Part 5.1 of Al-Maqrīzī's al-Ḫabar ʿan al-bašar
A critical edition and translation of al-Maqrīzī’s... more Part 5.1 of Al-Maqrīzī's al-Ḫabar ʿan al-bašar A critical edition and translation of al-Maqrīzī’s text on Arabian Outlaws, including detailed study that interrogates the outlaw lore in wider Arabic literature to uncover the ways in which Arabic writers constructed outlaw identities and how al-Maqrīzī used the tales to communicate his vision of pre-Islam.
By Ibn Qutaybah
Arabic Edition and Translation into English
Edited by James Montgomery and Peter ... more By Ibn Qutaybah Arabic Edition and Translation into English Edited by James Montgomery and Peter Webb Translated by Sarah Bowen Savant and Peter Webb
This is the introduction to Ibn Qutaybah's Excellence of the Arabs. For the full book, see: http... more This is the introduction to Ibn Qutaybah's Excellence of the Arabs. For the full book, see: https://nyupress.org/books/9781479809578/
A new interpretation of Arab origins and the historical roots of Arab identity
Who are the Arabs... more A new interpretation of Arab origins and the historical roots of Arab identity
Who are the Arabs? When did people begin calling themselves Arabs? And what was the Arabs’ role in the rise of Islam? Investigating these core questions about Arab identity and history through close interpretation of pre-Islamic evidence and the extensive Arabic literary corpus in tandem with theories of identity and ethnicity prompts new answers to the riddle of Arab origins and fundamental reinterpretations of early Islamic history.
A focused study of pre-Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca described in Arabic poetry. Via exhaustive and... more A focused study of pre-Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca described in Arabic poetry. Via exhaustive and in-depth analysis of the poetry corpus, this paper analyses the full gamut of pre-Islamic poetry about Hajj and opens new avenues to reconstruct pilgrimage before Islam. The findings are compared and contrasted to the depictions of Hajj in the Qur’an and in early hadith.
Hajj and the Arts of Pilgrimage : Essays in Honour of Nasser David Khalili, ed. Qaisra Khan. Gingko. 28-46., 2023
Study of the meaning of Mecca in the Qur'an, evidence for the pilgrimage in pre-Islam, and a stud... more Study of the meaning of Mecca in the Qur'an, evidence for the pilgrimage in pre-Islam, and a study of the status of Mecca and pilgrimage during the Umayyad Era
War and Collective Identities in the Middle Ages, ed. Yannis Stouraitis. ARC Humanities Press. 33-63., 2023
battles and ethniC identities seem natural companions in theory. Both engage strong emotions, bot... more battles and ethniC identities seem natural companions in theory. Both engage strong emotions, both are conceptualized in binary oppositional terms of "us" versus "them," and via memories of battles, ethnic groups can plot their history in heroic terms explaining how "we" as a people emerged from the crucible of conflict, how strong "we" are, and how "we" have always fought "them." But the well-known vicissitudes of collective memory readily recraft past events to harmonize them with a community's present circumstances. In practice, therefore, battles may not always be as ethnically charged in the thick of the fight as they come to be memorialized afterwards. This chapter studies the memorialization of the Battle of Dhū Qār, a pre-Islamic clash on Iraq's Euphrates frontier ca. 610 CE, which acquired a prominent and evolving significance in Muslim historiography. 1 Dhū Qār presents itself as a natural case study for war and peoplehood since its story has been told in explicitly ethnic terms for over 1,000 years. Arabic literature from at least the third/ ninth century regularly references Dhū Qār as the "the Arabs' first victory over the Persians," 2 or "the first time the Arabs showed themselves equal to the Persians," 3 and the pre-Islamic battle is depicted as foreshadowing the imminence of the Muslim conquest of Iraq which extinguished the Sasanian Empire just a few decades later. 4 Muslim-era histories invoke an ethnic binary of "Arab" versus "Persian" to project 1 An outline case study on Dhū Qār was published in Peter Webb, Imagining the Arabs: Arab Identity and the Rise of Islam (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016), 88-95; this chapter undertakes a fuller survey of the textual evidence and develops the conclusions.
Revue annuelle publiée par l'Association Semitica & classica, avec le concours du CNRS et le sout... more Revue annuelle publiée par l'Association Semitica & classica, avec le concours du CNRS et le soutien de l'UMR 8167 « Orient & Méditerranée » (Mondes sémitiques, Antiquité classique et tardive, Monde byzantin, Médecine grecque, Islam médiéval, Mondes pharaoniques).
The Historian of Islam at Work: Essays in Honour of Hugh N. Kennedy, 2022
I would like to begin by thanking Ann Christys for inviting my presentation, and Matthew Gordon a... more I would like to begin by thanking Ann Christys for inviting my presentation, and Matthew Gordon and Harry Munt for sharing material in ensuing discussions. 1 Detailed sources include the various references in al-Ṭabarī, Tārīkh; Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam; and the continuous narrative summary in al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ i, 173-238; see also sources collected in Zakkār, al-Jāmiʿ. The prevailing premodern literary "othering" of the Qarāmiṭa is analyzed in El-Cheikh, Women 66-75.
A study of grants of protection offered by women to men in pre-Islamic Arabia and early Islam, co... more A study of grants of protection offered by women to men in pre-Islamic Arabia and early Islam, comparing pre-Islamic customs, Islamic law provisions, and Arabic literary accounts of the practice
Empires and Communities in the Post-Roman and Islamic World, C. 400-1000 CE, 2021
In Empires and Communities in the Post-Roman and Islamic World, C. 400-1000 CE, eds. Rutger Krame... more In Empires and Communities in the Post-Roman and Islamic World, C. 400-1000 CE, eds. Rutger Kramer and Walter Pohl, pp. 283-328
Empires and Communities in the Post-Roman and Islamic World, C. 400-1000 CE, eds. Rutger Kramer and Walter Pohl, 2021
Response to the contributions of Hugh Kennedy and Walter Pohl in Empires and Communities in the P... more Response to the contributions of Hugh Kennedy and Walter Pohl in Empires and Communities in the Post-Roman and Islamic World, C. 400-1000 CE, eds. Rutger Kramer and Walter Pohl, pp. 76-88
Islam at 250: Studies in Memory of G.H.A. Juynboll, 2020
For all the complexities and evidential complications historians confront when reconstructing the... more For all the complexities and evidential complications historians confront when reconstructing the spread of Islam in the Middle East, there is a substructure upon which the whole edifice of early Islam stands, which is yet even more knotty and in need of pressing attention. This historical conundrum is the concept known in Arabic as al-Jāhiliyya. Most commentators interpret al-Jāhiliyya as the pre-Islamic Arabian world into which Muḥammad directed his prophetic messages, and al-Jāhiliyya thereby embodies both Islam's formative milieu and the lore of Islam's pre-history, making it a logical starting point for any study that seeks to understand how Islam emerged in Arabia. Yet al-Jāhiliyya is a conundrum because the world of pre-Islamic Arabia is very difficult to conceptualise. The most detailed accounts were recorded by Muslims after an effluxion of several centuries following Muḥammad, and while the Arabic literature offers us a vast store of information, its interpretation presents a double-edged difficulty.
Al-Jāhiliyya" evokes vivid images of idol worship, tribalist antagonisms, and violence commonly a... more Al-Jāhiliyya" evokes vivid images of idol worship, tribalist antagonisms, and violence commonly assumed to be emblematic of the Muslim representation of pre-Islamic Arabia as a "barbaric" anarchical society. Such associations, however, overlook manifold complexities of the era's portrayal in classical Arabic literature, and this paper calls for a more nuanced reading of classical narratives of al-Jāhiliyya. Exploration of the word's semantic shifts evidenced in Arabic lexicography and Qurʾānic exegesis between the third/ninth and seventh/ thirteenth centuries reveals that only after the fourth/tenth century did the now common Jāhiliyya stereotypes become virtually synonymous with pre-Islam. Via a survey of third/ninth century Arabic writings, this paper also explores how and why certain discourses articulated rather positive memories of pre-Islamic times.
Part 5.1 of Al-Maqrīzī's al-Ḫabar ʿan al-bašar
A critical edition and translation of al-Maqrīzī’s... more Part 5.1 of Al-Maqrīzī's al-Ḫabar ʿan al-bašar A critical edition and translation of al-Maqrīzī’s text on Arabian Outlaws, including detailed study that interrogates the outlaw lore in wider Arabic literature to uncover the ways in which Arabic writers constructed outlaw identities and how al-Maqrīzī used the tales to communicate his vision of pre-Islam.
By Ibn Qutaybah
Arabic Edition and Translation into English
Edited by James Montgomery and Peter ... more By Ibn Qutaybah Arabic Edition and Translation into English Edited by James Montgomery and Peter Webb Translated by Sarah Bowen Savant and Peter Webb
This is the introduction to Ibn Qutaybah's Excellence of the Arabs. For the full book, see: http... more This is the introduction to Ibn Qutaybah's Excellence of the Arabs. For the full book, see: https://nyupress.org/books/9781479809578/
A new interpretation of Arab origins and the historical roots of Arab identity
Who are the Arabs... more A new interpretation of Arab origins and the historical roots of Arab identity
Who are the Arabs? When did people begin calling themselves Arabs? And what was the Arabs’ role in the rise of Islam? Investigating these core questions about Arab identity and history through close interpretation of pre-Islamic evidence and the extensive Arabic literary corpus in tandem with theories of identity and ethnicity prompts new answers to the riddle of Arab origins and fundamental reinterpretations of early Islamic history.
A focused study of pre-Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca described in Arabic poetry. Via exhaustive and... more A focused study of pre-Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca described in Arabic poetry. Via exhaustive and in-depth analysis of the poetry corpus, this paper analyses the full gamut of pre-Islamic poetry about Hajj and opens new avenues to reconstruct pilgrimage before Islam. The findings are compared and contrasted to the depictions of Hajj in the Qur’an and in early hadith.
Hajj and the Arts of Pilgrimage : Essays in Honour of Nasser David Khalili, ed. Qaisra Khan. Gingko. 28-46., 2023
Study of the meaning of Mecca in the Qur'an, evidence for the pilgrimage in pre-Islam, and a stud... more Study of the meaning of Mecca in the Qur'an, evidence for the pilgrimage in pre-Islam, and a study of the status of Mecca and pilgrimage during the Umayyad Era
War and Collective Identities in the Middle Ages, ed. Yannis Stouraitis. ARC Humanities Press. 33-63., 2023
battles and ethniC identities seem natural companions in theory. Both engage strong emotions, bot... more battles and ethniC identities seem natural companions in theory. Both engage strong emotions, both are conceptualized in binary oppositional terms of "us" versus "them," and via memories of battles, ethnic groups can plot their history in heroic terms explaining how "we" as a people emerged from the crucible of conflict, how strong "we" are, and how "we" have always fought "them." But the well-known vicissitudes of collective memory readily recraft past events to harmonize them with a community's present circumstances. In practice, therefore, battles may not always be as ethnically charged in the thick of the fight as they come to be memorialized afterwards. This chapter studies the memorialization of the Battle of Dhū Qār, a pre-Islamic clash on Iraq's Euphrates frontier ca. 610 CE, which acquired a prominent and evolving significance in Muslim historiography. 1 Dhū Qār presents itself as a natural case study for war and peoplehood since its story has been told in explicitly ethnic terms for over 1,000 years. Arabic literature from at least the third/ ninth century regularly references Dhū Qār as the "the Arabs' first victory over the Persians," 2 or "the first time the Arabs showed themselves equal to the Persians," 3 and the pre-Islamic battle is depicted as foreshadowing the imminence of the Muslim conquest of Iraq which extinguished the Sasanian Empire just a few decades later. 4 Muslim-era histories invoke an ethnic binary of "Arab" versus "Persian" to project 1 An outline case study on Dhū Qār was published in Peter Webb, Imagining the Arabs: Arab Identity and the Rise of Islam (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016), 88-95; this chapter undertakes a fuller survey of the textual evidence and develops the conclusions.
Revue annuelle publiée par l'Association Semitica & classica, avec le concours du CNRS et le sout... more Revue annuelle publiée par l'Association Semitica & classica, avec le concours du CNRS et le soutien de l'UMR 8167 « Orient & Méditerranée » (Mondes sémitiques, Antiquité classique et tardive, Monde byzantin, Médecine grecque, Islam médiéval, Mondes pharaoniques).
The Historian of Islam at Work: Essays in Honour of Hugh N. Kennedy, 2022
I would like to begin by thanking Ann Christys for inviting my presentation, and Matthew Gordon a... more I would like to begin by thanking Ann Christys for inviting my presentation, and Matthew Gordon and Harry Munt for sharing material in ensuing discussions. 1 Detailed sources include the various references in al-Ṭabarī, Tārīkh; Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam; and the continuous narrative summary in al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ i, 173-238; see also sources collected in Zakkār, al-Jāmiʿ. The prevailing premodern literary "othering" of the Qarāmiṭa is analyzed in El-Cheikh, Women 66-75.
A study of grants of protection offered by women to men in pre-Islamic Arabia and early Islam, co... more A study of grants of protection offered by women to men in pre-Islamic Arabia and early Islam, comparing pre-Islamic customs, Islamic law provisions, and Arabic literary accounts of the practice
Empires and Communities in the Post-Roman and Islamic World, C. 400-1000 CE, 2021
In Empires and Communities in the Post-Roman and Islamic World, C. 400-1000 CE, eds. Rutger Krame... more In Empires and Communities in the Post-Roman and Islamic World, C. 400-1000 CE, eds. Rutger Kramer and Walter Pohl, pp. 283-328
Empires and Communities in the Post-Roman and Islamic World, C. 400-1000 CE, eds. Rutger Kramer and Walter Pohl, 2021
Response to the contributions of Hugh Kennedy and Walter Pohl in Empires and Communities in the P... more Response to the contributions of Hugh Kennedy and Walter Pohl in Empires and Communities in the Post-Roman and Islamic World, C. 400-1000 CE, eds. Rutger Kramer and Walter Pohl, pp. 76-88
Islam at 250: Studies in Memory of G.H.A. Juynboll, 2020
For all the complexities and evidential complications historians confront when reconstructing the... more For all the complexities and evidential complications historians confront when reconstructing the spread of Islam in the Middle East, there is a substructure upon which the whole edifice of early Islam stands, which is yet even more knotty and in need of pressing attention. This historical conundrum is the concept known in Arabic as al-Jāhiliyya. Most commentators interpret al-Jāhiliyya as the pre-Islamic Arabian world into which Muḥammad directed his prophetic messages, and al-Jāhiliyya thereby embodies both Islam's formative milieu and the lore of Islam's pre-history, making it a logical starting point for any study that seeks to understand how Islam emerged in Arabia. Yet al-Jāhiliyya is a conundrum because the world of pre-Islamic Arabia is very difficult to conceptualise. The most detailed accounts were recorded by Muslims after an effluxion of several centuries following Muḥammad, and while the Arabic literature offers us a vast store of information, its interpretation presents a double-edged difficulty.
Al-Jāhiliyya" evokes vivid images of idol worship, tribalist antagonisms, and violence commonly a... more Al-Jāhiliyya" evokes vivid images of idol worship, tribalist antagonisms, and violence commonly assumed to be emblematic of the Muslim representation of pre-Islamic Arabia as a "barbaric" anarchical society. Such associations, however, overlook manifold complexities of the era's portrayal in classical Arabic literature, and this paper calls for a more nuanced reading of classical narratives of al-Jāhiliyya. Exploration of the word's semantic shifts evidenced in Arabic lexicography and Qurʾānic exegesis between the third/ninth and seventh/ thirteenth centuries reveals that only after the fourth/tenth century did the now common Jāhiliyya stereotypes become virtually synonymous with pre-Islam. Via a survey of third/ninth century Arabic writings, this paper also explores how and why certain discourses articulated rather positive memories of pre-Islamic times.
Al-Ǧāḥiẓ is one of the ʿAbbāsid era's most celebrated bibliophiles, and his praise of books and c... more Al-Ǧāḥiẓ is one of the ʿAbbāsid era's most celebrated bibliophiles, and his praise of books and championing of 'writerly culture' in 3rd/9th-century Iraq are well documented. However, he also expressed distinctly negative appraisals of books that have hitherto received much less scholarly attention. This paper will examine the curiously paradoxical views of al-Ǧāḥiẓ by considering his opinions on non-Arabic books in the context of scholarly debates in his contemporary Iraq. Al-Ǧāḥiẓ's conception of such books intersected debates regarding (a) the suitability of books to transmit knowledge, (b) rivalries between Arabs and non-Arabs in early ʿAbbāsid Iraq, and (c) the merits of translating scholarly writings from pre-Islamic civilisations. Al-Ǧāḥiẓ's opinions on these issues led him to develop a particular conception of the 'perfect book' whereby he could unreservedly praise his own writings and extol ʿAbbāsid literary culture, but at the same time subordinate foreign literary cultures to the non-literate pre-Islamic Arabians. Al-Ǧāḥiẓ's theories reveal that 3rd/9th-century Iraq had not yet become entirely a 'civilisation of the book', and that conceptions of language, ethnicity and knowledge influenced the formation of Muslim bibliophilia.
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2021
Review of Inventing the Berbers: History and Ideology in the Maghrib. Ramzi Rouighi (Philadelphia... more Review of Inventing the Berbers: History and Ideology in the Maghrib. Ramzi Rouighi (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019).
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 2020
convincing, though some of his discussions about Simnānī's motives and decisions may underplay th... more convincing, though some of his discussions about Simnānī's motives and decisions may underplay the impact upon his oeuvre of later "editors" and copyists; a chronological sequencing of his works and their arguments and presentations, for instance, might be as illuminating as a linguistic division or structural analysis. In any case, this second chapter includes an insightful and eloquent discussion (pp. 138-41) linking Martini's considerations of Simnānī's linguistic choices with the intended "ritual" use of his texts in conveying divine grace into the hearts of his readers. The chapter concludes with a long "tabular" synopsis of the contents of the Arabic al-Wārid and the Persian Zayn al-muʿtaqad (pp. 155-78), which underscores his earlier observation that the Persian version is in fact not a translation, but a substantial reworking, of the content and thrust of the Arabic work, intended for a different audience; this conclusion leaves it uncertain why an English translation of the Persian work was not included alongside that of the Arabic "original".
Review of Blair and Bloom, "By the Pen and What they Write", Osborn, "Letters of Light", Mozzati,... more Review of Blair and Bloom, "By the Pen and What they Write", Osborn, "Letters of Light", Mozzati, "Islamic Art"
Forthcoming chapter in Walter Pohl and Rutger Kramer (eds.), "Empires and Communities in the Post... more Forthcoming chapter in Walter Pohl and Rutger Kramer (eds.), "Empires and Communities in the Post-Roman and Early Islamic World" (Oxford UP)
https://mouse.digitalscholarship.nl This online, interactive textbook contains a growing collect... more https://mouse.digitalscholarship.nl This online, interactive textbook contains a growing collection of lessons in codicology-the study of handwritten documents or codices-and palaeography from the Middle East, Islamic Africa and beyond. The lessons guide the student through the ways books were made and used there before the printing press, by investigating the traces left by producers, owners and readers of manuscripts. Using your mouse, you will come close to people in the manuscript age as they produced, transmitted, cherished and "consumed" the written texts. The lessons are centered around fully digitalised manuscripts from the oriental collection of Leiden University Libraries. They include samples in Arabic, Persian and Coptic, from cultures ranging from the Maghrib to Mughal India. The lessons can be read in any order. All include suggestions for further reading and questions (with answers) or assignments.
Overview of the early development of Arab identity and outline of the research aims of my British... more Overview of the early development of Arab identity and outline of the research aims of my British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship 2015-18 (pf150079)
In The Arab Thieves, Peter Webb critically explores the classic tales of pre-Islamic Arabian outl... more In The Arab Thieves, Peter Webb critically explores the classic tales of pre-Islamic Arabian outlaws in Arabic Literature. A group of Arabian camel-rustlers became celebrated figures in Muslim memories of pre-Islam, and much poetry ascribed to them and stories about their escapades grew into an outlaw tradition cited across Arabic literature. The ninth/fifteenth-century Egyptian historian al-Maqrīzī arranged biographies of ten outlaws into a chapter on ‘Arab Thieves’ in his wide-ranging history of the world before Muhammad. This volume presents the first critical edition of al-Maqrīzī’s text with a fully annotated English translation, alongside a detailed study that interrogates the outlaw lore to uncover the ways in which Arabic writers constructed outlaw identities and how al-Maqrīzī used the tales to communicate his vision of pre-Islam. Via an exhaustive survey of early Arabic sources about the outlaws and comparative readings with outlaw traditions in other world literatures, The Arab Thieves reveals how Arabic literature crafted lurid narratives about criminality and employed them to tell ancient Arab history.
The premodern Islamic world was multilingual and multicultural, and by necessity was continually ... more The premodern Islamic world was multilingual and multicultural, and by necessity was continually engaged in comparative critical practices. Mapping the interconnected trajectories of these practices, everywhere they arose between Urdu, Persian, Turkish, Arabic, and other language traditions of Asia and Africa, is the aim of this conference. We invite scholars to employ methodologies based on direct engagement with primary sources that negotiate the multilingual Islamic world(s) in ways that are overlooked or misunderstood by Comparative Literature.
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Books by Peter Webb
A critical edition and translation of al-Maqrīzī’s text on Arabian Outlaws, including detailed study that interrogates the outlaw lore in wider Arabic literature to uncover the ways in which Arabic writers constructed outlaw identities and how al-Maqrīzī used the tales to communicate his vision of pre-Islam.
Arabic Edition and Translation into English
Edited by James Montgomery and Peter Webb
Translated by Sarah Bowen Savant and Peter Webb
Who are the Arabs? When did people begin calling themselves Arabs? And what was the Arabs’ role in the rise of Islam? Investigating these core questions about Arab identity and history through close interpretation of pre-Islamic evidence and the extensive Arabic literary corpus in tandem with theories of identity and ethnicity prompts new answers to the riddle of Arab origins and fundamental reinterpretations of early Islamic history.
Papers by Peter Webb
A critical edition and translation of al-Maqrīzī’s text on Arabian Outlaws, including detailed study that interrogates the outlaw lore in wider Arabic literature to uncover the ways in which Arabic writers constructed outlaw identities and how al-Maqrīzī used the tales to communicate his vision of pre-Islam.
Arabic Edition and Translation into English
Edited by James Montgomery and Peter Webb
Translated by Sarah Bowen Savant and Peter Webb
Who are the Arabs? When did people begin calling themselves Arabs? And what was the Arabs’ role in the rise of Islam? Investigating these core questions about Arab identity and history through close interpretation of pre-Islamic evidence and the extensive Arabic literary corpus in tandem with theories of identity and ethnicity prompts new answers to the riddle of Arab origins and fundamental reinterpretations of early Islamic history.
http://blog.britac.ac.uk/arab-origins-identity-history-and-islam/