The Diary in Islamic Historiography: Some Notes

Abstract

In the Western world, the earliest extant diary is the anonymous French Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris de 1405 a 1449.1 The earliest extant diary in English is dated 1442.2 No previous diaries are known to exist. It is generally believed that diaries, the product of a heightened sense of individualism and self-awareness, had to wait for the Renaissance, after the close of the Middle Ages. The individualism of the Renaissance, in contrast to the communalism of the Middle Ages, is said to have been needed in order to produce the personal diary, as differentiated from the keeping of daily public records.3 In striking contrast to the West, Islam developed the diary very early in its history, earlier than has heretofore been known. And there is reason to believe that it antedates and is related to, three genres of historiographical literature: the annalistic, the biographical, and the combination of both in two separate sections under the same year. The following pages will therefore treat the diary and its relation to these other forms of historiography.