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As the fourth edition of Ostour was going to press, we received news of the loss of our dear friend and colleague, Dr. Mohamed Tahar Almansuri. Dr. Almansuri had been a key member of the Ostour editorial board. Having inspired us with his wisdom and erudition, we firmly believe that his influence will live on through his intellectual achievements. It is very fitting that the current issue bears his imprint so clearly in many of the articles.
In this issue, Ostour publishes an obituary of the late historian’s life and work written by Deputy Editor-in-Chief Abdelrahim Benhadda, as well as book reviews contributed by Dr. Almansuri, alongside two reviews of Almansuri’s last work, “Tunisia in the Middle Ages: Ifriqiya from Subordinate Emirate to Independent Sultanate”.
The fourth edition of Ostour also brings together theoretical studies concerning writing of European history at the end of the nineteenth century with an outstanding translation of the introduction to Hayden White’s Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe under the title “The Poetics of History” and “History, Memory, and History Writing” by Wajih Kawtharani. There are also a number of articles on cultural, political, and religious history largely based on archival and documentary research for the periods in question. Finally, the fourth edition offers a number of book reviews including historical sources with a piece entitled “Who is Andrad of Seville, author of ‘On the nature, kinds, and deeds of the horse?’” and oral testimonies from marginalized Syrians collected at the end of the 20th century by Syrian historian Abdulla Hana who specializes in social and oral history. Featured in the “Trends” section is an interview with historian Wajih Kawtharani and Ostour’s seminar entitled “Problems of Historical Research in the Arab World” in which a number of prominent Arab researchers and historians participated. Abstracts of all of the articles published within the latest edition of Ostour, are available in English translation below.
Table of Contents
Wajih Kawtharani: History, Memory, and Historiography: A Study of Sykes-Picot, the Caliphate, and the Memory of Religious Denominations in Lebanon
Hayet Amamo: The Biography of the Prophet: Narrators and Authors
Mohamed Tahar Mansouri: The Navigation Industry in Ibn Khaldoun's Muqaddimah
Abdelhakim Seifeddin: Scholarly Endowments (Waqf) for Rasulid Women in Zabid 626 - 858 AH/1229 - 1454 AD
Yahya Mohamed Ahmed Ghaleb: The Religious Obligation of the Pilgrimage from Indonesia to Mecca: The Hostility of the Dutch in the Second Half of the 19th Century
Khalid Tahtah: German Historiography and the Nazi Complex
Zeinab Hamouda: Tangier under Spanish Occupation (1940 - 1945)
Hayden White | Thaer Deeb: The Poetics of History
Rachid Affaki: Who is Andrad of Seville, Author of On the Nature, Kinds, and Deeds of the Horse?
Abdullah Hanna: Marginalized in Syria at the Turn of the Century:
Oral Testimonies
Fields of Historical Research in the Arab World (Ostour's Seminar)
A Conversation with Lebanese Historian Wajih Kawtharani
Wajih Kawtharani: History, Memory, and Historiography: A Study of Sykes-Picot, the Caliphate, and the Memory of Religious Denominations in Lebanon
History as a science (that is as an academic endeavor based on a method defined by rules) differs from historical memory, especially collective memory based on "recollection". The latter is a process that takes on various images formed over historical time and which is tinged with various emotions, perspectives, and positions, as well as anachronisms which are used (whether consciously or unconsciously, mostly the latter) for identity-based aims or other collective aims. This paper presents three examples of "histories" prevalent in Arab historical discourse: the historical discourse over Sykes-Picot; the historical discourse over the Caliphate and its abolition; and the histories of the various religious confessional groups in Lebanon. The paper studies the process of ideological-political transformation of events, which in some cases results in their mythologization, in prevailing historical discourses.
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Hayet Amamo: The Biography of the Prophet: Narrators and Authors
Ibn Ishaq is generally regarded to be the earliest author of the Prophet Mohammed's biography (sira). Ibn Ishaq was able to make the most of Medinan authors who preceded him, including luminaries such as Asim ibn Omar, Yazid ibn Ruman and Ibn Shihab Al Zuhri as well as Urwah ibn Alzubair, Aban bin Othman and Musa ibn Uqba. Additionally, Ibn Ishaq's Sira relied on such sources as the Israeliyat—Arabic sources on the lives of the prophets, based on the Old and New Testaments—and contemporaneous oral histories of the prophet. Ibn Ishaq's achievement was that he introduced a completely new form of Arabic literature, totally separate to the Hadith, or Koranic exegesis (Tafsir), the two sources on which Sira relied. The emergence of this new genre can be understood as a response to the need of Muslim society to immortalize the memory of the Prophet and make him an example to be emulated, but without the total renouncement of the pre-Islamic heritage, in which stories were a prime and influential element. In its method and structure, the sira of Ibn Ishaq is considered the nucleus for the development of many other Islamic disciplines such as history and short biography (tabaqat), which included, alongside histories of the prophets, the nations, and the Muslims, and the biographies of the sahaba and the tab'iun, a section devoted to the sira.
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Mohamed Tahar Mansouri: The Navigation Industry in Ibn Khaldoun's Muqaddimah
In his Muqaddimah of Ibn Khaldoun, the great author asserts that Arab only became sea oriented after their original encounter and intermingling with maritime civilizations. Ibn Khaldoun traces this original reluctance back to the history of the Arab Bedouin, which, he said, prevented Arabs from living a seaborne lifestyle. Despite this, claimed Ibn Khaldoun, the Arabs succeeded in conquering the sea at a time when, according to the author, "the Christians were unable to put a plank [in the Mediterranean]". The Arabs' relation with the sea, he noted, evolved in historical cycles (maritime cycles). These maritime cycles according to Ibn Khaldoun appeared as follows: the first occurred when the Carthaginians fought the Romans, and used to send fleets to war; the second cycle came with the Romans and Goths' domination over the sea, Ifriquia (Tunisia), and Morocco; the third cycle was witnessed with the Arab-Islamic domination which in turn had three waves, the first one was the period under Caliph Umar Ibn Al-Khattab who was reluctant to use naval power, the second period in which Arabs had absolute domination of the sea followed by a third period of weakness and decline. The final cycle Ibn Khaldun calls the cycle of Christian victory.
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Abdelhakim Seifeddin: Scholarly Endowments (Waqf) for Rasulid Women in Zabid 626 - 858 AH/1229 - 1454 AD
The primary and secondary sources for social history, and parts of the media, often present a gloomy picture of the status of women in Islamic history, and the waning, if not disappearance, of their role in public life, particularly in Yemen. In reality, such a picture might be credible at certain periods and in limited geographic regions, but it would be wrong to generalize across time and space. Scholars have long neglected the role of religious endowments (Waqf, pl. "Awqaf") and their influence in scholarly revival, as a pioneering institution of civil society in Islamic history. Hence the significance of this study in observing the contribution of women and the waqf during the Rasulid era in Yemen, a dynasty that ruled Yemen from 1229 to 1454, with a focus on the scholarly waqf of Rasulid women in Zabid. Thanks to these endowments, and the educational institutions they created and support, Zabid became a scholarly city. The main conclusions of the study are that women in the Rasulid era contributed to the revival of scholarship in Yemen and in Zabid in particular. Even after the Zabid dynasty moved its capital to Taiz, Zabid retained its political and intellectual significance.
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Yahya Mohamed Ahmed Ghaleb: The Religious Obligation of the Pilgrimage from Indonesia to Mecca: The Hostility of the Dutch in the Second Half of the 19th Century
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the pilgrimage to Mecca became of great interest to Dutch colonial authorities, who used all means to prevent it, or at least minimize its significance and reduce the number of Muslims traveling to Mecca each year to perform Hajj. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the pilgrimage of Indonesian Muslims to Mecca became a problem for the Dutch colonial authorities, particularly after the influence that a visit to Mecca had on the thinking and behavior of Indonesian pilgrims, who would go on to launch nationalist uprisings. This study begins by looking at the stature of Hajj for Muslims in Indonesia and the factors that gave it particular extra-religious significance. The author provides some statistics which demonstrate the great enthusiasm of Indonesian Muslims for Hajj, and the concomitant religious motivations for the pilgrims, in addition to the enhanced social prestige of those who completed the journey. The author then moves on to explore the hostility of the Dutch colonial authorities to the Hajj, and the measures which they took against Muslims in Indonesia to prevent them going to Muslim holy sites in the Hejaz.
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Khalid Tahtah: German Historiography and the Nazi Complex
Since the Second World War, large parts of the Nazi past have been off limits to critical discussion in Germany and across Europe. The unexpected turn taken by German capitalist society following the rise of the Nazis ended with the catastrophe of World War II, and the institutionalization of mass slaughter. Issues connected with the Nazi period in Germany have created considerable internal debate among major historians and philosophers focused on questions such as the uniqueness of Nazism and its crimes, and whether the German tradition after World War II enshrined an avoidance of dealing with issues linked to the Nazi period out of feelings of guilt and self-reproach felt by German historians. However, a number of new directions in historical research in Germany have opened up the subject of the Nazis and related issues. The history of the everyday life (Alltagsgeschichte) forms one of the new avenues in German historiography that has been able to overcome the taboos around the period following the fall of the Third Reich. An exploration of this topic could shed light on a previously neglected, unique experience in European history.
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Zeinab Hamouda: Tangier under Spanish Occupation (1940 - 1945)
The author aims to shed light on the history of the city of Tangier during World War II. The city was an international zone from 1923, arrangement designation that differed from the protectorate applied to the other parts of Morocco. Spain under the Franco dictatorship took advantage of the outbreak of World War II to occupy Tangier on June 14, 1940, thereby actualizing a longstanding Spanish imperialist aspiration to control the city. All the existing institutions of the international zone were abolished and the city was annexed in full to the Spanish protectorate. The economic, social and political impacts of the Spanish occupation were negative. This led to many reactions by the inhabitants of Tangier who rejected the occupation that threw their city into crisis, and dashed their hopes for a restoration of the rights usurped by the international zone system. The occupation ended with the end of the war, and on October 11, 1945 the Spanish withdrew from Tangier, which returned to international control once again, setting the stage for a new chapter in the history of Tangiers which, together with other Moroccan cities, quickly moved to make the most of new dynamics in world affairs to demand independence for the country.
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Hayden White | Thaer Deeb: The Poetics of History
Hayden White's Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe has remained an essential book for understanding the nature of historical writing. In this classic work, White argues that a deep structural content lies beyond the surface level of historical texts. This latent poetic and linguistic content - which White dubs the metahistorical element - essentially serves as a paradigm for what an appropriate historical explanation should be. To support his thesis, White analyzes the complex writing styles of historians like Michelet, Ranke, Tocqueville, and Burckhardt, and philosophers of history such as Marx, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Croce. The first work in the history of historiography to concentrate on historical writing as writing, Metahistory sets out to deprive history of its status as a bedrock of factual truth, to redeem narrative as the substance of historicality, and to identify the extent to which any distinction between history and ideology on the basis of the presumed scientificity of the former is spurious.
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Rachid Affaki: Who is Andrad of Seville, Author of On the Nature, Kinds, and Deeds of the Horse?
The real identity of the author writing On the Nature, Kinds, and Deeds of the Horse, a manuscript that has languished in a Moroccan library for centuries, has puzzled many researchers. The name given in the manuscript, of which only three copies are known to exist, is Andrad of Seville. For years it has been assumed that Andrad of Seville might have been Imam Faqih Hakim Abu al-Qasim Mohammed bin Mohammed al-Ummawi, known as Ibn Andras from Mercia, who died in AH 674. Yet, it can be gleaned from the introduction within the manuscript that its author wrote it in a language other than Arabic, and that the text is in fact an Arabic translation. This paper shall demonstrate that the manuscript's author is not, as previously believed, Ibn Andras. Through an examination of Spanish and Portuguese works, and the view that the author must have had Spanish/Andalusian origins, the study leads to the conclusion that Andrad of Seville is none other than Pedro Fernández de Andrada, author of De la Naturaleza del Cavallo, or "On the Nature of the Horse", a work in Spanish published in Seville in AD 1580.
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Abdullah Hanna: Marginalized in Syria at the Turn of the Century:
Oral Testimonies
Abdullah Hanna, one of the most prominent historians of modern Syria, was a keen adopter of the methods of oral history, and was especially fond of the structured field interview. Hanna's scholarly work was underpinned by his belief in value of the oral history gained through such interviews as the starting point for a history of the "voiceless". In other words, Hanna's work formed part of a global interdisciplinary approach towards a "history from below", and which combined academic history with anthropology and sociology. Hanna was particularly keen to study questions of land ownership and the role of peasants and serfs in modern Syria. Ostour is publishing a number of texts which Hanna collected during his interviews of marginalized Syrians during the final two decades of the twentieth century, making them available to scholars interested in Social History and how it can confirm the present-day history of Syria.
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Fields of Historical Research in the Arab World (Ostour's Seminar)
Ostour held its third discussion seminar on the subject of "Fields of Historical Research in the Arab World" on the fringes of the ACRPS conference "Arab History and Historiography: How was Arab History Written, and How is it Being Written Today" held from April 22 - 24, 2016. The seminar was organized into four sessions. The first was chaired by Nasireddin Saidouni and was devoted to theoretical and institutional aspects of writing Arab history. The second session was facilitated by Wajih Kawtharani and discussed examples of historical research in the Maghreb both before and after colonialism. The third session was devoted to problems of modernity and national belonging as a field for historical research, and was chaired by Abdelrahim Benhadda. The fourth and final session was chaired by Ibrahim Qadiri Boutchich, and explored the themes of modernity and patriotism as a subject of historical study. The editorial board of Ostour were keen to include interventions and ensuing discussions, and to make them available to readers.
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A Conversation with Lebanese Historian Wajih Kawtharani
Masarat (Arabic for "Trajectories") introduces Arab scholars who have made distinguished contributions through their historical writings, and reveals their relationships with their subjects as well as the material, methodological and practical difficulties they encountered. This section also reflects on the extent to which these researchers have benefited from contemporary historiographical schools of thought and their openness to the other social sciences. In this edition, Ostour introduces its readers to Lebanese historian Wajih Kawtharani, who discusses with readers of Ostour his experience of academic history and his approach to historical material. Kawtharani also uses Masarat to explain his fascination with the history of Greater Syria under Ottoman rule, the history of ideas, questions of (collective) memory and of historiography.
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