters
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400887364
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 521
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Book Description
For the non-Muslim, Mecca is the most forbidden of Holy Cities--and yet, in many ways it is the best known. Muslim historians and geographers have studied it, and countless pilgrims and travelers--many of them European Christians in disguise--have left behind lively and well-publicized accounts of life in Mecca and its associated shrine-city of Medina, where the Prophet lies buried. The stories of all these figures, holy men and heathens alike, come together in this book to offer a remarkably revealing literary portrait of the city's traditions and urban life and of the surrounding area. Closely following the publication of F. E. Peters's The Hajj (Princeton, 1994), which describes the perilous pilgrimage itself from the travelers' perspectives, this collection of writings and commentary completes the historical travelogue. The accounts begin with the Muslims themselves, in the patriarchal age of Abraham and Ishmael, and trace the sometimes glorious and sometimes sad history of Islam's central shrine down to the last Grand Sharif of Mecca, Husayn ibn Ali, whose fragile kingdom was overtaken by the House of Sa`ud in 1926. Because of chronic flooding and constant rebuilding, there is little or no material evidence for the early history of Islam's holy cities. By assembling, analyzing, and fashioning these literary accounts of Mecca, however, Peters supplies us with a vivid sense of place and human interaction, much as he did in his widely acclaimed Jerusalem (Princeton, 1985). Originally published in 1994. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Author: Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780873959216
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244
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Book Description
This volume records the lives and efforts of some of the prophets preceeding the birth of Mohammad. It devotes most of its message to two towering figures--Abraham, the Friend of God, and his great-grandson, Joseph. The story is not, however simply a repetition of Biblical tales in a slightly altered form, for Ṭabarī sees the ancient pre-Islamic Near East as an area in which the histories of three different peoples are acted out, occasionally meeting and intertwining. Thus ancient Iran, Israel, and Arabia serve as the stages on which actors such as Biwarasb, the semi-legendary Iranian king, Noah and his progeny, and the otherwise unknown Arabian prophets Hud and Salih appear and act. In the pages of this volume we read of the miraculous birth and early life of Abraham, and of his struggle against his father's idolatry. God grants him sons--Ishmael from Hagar and Isaac from Sarah--and the conflicts between the two mothers, the subsequent expulsion of Hagar, and her settling in the vicinity of Mecca, all lead to the story of Abraham's being commanded to build God's sanctuary there. Abraham is tested by God, both by being commanded to sacrifice his son (and here Ṭabarī shows his fairness be presenting the arguments of Muslim scholars as to whether that son was Ishmael or Isaac) and by being given commandments to follow both in personal behavior and in ritual practice. The account of Abraham is interlaced with tales of the cruel tyrant Nimrod, who tried in vain both to burn Abraham in fire and to reach the heavens to fight with God. The story of Abraham's nephew Lot and the wicked people of Sodom also appears here, with the scholars once again arguing--this time over what the exact crimes were for which the Sodomites were destroyed. Before proceeding to the story of Joseph, which is recounted in great detail, we linger over the accounts of two figures associated with ancient Arabia in Muslim tradition: the Biblical Job, who despite his trials and sufferings does not rail against God, and Shu'ayb, usually associated with the Biblical Jethro, the priest of Midian and father-in-law of Moses. Finally we meet Joseph, whose handsome appearance, paternal preference, and subsequent boasting to his brothers lead to his being cast into a pit and ending up as a slave in Egypt. His career is traced in some detail: the attempted seduction by Potiphar's wife, his imprisonment and eventual release after becoming able to interpret dreams, and his rise to power as ruler of Egypt. The volume ends with the moving story of Joseph's reunion with his brothers, the tragi-comic story of how he reveals himself to them, and the final reunion with his aged father who is brought to Egypt to see his son's power and glory. This is proto-history told in fascinating detail, of us in different contexts, as well as of others completely unknown to Western readers.
Author: Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780887065620
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 442
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Book Description
Volume I of the thirty-eight volume translation of Ṭabarī's great History begins with the creation of the world and ends with the time of Noah and the Flood. It not only brings a vast amount of speculation about the early history of mankind into sharp Muslim focus, but it also synchronizes ancient Iranian ideas about the prehistory of mankind with those inspired by the Qur'an and the Bible. The volume is thus an excellent guide to the cosmological views of many of Ṭabarī's contemporaries. The translator, Franz Rosenthal, one of the world's foremost scholars of Arabic, has also written an extensive introduction to the volume that presents all the facts known about Ṭabarī's personal and professional life. Professor Rosenthal's meticulous and original scholarship has yielded a valuable bibliography and chronology of Ṭabarī's writings, both those preserved in manuscript and those alluded to by other authors. The introduction and first volume of the translation of the History form a ground-breaking contribution to Islamic historiography in English and will prove to be an invaluable source of information for those who are interested in Middle Eastern history but are unable to read the basic works in Arabic.
