Document Type : Scientific-Research
Authors
1 Faculty Member in Department of History, Shahid Beheshti University
2 PHD Student of the History, Shiraz University
Abstract
The function of the historical sources of the early centuries of Islam in determining the conception of Muslims of different periods of the Islamic tradition and the definition of Islamic orthodoxy makes the historical critique of these texts important. The present article examines this situation in Al-Bad' wa al-Tarikh as an example of these texts, which not only has this form of importance, but also, because of its controversial structure, it has a second role and importance, in that by analyzing and recognizing the structure of the arguments in the book we can find an image of the nature and function of the Islamic reason in work among the theological movements of the early Islamic centuries. The theoretical approach of the paper is to accept the idea of social and cultural determination of knowledge, which seems to pave the way for the answer to the problem of this paper through a profound interpretation of the meaning of the text and the system of its implications. The meaning that Maḳdisī in his narrative of historical events intended to convey to the audience, far from being a reconstruction of the historical reality, is a reflection of the intellectual context of the Islamic society that shaped the lifeworld of the author. The foundations of this context, in the way that Joel Kremer expresses it, are the basis for examining his narrative/interpretation in this text. The development of cosmopolitanism, individualism, and secularism as the cultural manifestations of Islamic humanism in the fourth century are the contextual conditions that, as a problem, were Maḳdisī's motive for representing the past in the form of polemic products, in order to guide the path with the critique of those components, in the form of returning to the principles of Islam, of course, based on the interpretation to which he had an ideological affiliation.
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