Traditional Historiography Research Articles

Medina to House of Wisdom: Islam and Muslim Contribution to Science of History

This paper explores the pivotal role of Islam and Muslim scholars in advancing the science of history from the early days of Medina to the flourishing intellectual center of The House of Wisdom. This study aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the evolution of historical methodologies, preservation of historical knowledge, and cultural essence in both pre-Islamic and Islamic realms. Employing a qualitative research approach, the paper analyzes various genres of Islamic historical writing, including Tabaqat, Tarajim, geographical history, and universal history, as well as the methodologies used in documenting and analyzing historical events, such as logical interpretation, natural law interpretation, and speculative interpretation. Through an examination of libraries, scholars, and the transmission of historical knowledge, the paper highlights the enduring legacy of Islamic historiography and its impact on subsequent historiographical traditions. The research findings underscore the significance of Islamic historiography in shaping our understanding of the past and its ongoing relevance in modern academic research, while also suggesting avenues for future research to further explore the rich heritage of Islamic historical scholarship.

The City, the Neighborhood, and the Street: Toward a Global Urban Labor History?

Abstract Labor scholars have increasingly recognized the need to look beyond the workplace and explore where and how workers lived, socialized, shopped, or protested. The six books reviewed in this essay contribute to understanding how modern cities shaped the process of working-class formation as well as workers’ identity, experiences, and economic and material conditions. From different standpoints, these urban and labor histories of Paris, Mexico City, Miami, Port Said, Montevideo, and Santiago, Chile, demonstrate the impact of urban modernization, industrial capitalism, and migration on working families. By bringing together books from different regions and historiographical traditions, this essay also reflects on the possibilities and challenges of writing a global labor urban history.

Was Grand Duchy of Lithuania a Federation?

According to received wisdom in the historiography of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL), going back to M. Dovnar-Zapolski, M. Liubavski, O. Halecki, the territorial form of government in the GDL was federal in the late XV-early XVI century. The paper critically reviews the arguments advanced in favor of this thesis and argues that the concept of empire describes the territorial organization of GDL in a more accurate way. The criticism of the federalist theory is grounded in the conceptual analysis of the state forms provided by the distinguished Lithuanian historian and law theorist Mykolas Rėimeris (1880-1945). In his analysis, M. Rėimeris draws the distinction between a unitary state and three types of state compounds: federation, confederation, and empire. While federation and empire share the principle of subordination as the mode of organization, in the empire this is the subordination to a privileged metropole territory and cultural-ethnic group, while in federation all territories are subordinated to the federal center on parity grounds, all participating in federal government. Supplementing M. Rėimeris' ideas with those from the contemporary comparative sociological research on empires and imperialism (S. Eisenstadt, M. Doyle, A. Motyl, Ch. Tilly), the author argues that GDL was an empire because relations between Lithuania in the strict sense (including also some Russian lands annexed by the early XV century) and Polotsk, Vitebsk, Smolensk, Volynia, Kiev, Samogitia, etc. were those of subordination of the periphery to the imperial metropole. The proponents of the federalist thesis mistake as federalism what in reality was a system of indirect rule characteristic for premodern empires. The historiographical tradition was blind to imperial features of GDL because it implicitly or explicitly compared GDL with the Moscow state, considering it as a paradigmatic case of empires. However, the Moscow empire represents only one specific type of empire - Westphalian empire, distinguished by the early application of direct rule. While most medieval polities were transformed into sovereign territorial states and Westphalian empires in the early modern time, GDL was unique in following the path of federalization. However, GDL was transformed into a federation only on the eve of the Lublin Union in 1569, while in the XIV-first half of the XVI century it was a traditional empire, including metropolitan military agrarian domains and indirectly ruled peripheral areas shading into areas of mere hegemony.

Roman History

We start this survey in Italy during the early first millennium bce; a context on which Seth Bernard's new monograph offers an exciting, and in several respects transformative, contribution.1 Its general claim is that, while Rome did not develop a historiographical tradition until Fabius Pictor, there was a keen and pervasive interest in history across ancient Italy, since the early Iron Age, which played out across a wide range of venues and media. The brief of the historian must be to jettison any hierarchical approach to the interplay between textual and archaeological evidence, and to take as broad a view on what history amounts to as possible.

Contracorriente. Volver a mirar la historia de la arquitectura en Chile a través de las mujeres

Based on the ideas of art historian Griselda Pollock regarding the definition and critique of hegemonic cultural discourses, this article explores the possibilities for revising the history of architecture in Chile between 1920 and 1980 from a gender perspective. By employing Pollock's framework for understanding selective historiographical traditions, the article constructs a broad and heterogeneous panorama of significant figures at a local scale. The discussion concludes with reflections concerning the theoretical challenges involved in constructing a history of women in architecture.

An Evaluation of Köprülü Fazıl Ahmed Pasha's Foreign Policy

Abstract Historiographical tradition has tended to view the Köprülü-era foreign policy as one of conscious expansion, fueled by religious fervor. The descriptions of the seventeenth-century Ottoman chroniclers to that effect influenced the researchers of the twenty-first-century, too. However, in the reports of European diplomatic representatives active in Istanbul at the time, we see that the expansionary policy in the Köprülü period was not actually a pre-planned phenomenon with religious motivations; it was more likely that the grand viziers responded to the urgent problems arising from the political conjuncture of the period. To be more precise, this study argues that events such as the Érsekújvár Expedition (1663), the Siege of Candia (1667-69), and the Campaign of Kamieniec (1672), which all took place during the reign of Köprülü Fazıl Ahmet Pasha (r. 1661-76), could not be explained by religious motivations alone. Instead, the present study argues that a better way to understand Fazıl Ahmed Pasha's foreign policy is interpreting it from an international relations perspective through the neoclassical realist parameters of the individual, state structure, and international system.

The concept of “popular royalism” in the latest historiography of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Era: pro and contra

In recent years, the concept of “popular royalism” has gained popularity in the historiography of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. The author of the article analyses the main tenets and criticisms of this concept based on the writings of the three main theorists, Paul Choplin, Álvaro Paris, and Andoni Artola. The term “popular royalism” appeared as a result of an incomplete discussion about the essence of counter-revolution in European countries in the late 18th – early 19th centuries. According to the authors of the concept, royalist and counter-revolutionary movements were not retrograde in nature and met the actual demands of different layers of society in the situation of civil war. The counter-revolution gave rise to an alternative way of politicization of the masses and contributed to the emergence of new models of their political participation. The royalists monopolised old sources of political legitimacy and adapted familiar discourses and images to new challenges. Drawing on the idea of legitimacy, they put forward a wide range of demands that were not only conservative but also innovative. Nevertheless, specific regional casess, especially from Italian history, show that the cross-class alliances led by the royalists were temporary and unsustainable. These alliances contributed to the Restoration, but only with foreign military intervention. Yet, since the national historiographical traditions are still very stable, the proposed new concept of popular royalist movements requires substantial clarifications, taking into account the specifics of the historical development of different countries and regions.

PROBLEMATIKA NASKAH SEJARAH DI DUNIA MELAYU: ANTARA MITOS DAN REALITA (STUDI KASUS HIKAYAT RAJA PASAI)

One of the challenges that historians and philologists face is analyzing historical texts, especially traditional historiographic works like 'babad' and 'hikayat,' which may have been added to or subtracted from in various aspects. Such manuscripts cannot be considered the primary reference source for constructing a chronological history, as they lean more towards historical literature constructed from the author's imagination. This article discusses the challenges posed by Malay manuscripts that contain elements of myth and imagination. The study takes a case example of the manuscript "Hikayat Raja Pasai". The objective is to examine the position and role of hikayat or traditional historiography in general concerning the narration of history and its acceptance as a historical source. The research employs a descriptive-analytical method through several stages, including: 1) manuscript selection, 2) literature review, 3) content analysis and identification of imaginative elements in the manuscript, 4) examination of history to verify the accuracy of information, 5) interpretation of results, 6) writing, and 7) drawing conclusions. From this study, it was found that despite containing myths, hikayat still plays a role as a means to showcase the character of a community, aiding readers in understanding a belief, and myths are often more effective in raising human awareness and guiding them towards improvement. However, in accepting hikayat as a historical source, a critical and selective approach is necessary. Therefore, the application of historical methods is crucial to identify which elements can be used as historical sources and which ones should be considered purely imaginative.

Дореволюционные историографические источники об административно-правовой интегра-ции Северного Кавказа к России во второй половине XIX – начале XX вв.

The article examines the legality of using pre-revolutionary authors’ works not only as historical but also as historiographical sources, drawing on materials from Russia’s administrative and legal policy in the North Caucasus in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This approach opens up new avenues for extracting information from previously known scientific works, because, in addition to data on the topic under study, the historiographer considers the au-thor’s personality, level of education, intelligence, literary quality of the text, the goals of the arti-cle or book, the concepts defended, the ideological positions of the publication/publisher’s edito-rial board, and so on. This approach expands the informative significance of the publications un-der study, helps to comprehend their place among other works on the research topic. The article assesses the study’s core concept – “historiographical source” – in regional and all-Russian historiography. The analysis of the potential of the materials presented in pre-revolutionary historiography allows the entire corpus of historiographical sources to be divided into several hierarchical groups: monographs (books), collections of documents, articles summa-rizing works, reviews, obituaries, reference materials, documents of local lore organizations, and so on. This article employs certain categories of historiographical sources. The viewpoint on dividing the pre-revolutionary periodical press into two major trends: of-ficially protected and liberal democratic. The contribution of the most prominent scientists and local historians to the development of a historiographical tradition on the investigated topic is evaluated. Materials from the pre-revolutionary periodical press are revealed, containing infor-mation about the evolution of views and scientific concepts of a number of authors, which deter-mine the sound of the problem under discussion, bear the imprint of time, and allow a closer look at the flavor of the era under study.

«КРАТКИЙ КУРС ИСТОРИИ УКРАИНЫ» А. ПАЛИЯ И ПРЕДШЕСТВУЮЩАЯ ИСТОРИОГРАФИЯ

The article continues the analysis of the historiographical situation in Ukrainian historical science. A comparison of the work of A.Palia "A short course in the history of Ukraine" with earlier works on the history of Ukraine – "Ukrainian history. A short course" (collective work, 1948) and "The history of Ukraine from ancient times to the present day" (V.I. Semenenko, L.A. Radchenko, 1999). These works reflect the advantages and disadvantages of Ukrainian historical science in different periods of its development. The "Short Course", a collective work of Ukrainian and Russian specialists, included a number of political ideas that were characteristic of the 1940s – 1950s, in particular, the idealization of the Soviet period in the history of Ukraine. It was a classic example of the official Soviet version of Ukraine's history. At the same time, compared with previous literature, this work contained numerous facts, especially from socio-economic history. In the 1999 book The authors made an attempt to overcome the established historiographical traditions and present readers with an honest interpretation of Ukrainian history, especially its Soviet period. The authors highlighted a number of important and previously unknown facts, freed their work from the ideologization characteristic of the science of the Soviet period. The comparison revealed how the level of scientific historical thought of Ukrainian specialists has decreased, how primitive and tendentious it has become in the works of historians such as A. Paly, how knowledge of the past has been replaced by naked propaganda.

Гуманитарные и социальные науки: теоретико-познавательные основания

Scientific natural science, which had been established in European culture since the mid-17th century, began to transmit samples of scientific knowledge into the field of studying social reality. Until the 19th century, the only mental form of reflecting this reality was “primary history,” as Hegel defined it, i.e. tradition of historiography coming from Herodotus. This tradition received its design, oriented towards the field of scientific rationality, from the German historian Leopold von Ranke: to show “how it really was” (wie es eigentlich gewesen). Its social function is the formation of national historical memory. But methodological reflection at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries revealed, as it seemed to it, two radical differences between “primary history” and other “sciences of culture” from natural science. In this regard, the categories of “values” and “understanding” were emphasized. The presence of these categories in the foundations of any science determines its specification as a humanitarian science. The first attempts to transfer certain aspects of the disciplinary matrices of natural science to the sphere of social science are associated with the names of Kant and Marx. Both attempts were unsuccessful. But, unlike Kant’s, the “materialist understanding of history” found its supporters and successors. Its main error is the unlawful direct transfer of the semantic content of the category “matter”, as it developed in natural science (the relationships of things), to the relationships between people endowed with consciousness. The addressee of social sciences are cultural forms, the existence of which has an objective status of existence, but relative to the individual consciousness of acting people. These are, for example, social institutions. The humanities deal with meanings, the existence of which is determined by systems of social communications.

‘Shameful histories’ – shame and sex perceived by secondary school students in history education

A challenge for history education in Sweden involves integrating questions regarding relationships and sex education. The purpose of this article is to explore how students and teachers relate historical narratives about women’s sexuality between the past and present, with a particular focus on students’ discussion of shame. To analyse shame as something beyond the individual, we focus on the interrelationship of gender, sexuality and shame. The study builds on a poststructural understanding of gender, norms, sexuality and subjectification. The data comprise video-recorded classroom observations, focus group interviews with 16–19-year-old students, and interviews with their teachers. The findings are structured into two themes: shame as regulating women’s sexuality, and sexualised shame as a historical continuity. We conclude that it is highly challenging for a history teacher to construe a classroom environment that breaks with traditional historiography without resorting to a fragmentation of history into isolated case studies of the spectacular.

Listening to Amīr Ḳhusraw in the Mughal Court: Indian Sultanate Epistemologies of Persian Music and the Construction of Hindustani Music History in the Mughal Imaginary

Abstract: The history and development of North Indian (Hindustani) classical music is still viewed today as the result of a process of synthesis, syncretism, and hybridity between Indian and Persian systems of music. Central to this narrative is the Indo-Persian poet and courtier Amīr Ḳhusraw (1253–1325), often seen as the father of Sufi qawwālī and the classical ḳhayāl genre. This article both offers a reconsideration of the traditional historiography surrounding Ḳhusraw and his role in the development of Hindu-stani music tradition through his own writings on music and locates our modern-day understanding of his musical innovations in the Mughal reception of his legacy.

PENGGUNAAN HISTORIOGRAFI TRADISIONAL JAWA UNTUK PENULISAN SEJARAH: Studi tentang Pengasingan Sunan Paku Buwana VI ke Ambon, 1830-1849

This article explains the use of Javanese traditional historiography proposed by Sartono Kartodirdjo. This article was prepared using the literature study method. The literature used is in the form of undergraduate theses, dissertations, and books prepared using and discussing Javanese traditional historiography. Overall, the chronicle about the exile of Sunan Paku Buwana VI in Ambon has a historical picture. The strength of this text as a historical source lies in its description of the mental turmoil and experiences of a king who was removed from his throne and had to live in exile. The existence of candra sengkala written following important events described in the chronicles further proves that these chronicles contain strong historical elements. In addition, as a historical source, the chronicle about Sunan Paku Buwana VI's exile contains important material not found in colonial archives.

Forging the medieval amidst loss: The Public Record Office of Ireland and Ireland’s medieval history

In the aftermath of the destruction of the Public Record Office of Ireland (PROI) in June 1922 during the opening battle of the Irish Civil War, and with it seven centuries of records, historians and archivists have had to be creative in their search for sources for medieval Irish history. In response to this loss, they have forged a distinctive historiographical tradition using records now in English collections, as well as antiquarian transcripts and publications. Beginning with the work of Edmund Curtis in the 1920s, this tradition has sought to list, identify, and edit for publication replacement sources for records lost with the PROI for an Irish and international audience. More recently, scholars have made these collections digitally and publicly accessible worldwide with the CIRCLE and Beyond 2022 Projects at Trinity College Dublin. This article looks at how the lost records and a century of recovery efforts have shaped understandings of Ireland’s medieval past and its colonial relationship with England.

Study on the Development Status and Prospects of Public History in Contemporary China

Public history is a combination of traditional historiography popularization, in which many topics related to social practice may arise. Public history is beneficial for improving the knowledge level of the general public. The United States was the first to begin the study of public history, and then public history was introduced to China. The development of Chinese public history is reflected in various film and television historiography, and has been integrated into the daily lives of the general public. The development of contemporary Chinese public history is also reflected in museum historical architecture and folk genealogy. The main reason for the rise of Chinese historiography is that the general public has increasingly high demands for spiritual nourishment, and there are more and more educated people. Public history has gained a lot of attention in this environment. The dissemination of works that combine many historical themes has aroused strong interest among the public. After two launches of public history in China, public history experienced an outbreak in the second round. The government and the public paid more attention to topics related to public history, which made the development of public history more prosperous.

Oligarchia Revisited

Summary This article revisits an ostensibly important monument in Classical Attic historiography: the so-called Tomb of Critias, as preserved in a scholium note in Aeschines’ “Against Timarchus” (1.39). We survey prior scholarly positions on the realia of this monument, suggest it is a fiction, and consider the possible sources for the hexameter verse associated with it. We argue that the poetic composition from which the entire tradition derives, rather than being an inscription on a tomb, may in fact be an oligarchic commemoration, perhaps an encomium or epitaphios logos recited at Eleusis in the aftermath of the fall of the Thirty. As such, the verse composition may allude to a historiographical tradition that viewed the Thirty as a subversive hetaireia/kōmos group led out to govern the unruly dēmos. The reception of this composition generates a ‘lieu de mémoire’ in the historical imagination of later readers. The composition offers a piece of comparanda for the political views expressed by other Athenians with pro-oligarchic tendencies, an extreme formulation that strongly contrasts with the extant writings of Critias, Plato, and Xenophon. In revisiting this short anecdote we highlight the relevance of both scholia and monuments in our understanding of Attic historiography.

The Construction of a Religious Minority: The Case of the Arians in the Iberian Peninsula (6th Century) — A Secondary Publication

Unlike other minorities examined in this volume, the Arian one constituted a dominant minority in the Peninsula until the conversion of Reccared. While considering the Arian creed as an ethnic command, traditional historiography did not explore too much the religious component of domination. As much as the sources allow, this article studies the religious dimension proposed by this way of ordering society on two converging levels, which are Arianism as a parameter of hierarchy and Arianism as theology.

Rebuilding life after slavery. Manumission, emancipation, and family networks in European empires, 1750–1900

Wherever and whenever systems of slavery existed, enslaved people struggled to attain freedom. Spanning various imperial contexts from 1750 to 1920, this special issue convenes a team of scholars to investigate the aftermath of emancipation. What did freedom from slavery entail in deeply unequal colonial societies? This issue explores diverse experiences, from maroon communities in the Caribbean wilderness to the forced resettlement of freed slaves in European colonies in Africa, and the legal emancipation of slaves in segregated colonial port cities in Asia. Enslaved people encountered ‘freedom’ with its attendant threats and opportunities in myriad ways. Building on the rich historiographical tradition of slavery studies, this special issue aims to broaden the scope of historical research from the slave trade and the lives of enslaved individuals to their post-emancipation existence. However, even recent literature often treats freedom after abolition and manumission as distinct phenomena, representing different legal paths to freedom—one associated with the early modern period and the other with the nineteenth century. This special issue re-evaluates this presupposition by foregrounding the post-emancipation life events of formerly enslaved individuals. It questions whether and how these different transitions from slave status to freedom can and should be structurally compared in slavery studies. By tapping into previously unexplored sources, re-examining older datasets with fresh perspectives, and employing record linkage to uncover forgotten slave histories, the authors seek to assess the living conditions of formerly enslaved people and their direct descendants after emancipation. In doing so, we aim to explore how past experiences of enslavement influenced future life choices and opportunities, thereby questioning the so-called afterlives of slavery.

Unraveling the Threads of Microhistory: Exploring Key Features and Notable Examples

This study aims to comprehensively characterize microhistory as a modern historiographical genre. It examines the key attributes, features, and epistemology of microhistory in relation to conventional historical approaches. By tracing the emergence of microhistory and analyzing sample texts, this research identifies the distinctive elements of microhistorical research. These include a granular focus on marginalized individuals, skepticism toward grand narratives, and a sensory emphasis on material artifacts over abstract facts. The study elucidates how microhistory’s postmodern relativism and localized subjectivity contrast with traditional historiography. While acknowledging microhistory’s unique focus on overlooked experiences, the analysis cautions against overly presentist and emotive reinterpretations of the past. This study maps the philosophical underpinnings and practices of the microhistory movement, clarifying its significance within modern historiography and its potential impact on historical research methodology.