Thursday's Read: The Times of History: Universal Topics in Islamic Historiography

Azmeh, Aziz. The Times of History: Universal Topics in Islamic Historiography. Central European University Press (November 4, 2007)


Aziz Al-Azmeh's work is exactly the kind of history I love. This level of analysis is why I fell for history, and it is the type of history that one day I hope to do. I'm not at all surprised that Hayden White - another of my favorites along with Louis Mink-  wrote the forward to this excellent collection of historiographical essays. It is, I confess, rarely this year that I open a book and am immediately sucked in and lose myself, engrossed in the pleasure of the content. (Normally I have one eye on the clock at all times and am forced to focus on how quickly I can summarize the argument.)

White introduces the volume with his usual masterful turns of phrase, explaining Azmeh's work as an overall corrective to several niggling blind spots and false characterizations that have managed to find their way into much of contemporary work on Islamic history and historiography, both that done from a faithful standpoint and that of the general secular academy. He explains:

...Al-Azmeh's book may be seen as a major contribution to the project popularized by the late Edward Said, which was nothing less than an effort to explode the myth of 'Orientalism.'' But Al-Azmeh's work is much more than a continuation of extension of Said's project. And this because: Said, for all his learning, insight, and passion, did not have the scholarly gear to dismantle this Orientalism which he had correctly identified as the product of an effort to provide ideological justification for the West's 'molestation' of a quarter of the world's population. Said's was a literary sensibility. He did not know the history of the portion of the globe whose cause he tirelessly publicized in the Western media. Said was outraged at the Western misrepresentation of the Arab world, and he acutely criticized the scholarly, literary, and institutional apparatuses (such as the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago) that contributed to the creation of the myth of 'the Orient.' But Said was not a historian or rather, his idea of what a proper historical take on the Orient should be shared too many attitudes informing that 'Orientalism' which he wished to criticize (x- xi, emphasis added).

This last observation is certainly not unique to White. It is the fundamental critique of Said's work, and has been made with machine-like consistency by various scholars since Orientalism's debut publication in 1978. Al-Azmeh's central contention is that orientalist discourse is created and perpetuated as much by a contingent of Arab and Muslim scholars as it is by Western ideologues, the former because they have their own interests in "creating an 'Islam' that is as mythical as anything conjured up" by their Western counterparts (xi).