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History as Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Julie Scott Meisami
Julie Scott Meisami*
Affiliation:
Persian Oxford University
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Extract

Confronted with the task of writing a chapter on “History as Literature” for the volume on Persian historiography in the new History of Persian Literature, I found myself asking, “What does this title mean? And what might it imply?“ In medieval Islamicate societies, “history” (Arabic ta˒rīkh, Persian tārīkh) referred both to a specific discipline and to works dealing with the objects of that discipline. If, as written works, histories may be broadly classed as “literature” (for which neither Arabic or Persian had a corresponding term until the modern period), this might suggest that historians placed style over substance, or/and that history is “imaginative writing” and may, as such, contain an element of “fiction.” Indeed, as I shall note below, recent research on Arabic historiography (which poses somewhat different problems, in the main, than does Persian) has argued that many of the “historical” accounts which appear therein are, in fact, “fiction” passed off as history.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 33 , Issue 1-2 , Spring Winter 2000 , pp. 15 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 2000

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References

1. The paper on which this article is based was originally presented in a panel on premodern Persian historiography at the 2nd International Conference on Medieval Chronicles, Utrecht/Driebergen, Holland, in July 1999. The panel's four speakers (Charles Melville, Sholeh Quinn, Ernest Tucker, and myself) are among the contributors to the volume on Persian historiography in the new History of Persian Literature (general editor: Ehsan Yarshater), which is being edited by Charles Melville.

2. Ta˒rīkh originally referred to the study of chronology (see Rosenthal, F., A History of Muslim Historiography, 2nd rev. ed. [Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1968], 11–15Google Scholar) but soon came to be applied to any type of historical writing. Other terms for “history” include akhbār (sg. khabar), “accounts,” and sīra (pl. siyar), “life/lives,” applied in the first instance to the life and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad but also, in particular, to the history of the pre-Islamic Persian kings (siyar mulūk al-Furs). See R. S. Humphreys, ‘Ta˒rīkh. II. Historical Writing,” EI2 10: 271-76; Rosenthal, Muslim Historiography, 67-98.

3. See Meisami, J. S., Persian Historiography to the End of the Twelfth Century (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999)Google Scholar, especially 289-98.

4. The relevant literature, which encompasses historical writing from the classical to the early modern period, is far too abundant to cite here. For particularly relevant essays on historiography in the European Middle Ages and the Renaissance see Breisach, Ernest ed., Classical Rhetoric and Medieval History (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University Press, 1985).Google Scholar

5. Noth, Albrecht, The Early Arabic Historical Traditions: A Source-Critical Study, in collaboration with Conrad, Lawrence I., trans. Bonner, Michael (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1994).Google Scholar

6. Noth, Studien, 109-10; see also Meisami, Persian Historiography, 283-84.

7. Leder, S., “Features of the Novel in Early Historiography: The Downfall of Xālid al-Qasrī,” Oriens 32 (1990): 74.Google Scholar

8. See Meisami, Persian Historiography, 1-2, and the references cited. Gibb also commented on the “unfavorable” influence of the Persian historical tradition on Arabic-Islamic historiography; see Gibb, H.A.R., ‘Tarikh,” in Studies on the Civilization of Islam, ed. Shaw, Stanford J. and Polk, William R. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 116–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar (originally published in the Supplement to the first edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam in 1938).

9. Seminar on the Medieval Mediterranean, C.400-C.1300, St. Hilda's College, Oxford, 25 November 1999.

10. Leder, Stefan ed., Story-Telling in the Framework of Non-Fictional Arabic Literature (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998).Google Scholar

11. Leder, , “Conventions of Fictional Narration in Learned Literature,” in Storytelling, 34.Google Scholar

12. Ibid., 34-35.

13. Ibid., 46.

14. Ibid., 55.

15. Ibid., 59. Leder's concluding statement gives the game away, as he states that “Narrative texts often oscillate between factual and fictive … because fiction has not won general acceptance as a mode of literary expression in its own right …. Story-telling is an essential component of learned literature. At instances, fictional narration is deliberately chosen as a mode of expression. As a rule, however, narration retains the guise of factuality and thus establishes its ambigious [sic] character typical of this literature. This convention seems to generate a constant play engaging narrator and recipient: The exposure of the fictional character of narration is avoided, and this mode of expression is thus integrated into the confines of refined literature. The fact that fiction did not unfold in this literature in a way comparable to the European tradition must not blur the perception of the existing range of expression” (Leder, “Conventions,” 60; emphasis mine). What we have here, it appears, is an apologia for why Arabic literature never developed “fiction” as “we” (that is, we Westerners) know it and, more importantly, define it.

16. Waldman, M. R., Toward a Theory of Historical Narrative: A Case Study in Perso-Islamicate Historiography (Columbus: Ohio State University Press), 7.Google Scholar

17. Ibid., 17.

18. Ibid., 18-19.

19. See for example the essays in Breisach, Classical Rhetoric; also Meisami, J. S., “The Past in Service of the Present,” Poetics Today 14 (1993): 247–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Meisami, Persian Historiography.

20. See Meisami, Persian Historiography, 28-37, and the references cited.

21. There is an extensive literature on the Barmakid catastrophe and its historical and literary treatments. See, for example, J. S. Meisami, “Masᶜūdi on Love and the Fall of the Barmakids,” JRAS 1989: 252-77; and, more recently, Hamori, A., “Going Down in Style: the Pseudo-Ibn Qutayba's Story of the Fall of the Barmakis,” Princeton Papers in Near Eastern Studies 3 (1994): 89–125Google Scholar; J. Sadan, “Death of a Princess: Episodes of the Barmakid Legend in Its Late Evolution,” in Stefan Leder, ed., Story-Telling, 130-57.

22. Abu ᶜAli Balᶜami, Tārīkhnāmah-i Ṭabarī, bakhsh-i chāp-nashudah, ed. Rawshan, Muhammad (Tehran: Nashr-i Alburz, 1994), 1: 1193–1200.Google Scholar

23. Balᶜami, Tārīkhnāmah, 1:1197–99.Google Scholar

24. Balᶜami, Tārīkhnāmah, 1: 1199–2000.Google Scholar

25. Luther, K. A., “Bayhaqi and the Later Saljuq Historians: Some Comparative Remarks;” in Yadnamah-i Abu al-Fazl Bayhaqi (Meshed: Danishgah-i Mashhad, 1971), 14–33.Google Scholar Luther's argument is, however, circular, since he relies on Bayhaqi's own copies of chancery documents, inserted into his history, to establish the parameters of Ghaznavid chancery style. For an illuminating insight into how official letters ought (or ought not) to be written, see Bayhaqi, Abu'l-Fazl, Tārīkh-i Bayhaqī, ed. ᶜAli Akbar Fayyaz (Mashhad: Danishgah-i Mashhad, 1971), 844–46.Google Scholar

26. Waldman, Theory, 72-73.

27. Poliakova, E. A., “The Development of a Literary Canon on Medieval Persian Chronicles: the Triumph of Etiquette,” Iranian Studies 17 (1984), 241.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28. Bayhaqi, Tārīkh, 221-46. On this portion of Bayhaqi's history see also Meisami, J. S., “Exemplary Lives, Exemplary Deaths: The Execution of Hasanak,” in Actas XVI Congreso UEAI (Salamanca: AECI, 1995), 357–64.Google Scholar

29. Bayhaqi, Tārīkh, 221-23.

30. Ibid., 223.

31. Ibid., 225.

32. Ibid., 227.

33. Ibid., 228-32.

34. Ibid., 232-34.

35. Ibid., 236.

36. Ibn Baqiyya's execution was the subject of a famous poem which Bayhaqi quotes at length. (See “Ibn al-Anbārī”, in Meisami, J. S. and Starkey, Paul, eds., Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature [London: Routledge, 1998], 1: 311Google Scholar).

37. Bayhaqi, Tārīkh: 242-43.

38. Humphreys, R. S., Islamic History: A Framework for Enquiry, revised ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 144.Google Scholar

39. Allin Luther, K., “Chancery Writing as a Source of Constraints on History Writing in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries of the Hijra,” unpublished seminar paper, University of Michigan, 1977.Google Scholar

40. See Luther, “Chancery Writing” and Allin Luther, K., “Islamic Rhetoric and the Persian Historians, 1000-1300 A.D.,” in Studies in Near Eastern Culture and History in Memory of Ernest T. Abdel-Massih, ed. Bellamy, James A. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Center for Near Eastern and North African Studies, 1990), 90–98.Google Scholar

41. Baha˒ al-Din Baghdadi credits Rashid-i Vatvat with having introduced rhymed prose and the ornate, figured style into Persian tarassul, “partly to reflect glory on his royal patron and partly to demonstrate [his] own erudition and refined style.” F.-A. Mojtabā˒ī, “Correspondence. II. Islamic Persia,” EIr 6: 292Google Scholar; Baha˒ al-Din Baghdadi, al-Tawassul ilā al-tarassul, ed. Bahmanyar, Ahmad (Tehran, 1936), 9.Google Scholar Baghdadi notes that this innovation was “not approved by the masters of style.”

42. Luther, “Chancery Writing.”

43. Luther, “Islamic Rhetoric,” 95.Google Scholar See also Meisami, J. S., “Ravandi's Rāḥat al-ṣudūr. History or Hybrid?”, Edebiyat, n.s., 5 (1995): 187–88.Google Scholar

44. Ali Ravandi, Muhammad, The Rāḥat-uṣ-ṣudūr wa-āyat-as-surūr, ed. Iqbal, Muhammad (Leiden: E. J. Brill; London: Luzac, 1921), 117.Google Scholar

45. Ravandi, Rāḥat-uṣ-ṣudūr, 117-18.

46. Unlike Nishapuri, Ravandi shows no interest in Nizam al-Mulk's personal motives; the event is, for him, paradigmatic, as it foreshadows the moral decline of the Saljuqs which culminated in their collapse in 590/1194.

47. For an overview see Meisami, J. S., “Mixed Prose and Verse in Medieval Persian Literature,” in Harris, Joseph and Reichl, Karl, eds., Prosimetrum: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Narrative in Prose and Verse (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997), 295–319.Google Scholar

48. Perhaps this should be modified: historians obviously do not include “all the facts”, that is, everything that might be said; but events as momentous as (for example) the killing of a vizier cannot be passed over in silence. It is the historian who decides what, and how much, to make of them, to suit his own purpose. Thus, for example, Bayhaqi's contemporary, ᶜAbd al-Hayy Gardizi, reports Hasanak's execution briefly and without comment, in the more general context of Masᶜud's vindictive campaign against both his father's former officials and those who had supported Muhammad (Gardizi, Zayn alakhbār, ed. ᶜAbd al-Hayy Habibi [Tehran: Bunyad-i Farhang-i Iran, 1347/1968], 196–97Google Scholar).