Islamic Annalistic Historiography during the Third and Fourth Centuries AH and its Relationship to non-Arab Cultural Influences

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Yarmouk University- Jordan

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This article examines Muslim historians’ contribution to the emergence and development of a form of writing history known as annalistic history, which organizes historical events annalistically by years, year after year. It provides the historian with a systematic framework wherein historical events are narrated in a specific manner. The research discusses the origin of this historiographical method as developed by Muslim historians, investigating whether it was merely borrowed from pre-Islamic cultures, specifically the Greek, Byzantine and Syriac, or instead developed by those historians in light of the Islamic tradition as well as foreign influences. The research focuses on the contribution of the annalistic history in bringing about a transformation in the historical writing of Muslims, and the establishment of an important written form in their historical literature to consolidate the identity of the Islamic nation and its cultural specificity. The study examines the Islamic historical writings that follow this form, starting from the third century AH until the fourth century AH, focusing specifically on important books such as Tārīkh Khalifa b. Khayyāt (240 AH), and Tārīkh al-Rusul wa al-mulūk by al-Tabarī (d. 310 AH), as well as other works which only survived in fragments in other works.

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