Borrut :
This article argues that the agreed-upon periodization of early Islam is an Abbasid-era construct that became a binding framework for later generations of historians down to modern times.
Of course.
It also contends that scholars have tended to ignore the fact that this periodization was first and foremost an Abbasid claim to power.
Of course.
It investigates the Abbasid-era construction of the past and demonstrates that alternative periodizations were used prior to these massive efforts to enclose the past into a rigid structure, and so it sheds light on forgotten alternative pasts.
I'm not sure that Borrut have understand all. But as an academic, he cannot tell what he wants.
This disinterest is perhaps best exemplified by the fact that a history of (early) Islamic time has yet to be written. The question of the introduction of the Islamic (hijri) calendar, has to date received only tangential attention
Cf. Pourshariati about the Arab/Sassanian war in Iraq.
We are accustomed to think in terms of Jāhiliyya, Prophetic
period, Rāshidūn era, Umayyad mulk, and Abbasid dawla, not to mention several
fitnas along the way. But such periodizations would certainly be quite surprising
if not largely unintelligible to most of the actors of early Islam. What were, for instance, the changing meanings granted to the pre-Islamic past under the label of Jāhiliyya?Would all of their contemporaries have considered ʿUthmān or ʿAlī “rightly guided,” as once asked by Morony?Was Ibn al-Zubayr a mere rebeland ʿAbd al-Malik the sole legitimate caliph, a view recently challenged by Chase Robinson?(Robinson, ʿAbd al-Malik, 31–48.)
The Emperor's New Clothes...
Indeed, the place granted to Syria in Islamic narrative sources, or perhaps, more aptly, the oblivion of the former Umayyad heartland of power, is largely explained by the periodization imposed onto Islamic history. The pre-Islamic past and theProphetic period are firmly anchored – if not locked – in the Arabian Peninsula,³³while the successful and cosmopolitan Islamic Empire of the classical age was centered on Baghdad, on Iraq, and to a large extent on Iran as well – that is, looking East and not West.
Yes.
I have argued elsewhere that this dichotomy between Umayyad Syria and
Abbasid Iraq, between white and black if you will, was an Abbasid-era construct
and a deliberate attempt to lock memories into clearly delimited and antagonistic
spaces. The links between periodization and space noted above are here
quite obvious. Umayyad and Abbasid histories were, in other words, rewritten at
the mirror of the Euphrates, thus depriving us of a global understanding of the
dynamics of power of both dynasties at the scale of the Empire
It's more simple than that.
The historiographical vulgate that resulted from these efforts is unmistakably Iraq-centered.The consequences of this remark are extremely important for approaching Syrian history, and they largely explain why Syria occupies such limited space in mainstream chronicles. It is not just a question of geography and space but first and foremost a question of periodization. Restricted to its Umayyad past, Syria had to vanish from the scene with the demise of the first dynasty of Islam to make room for the Abbasids who had their own claims to make. Forgetting Syria was indeedcritical for the new masters of Baghdad, and the second dynasty of Islam thus carefully erased its Syrian roots in Ḥumayma (in modern-day Jordan), where the family had been settled for decades under the Umayyads, while stressing their links to Iraq and Khurāsān.³⁸( Borrut, Entre mémoire et pouvoir, 210–17.)
It is impossible to fully discuss here the reasons explaining why this rewriting of the past was widely accepted,
It is yet very simple (there is no plot). But Borrut is still stuck to the main issue.
Topic: Qur'anic studies today