1 A Rose in the Desert?

Late antique and early Byzantine chronicles and the formation of Islamic universal historiography
Under exactly what conditions was produced the last molecular shock, indispensable for the expansion of the gas? We must often resign ourselves to ignorance. This is no doubt regrettable, but what of the chemists? Their position is not always much better. Nevertheless, the composition of the explosive mixture remains perfectly susceptible of analysis.

M. Bloch

1. The debate about origins For a long time studies of Islamic historiography were founded on two dogmas expressed respectively by H. A. R. Gibb and Bernard Lewis: the former asserts that Arabic historiography cropped up by spontaneous generation,1 like a rose spontaneously blooming from the arid sands of Arabia, without relation to the outside world; the second affirms that Muslim chroniclers at no time did attempt to consult Greek historical sources, or to deal in a connected form with the history of the Greek empire, and therefore he concludes that no direct connections between the Greek and Roman historiography and the Arab-Islamic one ever existed.2 As a matter of fact, the great syntheses by Jean Sauvaget,3 Claude Cahen,4 Dennis Margouliouth5 and Franz Rosenthal6 favored such a vision, and located the origins of Muslim historiography exclusively in the Pre-Islamic past and in the idea of the world elaborated by Muhammad. In this context also external elements are obviously considered (and particularly the influence of biblical tradition), but in a quite subordinate manner. In other instances the role of the Sasanian culture has been excessively emphasized: Ignaz Goldziher went as far as to claim that Arabic historiography is the child, or at least the disciple, of Persian literature.7 Nevertheless, the most enlightened scholarship has widely criticized such overstatements and has showed that Sasanian tradition, which was destined to have a significant influence among the Islamic historians at the end of 10th- and at the beginning of 11th- century A.D., plays a

1 2

Gibb (1926) 116. Cf. also Goodman (2003) 172 ff. Lewis (1962) 181. 3 Sauvaget (19612) 24-41. 4 Cahen (1986) 133-198. 5 Margouliouth (19722). 6 Rosenthal (19682) 8-17, and Id. (1962) 35-45. 7 Goldziher (1969) 382.

2 quite limited role (with the exception of the work by authors such as Ibn al-Muqaffa and Dnawar) in the historiography of early Islm.8 The most recent studies dealing with the origins of Muslim historiography often offer new rich and pertinent analysis, but they do not distance themselves from the traditional approach. Even when as, for example, in the important works by Abd al-Azz Dr,9 Fred Donner,10 Tarif Khalidi11 and Bernd Radtke,12 methodological problems are clearly displayed and the overall view of the development of history in the Islamic field is widely and fully sketched; it takes it for granted that its horizon is restricted to the Arab-Islamic world, a world still considered as apart, completely isolated from the most important cultures of the time. On the other hand, the discussion about the origin and the development of historiography in the Muslim world has for a long time concentrated on different problems, and in particular on the great question of the reliability of early Islamic literature: in fact, scholars such as Ignaz Goldziher,13 Julius Schacht,14 John Wansbrough15 and above all Michael Cook and Patricia Crone,16 starting from the analysis of the chains (isnd) of testimonies of traditions concerning Muhammad ( adt), consider all this production to be a mere late fabrication: in particular, according to Wansbrough, the two fundamental sources of Islm, the Qurn and the prophetic tradition, would not be anything but a late outcome of a sectarian controversy developed over about two centuries and fictitiously projected backwards to Muhammads time; the whole Islamic doctrine would have to be moulded on Judaic prototypes and early Islamic historiography would be only a late expression of salvations history according to the Old Testament. Moreover, according to Cook and Crone, authors of the controversial Hagarism, the Making of the Islamic World, the narration of Muslim history, at least until Abd al-Maliks caliphate (685-705 A.D.), is to be held reliable only from the prosopographical, social and anthropological point of view, but is much less valuable from the evenemential one, ever more since the historical narratives about early Islm are to be considered merely as fanciful re-elaborations of obscure qurnic passages. According to this
8

See Spuler (1955) 127; Dr (1983) 58 f.; Rosenthal (19682) 74 f.; Desomogyi (1988) 374; Cahen (1986) 141 f.; Busse (1987) 264-8; Springberg-Hinsen (1989) 5 ff., and Humphreys (1989) 273 f. 9 Dr, The Rise of Historical Writing among the Arabs. 10 Donner (1998). 11 Khalidi (1994). 12 Radtke (1991) and Id. (1992). 13 Goldziher (1890). 14 Schacht (1949), and Id. (1967) 138-59. 15 Wansbrough (1977), and Id. (1978). 16 Cook and Crone (1977). Cf. also Crone (1980), and Ead (1987).

3 interpretation, Islm emerges as an autonomous religion and culture only through a long struggle for identity. Scholars have answered in several ways to Crone and Cooks provocative thesis: James Burton.17 G.H.A. Juynboll18 and Albrecht Noth19 tried hard to attenuate their radicalism, even if they accepted, at least partly, their main propositions. Other scholars reaffirmed strenuously the reliability of early Islamic sources, above all on the basis of a careful and refined analysis of the formation and transmission of early corpora of adt, from which we can infer a very early use of writing in the historiographical field.20 A third group of scholars claimed instead a different regime of truth for the Islamic historiography, comparable to occidental historiography. These scholars considered the unreliability of accusations brought against Muslim historians (and in particular those by Crone and Cook), as an indication of an inability to understand the fundamental values of early Islamic society.21 Nevertheless, in this discussion the global context in which the Islamic culture grew takes a back seat. Recently, on the contrary, we can observe a new trend. In 2000 a German scholar, with the pseudonym of Christoph Luxenberg, presented the results of his philological studies on the interpretation of the qurnic text in a book which has provoked a heated debate: Die Syro-aramische Lesart des Koran.22 This work is an attempt to interpret several obscure passages of the Qurn by means of Syriac, the frank language of late antique Near East. Luxenbergs book has given a new impulse to the studies of qurnic philology and has tried to contextualize concretely the Qurn in the multicultural background in which it formed at the beginning of 7th century A.D. This renewed effort of contextualization has only partially concerned studies of Islamic historiography; indeed, where this has been attempted, as for instance in the case of the workshops on late antiquity and early Islm promoted by Averil Cameron and Lawrence Conrad23 and of some essays by Glen W. Bowersock and Garth Fowden,24 these scholars preferred to insist on the tricky topic of the continuity between the world of late antiquity and the Islamic world. There are however some meaningful exceptions: the most important is the work on Muslim kingship by Aziz al-Azmeh, which deals with the problem of the theories and practice of political power in Muslim polities against the background of the Near Eastern
17 18

Burton (1977). Juynboll (1983). 19 Noth (19942). 20 See Abbott (1957) and Sezgin (1967: 51-389). Cp. Khoury (1986). 21 See Radtke (1985) 59-70, and Id. (1992),4-7. 22 Luxenberg (20042). On the debate about this work see Id. (2005). 23 Cameron, Conrad, Haldon and King, eds. (1992-2004). The question of the relationship between late antique and Islamic historiography is completely absent from the important work by Leder (1992) 277-315. 24 See especially Bowersock (1990), and Fowden (2004).

4 traditions of sacred kingship, particularly Hellenistic, Persian and Byzantine.25 Furthermore it is necessary to bear in mind a few but important pages from the recent book about Islamic Historiography by Chase F. Robinson, who wonders whether it is possible that the nascent tradition [] may also have drawn upon non-Islamic schemes that were in circulation in the eighth and ninth century,26 and calls for further work on this topic. Another fundamental work is Les Arabes et lappropriation de lhistoire, by Abdessalam Cheddadi,27 which analyses the origin and early development of Muslim historiography until the 8th century AD and which represents a preliminary answer to Robinsons wishes. The explicit goal of Cheddadi is to specify the relations of continuity and discontinuity which can be identified between Muslim historiography and the earlier Greek and Jewish-Christian historiographic traditions.28 2. Possible models In a famous essay dating back to 1962, Rosenthal had extensively underlined the importance of Biblical tradition in the formation of Muslim historiography,29 showing how such tradition provided Muslim historical writing with some of its most significant elements.30 In his History of Muslim Historiography, the scholar went further, identifying some possible models for Islamic annalistic in Greek and Syriac works dating back to Late Antiquity and the early Byzantine age31. Nevertheless he seemed to underestimate the significance of his observations and ruled out the possibility that Greco-Syriac historiography [] reached Muslim historians early enough in this way to inspire their use of the annalistic form.32 When Cheddadi opened again the discussion on the issue, he did it with the theme of Biblical influences,33 and eventually moved on to deal with the forms of communications between the first Arabic-Islamic historiographical production and Byzantine historiography.34 Cheddadis tight analysis, which unfortunately analyses only the authors dating back to the first two centuries of Islm and concentrates almost exclusively on the historiographical genres of mag\z-sirah and of the adt wa l-siyr, has the merit of emphasizing the general terms of this relationship. He effectively underlines the elements of continuity and
25 26

al-Azmeh (2001). Robinson (2003) 46-50. 27 Cheddadi (2004). 28 Ibidem 20 f. Calasso (1994) 207 f. 29 Rosenthal (1962). 30 Ibidem 45. 31 Rosenthal (1968) 75-81. 32 Ibidem 80. For a similar undervaluation of the influence of the late antique historiography over the formation of Islamic historiography see also Spuler (1955) 128 f. 33 Cheddadi (1998) 141-150. 34 Cheddadi (2004) 126-163.

5 discontinuity between the two traditions, with a certain tendency to a vision of excessive continuity, to which subject I shall return.35 However, if we can widely share his approach, it is difficult to share all the points of his analysis: in particular, the description of the fundamental characteristics of late antique and Byzantine sources turns out to be very limited and superficial. Even the ways through which such sources influence the Islamic historiography are not well understood (for instance the role of John Malalas, the so-called Byzantine Kaiserkroniken and the Kleinchroniken is totally ignored).36 Furthermore, Cheddadis analysis reveals a substantial lack of comprehension of the role played by the hagiographical literature in the elaboration of the early biographies of Muhammad (according to Cheddadi these latter would be quite influenced by the Hellenistic genre of the bioi of illustrious men and by the evangelic model).37 3. Contextualization without continuity The less convincing element of Cheddadis work is represented by its strong inclinations towards continuity.38 The legitimate need to contextualize Islamic historiography in the wider background of Mediterranean culture and the desire to identify sources and models deriving from the Byzantine historiography should not prevent us from appreciating the great change represented by the advent of Islm, not only on the economic, political, social and religious level, but also on the cultural one.39 A quite illuminating example of the misunderstandings to which a continuistic interpretation can lead is offered by Cheddadis analysis of the famous Six Kings painting at Qusayr Amrah, a luxurious residence dating back to the Umayyad period and located not far from Ammn. Since its discovery by Alois Musil in 1898, the extraordinary wall-painting at Qusayr Amrah that features six rulers, three of whom labelled in Greek and Arabic as Caesar, Chosroes and Negus respectively, has stimulated the imagination and critical insight of generations of scholars. Damaged soon after discovery, and poorly preserved in spite of two subsequent restorations, this painting has hitherto remained enigmatic. In his recent book on Qusayr Amrah, Garth Fowden has argued that those six rulers are symbolic figures who stand for the whole political and cultural heritage of the world the Arabs had now

35 36

Ibidem 136-57. Ibidem 136-40. 37 Ibidem 187-97. 38 Cp. Ibidem 15-21. 39 On this point see the important considerations by Giardina (1999) 157-80. In the same perspective Morony (1989) 21-5.

6 inherited,40 thus taking the painting as a witness to the cultural continuity between Hellenistic and early Islamic worlds. Yet, he failed to consider another Arabic inscription, long since read by Enno Littmann: painted on the garment of Caesar, i.e. the Byzantine emperor, it styles the same figure as Muqawqis, i.e. Patriarch of Egypt in Arabic tradition, the lord of Alexandria and head of the Copts (and Greeks).41 As a matter of fact, this inscription belongs to the first phase of the painting, and proves to be crucial for a better understanding of the latters iconography: the presence of the Muqawqis, who must have been already next to the Roman, the Persian and the Ethiopian kings, suggests that the scene originally referred to a celebrated event of the early Islamic history, namely the embassies sent by Muh}ammad to the six kings of the earth including the ghassnid phylarch and the lord of the Yam mah in the year 6 H (= AD 628) The relevant ancient traditions, perfectly fitting in with the painting, were later canonized by Ibn Is q (d. AD 761) and al-Wqid (d. AD 823). The bilingual inscriptions, among which the one transforming the Muqawqis into Caesar, are thus likely to belong to a subsequent phase.42 Cheddadi, following the theories by Oleg Grabar and Bowersock, considers the Qusayr Amrah painting as an illustration of the ancient concept of the Family of Kings, this is to say the Persian idea of a spiritual family relationship between the rulers of the world.43 But we have seen that this interpretation is confuted by the philological examination of the painting. Beyond the superficial continuity of the artistic forms, it is therefore evident that to understand the real significance of the Qusayr Amrah painting we must look more to Islamic tradition in the strict sense than to the common background of Hellenism and Islm.44 This example should serve as a warning to those scholars who emphasize the role of the Greek heritage in the formation of the Islamic civilization.
40 41

Fowden (2004) 198. Littmann (1955). 42 See Di Branco (2008) 597-620. 43 Cheddadi (2004) 26-32. 44 Following Bowersock (1990) 81, monuments of the early Islamic period such Qu ayr Amrah and the mosaics of Umm al-Ra would represent the proof of the indigenous character of Hellenism in that part of the new Islamic world and the proof that at least some of the roots of Islam were embedded in that local Hellenism. If it is true that as it has been well demonstrated by Monneret de Villard (1966) 23-88 and Grabar (1989) the Hellenistic figurative language is one of the fundamental ingredients in the formation of Islamic art, we must underline that this language is employed only in a superficial form, deprived of all its deepest contents and communicating values which are in large part foreign to the Graeco-Roman world. The appropriation of such language by some of the Islamic artists, rather than demonstrating their striking root in the local Hellenism, appears to be dictated by the fact that the refined figurative Hellenistic (as well as Sasanian) culture represented for the Muslims the main reference point for the elaboration of an elite form of art, essential for the Islamic empire still in formation. One wonders whether the idea itself of local Hellenism is not a contradiction in terms and whether it is not more appropriate to speak of flourishing of local identities in spite of Hellenism, a universalistic and elite phenomenon par excellence. See on this subject Mazzarino (19882) 164-70.

4. Gesta dei per homines: the late antique and early Byzantine chronicles The trend of studies which promotes systematic comparison among late antique, early Byzantine and Islamic historiographical traditions has produced, in past years, another noteworthy work, Weltgeschichte und Weltbeschreibung im mittelalterlichen Islam. This work, born as a commentary on a text by the cosmographer Ibn al-Dawdr, expanded and became a ponderous study on universal history between Christianity and Islm.45 Radtke rejects the idea of a more or less direct dependence of early Islamic historiography upon nonIslamic historiography, but in his analysis of Muslim Weltgeschichte he refers continuously to the already existing studies on Christian historiography. As a matter of fact, from the Christian point of view as well as from the Islamic one, human life and history make sense only with reference to God: it is not a chance if in the Christian Orient and in the lands of Islm world history is narrated as sacred history. Typical results of this frame of mind are the so-called universal chronicles, often wrongly considered as an expression of cultural decline.46 These chronicles have the delicate task to answer to the new questions about the interpretation of the past which originates from the Christianization of the Roman empire.47 As Arnaldo Momigliano noticed, the jump from the creation of scientific chronology in the third century B.C. to the Christian canons is a wide one;48 however, the chronological problems which the early universal chronicles had to deal with were completely different from those of the past. The task of Christian chroniclers was a hard one: they had to establish the exact chronology of the vicissitudes of Gods people beginning from the Creation.49 In fact, the scope of such texts was to record the key events of world history from the specific Christian point of view, which identified in them important stages of the realization of the divine project of salvation. The language of these chronicles was very close to oral expression: in this way they became the most popular instrument of recording the past for a Christian public. Cyril Mango correctly observed that the idea of history formulated by the Byzantines is a construct of the Christian and Jewish apologists [...] and its ingredients were mostly biblical with an admixture from other sources, both classical and oriental, but always subordinated to the teaching of the Bible. This idea is at the same time providential and didactic, and is extraordinarily similar to

45 46

Radtke (1992) VII f. See for example Jones (1966) 3, and Whitby (1992) 25-80. 47 See in particular Gelzer (1898); Adler (1989); Croke (1990); Mortley (1990); Id. (1996) 151-204; Nilsson (2006), and Roberto (2006) 3-16. 48 Momigliano (1975): 17. 49 On the concept of time in paganism and Christianity is still fundamental Mazzarino (1983 2) n. 555, 412-61. On the relationship between ancient historiography and Christian revelation see Becker (2005) 1-17.

8 the Orthodox Islamic vision of universal history such as we find in the great Islamic historian abar (d. 923).50 From such a mindset derives a fundamental feature of this type of literature: in order to avoid continuous paraphrases in the account of the early events, the majority of the chroniclers chose to copy sometimes word-for-word the works of their predecessors, modifying them only in the case that they wanted to provide an original interpretation of some specific events. Therefore a sort of transmission chain was created: the most ancient texts were co-opted within the most recent ones, which somehow represented an update, eventually used and copied by other authors.51 5. An exceptional model: the Chronographia by John Malalas If the theoretical reference point of late antique chronography is certainly the Chronicon by Eusebius, its great literary model is the Chronographia by John Malalas,52 which, using an effective expression by Elizabeth M. Jeffreys, puts a little flesh onto the bare bones of Eusebius.53 As a matter of fact, Malalas narrative structures, inserting themselves in the Eusebian scheme, originated a fundamental paradigm, which for many centuries to come remained at the base of one of the most important historiographical Byzantine trends. The new role taken by biblical history in Malalas works and above all the need to connect it, even chronologically, with Classical history, caused the re-evaluation, often in an euhemeristic sense54 of the myths related to the war of Troy, useful to establish specific temporal connections,55 in addition to a growing attention for the Judaic and oriental world. This mythical history, which had already undergone a remarkable revival between the 1st and the 2nd century AD,56 would be harshly criticized by Procopius, who categorically stated that myth had nothing to do with history (save for making large use in his own work of rationalized mythical tales).57

Mango (1984) 57. On abars conception of history, see especially Rosenthal (1989) 5-154; Khalidi (1994) 7382; Radtke (1992) 16-27; Robinson (1993) 32-6, and lately Shoshan (2004) 85-107. 51 See for example Jeffreys (1979) 199-238. 52 Ioann. Mal. Chron., ed. I. Thurn (Berolini et Novi Eboraci, 2000: CFHB, XXXV). 53 Cfr. Jeffreys (1979) 216. 54 Jeffreys (1979) 223 f. 55 See for example Goulet (1987) 137-64. 56 See for example Bowersock (1989) 407-14. 57 Proc. Bell. 8.1. 12-13, to be compared with 8.2. 12-15 and 30-31, and VIII 3, 5-11. Cp. Cameron (1985) 216-9, and Scott (1990) 70-78.
50

9 According to Malalas, as well as according to the majority of the Byzantine historians, the only noteworthy governmental form is the empire (a state without emperor is not civilized or, even worse, it is not a state at all): from this position derives an absolute lack of interest in the history of the Greek cities (Malalas devotes to Periclean Athens only one line of his Chronographia)58 and of Republican Rome. From this derives a subordination of the Greek element within the Byzantine civilization to the Roman imperial component, which would lead to a vision of Byzantium as a summa of Christianity and Roman spirit, where the Greek heritage is totally unimportant, and even more, in that it is pagan, represents a danger for the soul of the good Christians.59 In Malalas work as well as in the work of his contemporary Cosmas Indicopleustes space is given to the theory of the translatio imperii (transfer of rule), which identifies in the Roman empire the climax of the succession of kingdoms: as a consequence the author is particularly interested in the relationship between empire and Church,60 in the deeds of the saints (not seldom inserted in the heart of narrations concerning political and military events)61 and in the theosophic doctrines, according to which the reflections of the Greek philosophers anticipated the divine revelation: the Chronographia quotes several times the renowned Theosophia of Tbingen, in which the Athenian philosophers announce the coming of Christ.62 Moreover one should add the fascination for the ancient monuments, seen as the relics of the ancient grandeur of the cities, and for the literary genre of the mirabilia (for example, the Patria of Constantinople), in which as Gilbert Dagron has demonstrated in a masterly manner we find the relation between past and future, which is to say between the ancestral memories of the city and the oracles and the prophecies relating to it. These latter can be revealed only by a key character, the philosopher: the person who knows, either through different techniques or through a reading which is almost a deciphering, how to combine present, past and future, the one who asks himself and who must find for everything an explanation and a mystery.63 In a similar perspective, time seems to contract and the events of the more distant time are reconstructed on the base of categories belonging to recent history. These contents of Malalas Chronographia may appear eccentric, but nevertheless they must have been largely shared by numerous chronicles of earlier date, today unfortunately disappeared.64 The same can be said of another important characteristic of Malalas work, the absence of a real critical interpretation of events, an
58 59

Ioann. Mal. Chron., ed. I. Thurn, VI 27. See especially Bratianu/Iassi (1937) 86-111; Irmscher (1981) 569-80; Id. (1982); Cavallo (1986) 91-99; Jeffreys (1979) 227-34, and Ead (1990) 60 f. 60 On Malalas and ecclesiastical history see now Martin (2004) 85-102. 61 See Boulhol (2004). 62 Cp. Bidez (1902); Jeffreys (1990) 63 f.; Scott (1990) 68 f. 63 Dagron (1984) 59. On the Patria see Cameron and Herrin (1984). On this topic see now M. Di Branco (2005). 64 Jeffreys (1979) 522, and Scott (1990) 69.

10 absence which characterizes also Procopius, a historian whose mindset is quite distant from that of Malalas.65 From the linguistic point of view, it is to be underlined that Malalas chronicle is the first work of Greek literature which is set on an absolutely vernacular register: his language is a popular one, rich in formulaic repetition, which makes it very similar to the spoken language: this is undoubtedly one of the main secrets of his success.66 Indeed, the Chronographia was widely diffused and was extensively cited by the chronicles of later age, and this explains its survival as an independent text. Malalass work had a conspicuous influence even beyond the Greek-speaking world, and in particular in the Syriac world, where we find it employed by many of the main chroniclers, from the Ps.-Dionysius of Tel-Mah}r, whose work was completed in 775 AD., to Michael Syrus (12th century AD).67 This last element is particularly relevant: as is well known, the Syriac chronicles represent one of the main sources through which the Arabic historians had access to Greek and Roman history. This means that the vision of such history transmitted to the Islamic world through the Syriac medium was deeply influenced by Malalas approach. One must therefore seriously take into consideration the possibility of an indirect impact of the Chronographias model upon the development of Islamic historiography. Unfortunately such circumstances seem to completely escape the attention of Cheddadi in whose work John Malalas is not even mentioned.68 6. Universal historiography between Byzantium and Islm With the beginning of the tenth century AD we meet three different types of universal Islamic history. They were preceded by Dnawars chronicle, a synchronized presentation of Biblical, Persian and pre-Islamic Arabic history. The first of these three types of world history is the work of Yaqb (d. ca. 900 AD), which begins with Biblical history and replaces political history with cultural history. The second type is represented by the world history of the great Muslim theologian abar (d. 923 AD). This work was incomparably more important than Yaqb, who was soon all but forgotten. abar brought to his history the scrupulousness of the theologian and the accuracy of the jurist. Its pre-Islamic history is restricted to a synchronized presentation of
65 66

See Cameron (1985) passim, and Scott (1990) 71. See Helms (1971-72) 313 f.; James (1990); Jeffreys (2003) 511 f. 67 See Witakowski (1990) 299-310; Id. (1987) 35-38, and Debi (2004) 147-164. 68 On the contrary, according to Rosenthal (19682) 76, in Ioannes Malalas, we thus have exactly the same annalistic form and contents encountered later on in Muslim annalistic historiography, and nevertheless he tends to deny (loc. cit, n. 4) a direct knowledge of Malalas by the Muslims.

11 Islamized Biblical history, Arab history and Persian history. No notice is taken of the widening of the historical and cultural horizon which had taken place during abars life. The third great universal history of the period is the work by Masd. In this book the story of the creation of the world is followed by a physical description of the earth. The treatment of pre-Islamic Arabs which stresses the cultural elements in their history is combined with a discussion of all foreign nations known to the Muslims of the tenth century. Very little space is given to the history of the Prophet. As we have seen, scholars such as Rosenthal and Radtke are excessively cautious about the possibility of the direct influence of Byzantine and Syriac models upon the formation of Islamic universal historiography. However, they make allowances for influence upon annalistic and universal history: according to Rosenthal there can be little objection to the assumption that Muslim annalistic historiography in its beginning was indebted to Greek and Syriac models;69 according to Radtke, the Vorbilder and the Ordnungsschemata belonging to the Islamic conception of universal history are to be looked for, at least in part, im syrischbyzantinischen christlichen Raum.70 As a matter of fact, both the Byzantine universal chronicles and the Islamic ones narrate the vicissitudes of Gods people on earth starting from Creation, and for this reason they belong to all effects to the sphere of the ilm, the divine science approved and transmitted by the ulam, that is the religious elite.71 In the same way, history is considered ibrah, an enlightening example, which reveals the providential divine design, just as the cosmos itself reveals the wisdom of God.72 Further elements in common to both historiographies are the idea of the translatio imperii; the lack of interest in other political experiences; the radical distortions of temporality, which made myth very close to history;73 the strong interest in mirabilia (ag^ib), prophecies and apocryphal traditions;74 the stratification of historiographical materials without an evident principle.75 Finally, two further and fundamental common peculiarities are the trend to embed, with slight variants, predecessors narrations and the use of formulae and structures recalling the oral tradition. In this regard, it
69 70

Rosenthal (19682) 77. Radtke (1992) 160. 71 Ibidem 152 f., and Springberg-Hinsen (1989) 135-144. 72 On the Islamic concept of ibrah see now Azmeh (1984) 109. 73 Ibidem 101 ff. 74 Cp. Radtke (1992) 185. 75 Cp. Scott (1990) 76.

12 is legitimate to wonder whether, as the vulgata state, such use in Muslim historiography derives from the interplay of oral and written tradition,76 or whether as the convincing considerations by Abbott and Sezgin on the early affirmation of writing in the Islamic context would make believe it is not rather the product of a specific stylistic choice within a tradition which is, all things considered, literary. One must however keep in mind that this view of the formation of Muslim historiography (consisting of its representation of ancient history, that is pre-Islamic), runs the risk of excessively stressing the elements of continuity while underestimating the elements of rupture among the various historiographical traditions of Late Antiquity. This is all the more true since, in the narration of facts relating to non Islamic people and the empires prior to the advent of Islm, Muslim historians reveal themselves to be ineluctably influenced by their sources, not only from the point of content, but also from the formal and structural one. In this sense one can easily share the reflections by R. Stephen Humphreys and Khalidi regarding the tight bond present in the Islamic chronicles between the idea of Islm as a decisive break in world history and the use of renovated narrative structures (even of qurnic derivation) in the narration of its achievements .77 At the same time it is undeniable that the vicissitudes of the prophets and kings before the Revelation offered to Muslim universal historians a never-ending repertoire of themes and models, such as, for example, the annalistic scheme which, almost paradoxically, was applied more to the events relating to the Islamic community itself rather than to the narrations of pre-Islamic history from which it derives.78 It therefore appears quite appropriate to extend also to historiography what Oleg Grabar has correctly theorized for the formation of Muslim art: the idea that the originality of the new Islamic language is based on the re-elaboration and the re-interpretation of a vocabulary and the grammatical rudiments coming from the whole conquered world and in particular from Byzantium.79

7. The mystery of the missing translations Before beginning with the analysis of Greek, Roman and early Byzantine history, and in order to underline those links between the eastern Christian and early Muslim historiographic
76 77

See Leder (1992) 277-315; Beaumont (1996), and Robinson (1993) 25 f. Khalidi (1975) 114, and Humphreys (1989) 274. 78 See Radtke (1992) 163 ff. 79 Grabar (1989) 257-70.

13 traditions which according to Humphreys remain to be explored,80 one last preliminary question should be discussed: the relative paucity of Arabic translations of Greek, Roman and Syriac historiographical works. As a matter of fact, only one Latin text translated into Arabic has come down to us, the Historiae adversus paganos by Orosius, and in all the Arabic literature less than ten Classical works translated into Arabic are mentioned: the kanon basileion (Canon of Kings) by Claudius Ptolemy; the history by John Philoponus;81 the History of Philosophers by Porphyrius;82 the Chronicon by Jerome;83 a section from the Etymologiae by Isidore of Seville;84 a Byzantine chronicle by a certain Anianus and dating to the 5th century (also known in the Syriac context);85 a chronicle dating to the 6th century and composed by a certain Andronicus;86 an anonymous Byzantine Kleinchronik;87 a History of the Greeks translated into Arabic by Habb b. Bahrz from Mosul;88 a historical Byzantine work translated by an anonymous author, used by the judge Wak (d. 918), famous for the history of Muslim juriconsults.89 If to this list, we add some brief pieces of information on Eusebius (read by the Christians of Syria, especially in the abridged version, and very popular, through a Christian intermediary, also among the Muslims),90 and sporadic references to other authors contained in the work by Ab s b. al-Munag^g^im (IXth century), citing the Contra Iulianum by Cyril of Alexandria;91 Ab Sulaymn al-Sig^istn (d. 985 AD), who knows Thucydides name and refers to sayings credited to him;92 G#ibrl ibn Buh~t (d. 1006 AD) and Masd (d. 956 AD), who mention several writings of Greek and Byzantine history,93 we will have a quite complete, if uninspiring, picture, of direct and explicitlyattested relations between late antique Greco-Roman and Syriac historiography and Arabic historiography. Obviously, scholars have many times asked themselves the reasons for this apparent lack of interest, on the Islamic side, in Occidental historical works: according to Spuler and
80 81

Humphreys (1989), n. 10, 288. See Meyerhof (1932) 12-14. 82 See Rosenthal (19682) 77 f. 83 See Dietrich (1971) 95. 84 Ibidem 95. 85 See Rosenthal (19682) 79. 86 Ibidem 78 f. 87 Ibidem 78. 88 Ibidem 79. 89 Rosenthal (19682) 79. 90 Ibidem 78, and n. 3. About Eusebius fortune in the Syriac world see especially S. Brock, Eusebius in Syriac Christianity, in Eusebius, Christianity, and Judaism, ed. by H.W. Attridge and G. Hata, Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 1992, 212-34 (= Id., From Ephrem to Romanos: Interactions between Syriac and Greek in Late Antiquity, Aldershot-Burlington, VE, nr. II). 91 Rosenthal (19682) 79. 92 iwn al- ikmah, 133, ed. Abd al-Ra mn Badaw , Tehran, Inti rt Bunyd Farhang Irn, 1974. 93 Rosenthal (19682) 79. Cp. also Goodman (2003) 171.

14 Rosenthal, for example, the pagan Greco-Roman literature would have looked suspicious to Muslim theologians (differently from the scientific texts, which usually did not attract any objection), limiting therefore their diffusion and translation.94 In Lewis opinion, on the contrary, everything should be explained by reference to the absolute lack of intellectual curiosity of the Muslim man, deriving from his deep belief in the finality, completeness, and essential self-sufficiency of his civilization.95 However the enigma of the missing translations can find another solution, if we take into consideration the idea itself of translation in Medieval Arabic culture. In a fundamental essay, Dimitri Gutas has clearly demonstrated that in the vision of the great Arabic translators of the early Abbsid period, the main criterion used to identify the text to be translated is not its form (that is the specific and precise chain of words), but rather its contents for which it was consulted in the first place.96 Muslim scholars were not therefore interested in the texts as such, but in their fundamental core, and above all in their practical utility. If this is correct, the supposed enigma can be seen in a different light: it is enough to consult the Greco-Roman sections of any Muslim universal history to find in a condensed form everything that Islamic culture considered it useful to know about the history of those civilizations. They represent heterogeneous historical materials which substitute the translations:97 these texts can be often recognized and ascribed to specific sources (Alexander Romance, Malalas, Eusebius etc.), but more often belonging to the large group of Byzantine Kleinchroniken and Kaiserchroniken (not seldom simple lists of kings and emperors from the Biblical era down the Byzantine age).98 We could say that somehow they are themselves interpretative translations in the sense specified by Gutas, that is to say without any interest for philological accuracy and correspondence to the original, but with a strong inclination to the selection and synthesis of the information considered useful. Not acknowledging their existence (and their origin) simply because the explicit citation of the sources is missing, means ignoring the dynamics of ancient and medieval historiography. On the other side, just as the Arabic translations of scientific and philosophical Greek texts are always aimed at applied and theoretical science, in the same way the historical synthesis derived from Greek and Syriac sources was immediately put to the service of Islamic
94 95

Spuler (1955) 128 f.; Rosenthal (19682) 75 f., and Id. (1975) 24-8. Lewis (1962) 180 f. 96 Gutas (2002) 164 f. 97 An analogous phenomenon happens in the Syriac tradition. Cp. For example Debi (2004) 149. 98 See especially Schreiner (1967) 3-6.

15 historiography which incorporates them, making (with few exceptions)99 the creation of autonomous translation of historical texts superfluous. It is evident that the activities of translation and synthesis could involve only Greek and Syriac works easily accessible, and, above all, in line with the historical vision proper to Islamic history. To Lewis, who laments the fact that Muslims had no curiosity for Greek history narrated by Herodotus or by Thucydides, one could object that not even the Byzantines, legitimate heirs of the Greeks, were very much interested in it: the history of the polis remains, in every sense, outside of the providentialistic Islamo-Christian perspective.100

99

In this regard, we must underline that Levi Della Vida (1954) has demonstrated that also the famous Arabic version of Orosius is not a literal translation, rather an interpretative one: in it we can find several interpolations coming from other sources. 100 See also Robinson (2003) 131 f.

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