Ancient imperial heritage and Islamic universal historiography: al-Dīnawarī’s secular perspective

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the historical work of the ninth-century Muslim scholar Abū anīfa al-Dīnawarī. Adopting the format of universal history, al-Dīnawarī constructed a historical narrative beginning with the first human Adam, continuing through the rise of Islam and culminating in the Caliphate. This paper argues that al-Dīnawarī’s work, appropriately entitled Longer narratives, represented an attempt to configure Islamic polity into world history through a reorientation of Sasanian imperial ideology and geographical consciousness in order to fit Islamic sensibilities. As an early example of belles-lettres (adab) oriented (belletrist, adabī) universal historiography, al-Dīnawarī’s work comes across as a perceptive outlook on history, which proved relevant to dynasties of diverse origins struggling to carve a space for themselves in the Persianate political landscape of the late and post-‘Abbāsid world.