TABERÎ’NİN TARİH ANLAYIŞI

Year 2008, Volume: 1 Issue: 6, 88 - 103, 30.11.2008

Hasan Kurt

Abstract

With his work Târîkh al-Rusul wa al-Muluk, al-Tabarî has become the best
representative of the understanding of history in Islamic world from the
very beginning until his time. Through al-Tabarî’s work, information found
in many lost works has also reached, even if partly, at our time. In reporting
historical accounts, al-Tabarî adopted a traditionalist method so that his
reader could make a neutral assessment. In this context, he made some
methodological attempts in such a way that he helped his readers make an
assessment in their opinion. It seems that due to his oversensitivity of relia
bility the informative parts of his accounts in his work sometimes remained
behind compared with the chain of narration.
Al-Tabarî related the accounts from the creation of man to the migration
of the Prophet Muhammad in accordance the subjects, while he recorded
the events of the post-migration period in accordance with their chronolo
gical sequence. This may regarded as the lack of material at his disposal
about the ancient nations and pre-migration period. Though his work lar
gely shows the features of political history, there also exists information
including social, religious, cultural economic etc. aspects. He also made
use of such materials as poetry, letter and so on. This shows, though he did
not compile a book for the methodology of history, that the understanding
of historiography he pursued, when considered the conditions of that time,
was never at a level that could be disregarded.

Keywords

İslam tarihi,, Taberi,, Tarihu'r-rusul

References

• Ahmed Emin, Duhâ’l-İslâm, Kahire, 1972.