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Article: Reinterpreting Islamic Historiography: Harun al-Rashid and the Narrative of the [Abbasid.sup.[subset]] Caliphate.(Review)
- Article from:
- The Journal of the American Oriental Society
- Article date:
- January 1, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 American Oriental Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Reinterpreting Islamic Historiography: Harun al-Rashid and the Narrative of the [Abbasid.sup.[subset]] Caliphate. By TAYEB EL-HIBRI. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. Cambridge: CAMBRIDGE UNIV. PRESS, 1999. Pp. x + 236. $64.95.
The caliphs, finally, have become texts. For all that modern scholarship has recognized the early Islamic chronicles to be literary rather than documentary sources, scholars have until recently been slow to subject these sources to serious literary analysis, and to treat these histories as complex and artful narratives. This is so because early Islamicists have, as a group, been prudent (to say the least) in their response to the ...