The Origins Of Arabic Historiography

History of Arabic Historiography is a subject of study of the origins and development of Arabic historiography.This essay tries to describe the origins of Arabic historiography,and discusses the motive force of it.The essay consists of introduction,four chapters and conclusion.The introduction explained the concept of History of Arabic Historiography,discussed the origin of this subject and the-value of the topic,introduced the past studies on it and the methods of this essay.The first chapter described historical consciousness of the Arabs in pre-Islamic times.Historical consciousness is the basic social conditions of the origins of historiography,however,the historical consciousness of every crowd has its own particularity.A vast body of legendary lore about ancient history of Arabia appeared in pre-Islamic times.In the south of Arabia,some monuments are preserved in the Minaean,Sabean,Qataban,Awsan,Hadhramaut and Himyaritic inscriptions.In the north of the peninsula,the Arabs of Nabataea,Palmyra,Ghassanid,Al-Hirah and Edessa used some forms of historical writing tradition to account the events.Oral tradition was very popular in the central of Arabia.This tradition consisted of the genealogical lore,historical story,Jahili poetry and 'Aiyam al-Arab.The second chapter discussed the development of Arabic historical writing in the times of Muhammad and Rashidun Caliphate.This discussion consists of the rise of Islam and its influence on the development of Arabic historical tradition.The Qur'an is a source of ideas on history.The study of Qur,an and Hadith promoted historical research.The Rashidun Caliphate sensed that historical knowledge is very important for government.The development of Islam produced progress of Arabic written language and writing materials.The Hijri calendar changed Arab vision of history.All of these were of great benefit to the development of Arabic historical writing.At this time,genealogical research became an important activity of the government.The converted Jews and Christians introduced their ancient stories to Muslims.Scholars started to account and collect information of al-Maghazi.The following chapter discussed the development of Arabic historical writing in the period of the Umayyad Caliphate.In this period,many historical works were finished,that benefited from the motive force of economic growth,policy support,cultural development,scholar's struggle and civilization exchange.'Ubayd b.Shanyah and Wahb b.Munabbih are two well-known scholars in ancient Yemen history.Aban b.Uthman,'Urwah b.al-Zubayr,Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri,Musa B.'Uqbah and Ma'mar b.Rashid made great contributions to the development of 'Ilm al-Maghazi wa-l-Siyar.The last chapter discussed the life of Ibn Ishaq and his work Sirat Rasul Allah.In the conclusion,the characteristics of the development of Arabic historiography until Ibn Ishaq's age,the motive forces of historiography and the position of Arabic historiography in the world historiography are discussed.