Authority and Identity in Medieval Islamic Historiography

Persian Histories from the Peripheries
Erscheinungsjahr 2018
ISBN: 978-1-107-56583-8
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 319 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 431 g

Reihe: Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization

Intriguing dreams, improbable myths, fanciful genealogies, and suspect etymologies. These were all key elements of the historical texts composed by scholars and bureaucrats on the peripheries of Islamic empires between the tenth and fifteenth centuries. But how are historians to interpret such narratives? And what can these more literary histories tell us about the people who wrote them and the times in which they lived? In this book, Mimi Hanaoka offers an innovative, interdisciplinary method of approaching these sorts of local histories from the Persianate world. By paying attention to the purpose and intention behind a text's creation, her book highlights the preoccupation with authority to rule and legitimacy within disparate regional, provincial, ethnic, sectarian, ideological and professional communities. By reading these texts in such a way, Hanaoka transforms the literary patterns of these fantastic histories into rich sources of information about identity, rhetoric, authority, legitimacy, and centre-periphery relations.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hanaoka, Mimi

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Islam & Islamische Studien Islam & Islamische Studien
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Naher & Mittlerer Osten
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein Historiographie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introduction; 2. Methodologies for reading hybrid identities and imagined histories; 3. Contexts and authorship; 4. Dreaming of the prophet; 5. Holy bloodlines, prophetic utterances, and taxonomies of belonging; 6. Living virtues of the land; 7. Sacred bodies and sanctified cities; 8. Prophetic etymologies and sacred spaces; 9. The view from Anatolia; 10. Lessons from the peripheries.

Über Autor(innen)

Hanaoka, Mimi
Mimi Hanaoka is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Richmond, where she is a scholar of history and religion. Her publications include scholarly journal articles on Persian and Islamic history and historiography. Her work as a social and cultural historian focuses on Iran and the Persianate world from the tenth to fifteenth centuries, concentrating on issues of authority and identity. In the field of global history, she concentrates on interactions between the Middle East and East Asia, focusing on the history of Iran-Japan relations.