Abstract
This chapter will recount briefly the main elements of Islam’s inspirational narrative and explore which aspects align with historically factual evidence and which are best understood as religious narrative, incorporating a measure of creative interpretation. It will examine the contextual background to the origins of Islam, including the array of religious movements that were occurring at the time that the inspirational narrative suggest constitute the foundations of the Islamic community. The chapter will attempt to interpret the inspirational Islamic narrative against this background, especially to help in explaining those elements of the narrative that do not conform easily to recorded history. The chapter will attempt to achieve these tasks with particular attention to al-Tabari’s voluminous The History.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Al-Ijtihad. (2011). Prophet Ibrahim. Available at: http://www.alijtihadcom/library/prophets/ProphetIbrahim.pdf.
Althusser, L. (1971). Lenin and philosophy, and other essays (B. Brewster, Trans.). London: New Left Books.
Barthes, R. (1973). Mythologies/Roland Barthes (A. Lavers, Trans.). London: Granada.
Barthes, R. (1979). From work to text. In J. Harari (Ed.), Textual strategies (pp. 73–82). New York: Cornell University Press.
Barthes, R. (1981). The discourse of history. Comparative Criticism, 3(1), 7–20.
DeMarris, E., Castillo, J. L., & Earl, T. (1996). Ideology, materialization and power strategies. Current Anthropology, 37, 15–31.
El-Hibri, T. (1999). Reinterpreting Islamic historiography: Harun al Rashid and the narrative of the Abbasid caliphate. New York: Cambridge University Press.
El-Hibri, T. (2010). Parable and politics in early Islamic history: The Rashidun caliphs. New York: Columbia University Press.
Kearney, R. (1988). The wake of imagination. London: Routledge.
Kearney, R. (2004). On Paul Ricoeur: The owl of Minerva. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Pub.
Kearney, R. (2010). Imagining the sacred stranger. In J. H. Dyck (Ed.), Politics and the religious imagination (pp. 16–30). Hoboken: Taylor and Francis.
Ricoeur, P. (1971a). Critique of ideology. In G. Ormiston & A. Schrift (Eds.), The hermeneutic tradition: From Ast to Ricoeur (pp. 298–335). New York: SUNY Press.
Ricoeur, P. (1971b). The model of the text: Meaningful action considered as a text. Social Research, 38, 529–562.
Ricoeur, P. (1990). Time and narrative (3 volumes) (K. McLaughlin, D. Pellauer & K. Blamey, Trans.). Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Ricoeur, P. (1991). From text to action. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press.
Ricoeur, P. (2011). Paul Ricoeur: Poetics and religion (T. Hettema, P. Vandecasteele & J. Verheyden, Eds. & Trans.). Leuven: Peeters.
Rosenthal, F. (1970). Knowledge triumphant: The concept of knowledge in mediaeval Islam. Leiden: Brill.
Rosenthal, F. (1989). ‘The History’’ of al-Tabari. New York: SUNY Press.
Rosenthal, F. (2005). The Muqaddimah: An introduction to history/Ibn Khaldûn (N. Dawood Ed., F. Rosenthal Trans.). Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Shoshan, B. (2004). Poetics of Islamic historiography: Deconstructing Tabari’s history. Leiden: Brill.
Thwaites, T., Davis, L., & Mules, W. (2002). Introducing cultural and media studies: A semiotic approach. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Wansbrough, J. (1978). The sectarian milieu: Content and composition of Islamic salvation history. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Yarshater, E. (1999). The history of the prophets and kings. New York: SUNY Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lovat, T., Moghadam, A. (2018). The History as Islam’s Inspirational Religious Narrative. In: The History of Islam . SpringerBriefs in Religious Studies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67717-0_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67717-0_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-67716-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-67717-0
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)