Journal of Historical Perspective & Historiography
Year:2023 | Volume:33 | Issue:32|Papers Count:12

This paper examines Ayatollah Sayyid Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr's perspective on history through methodological and substantive point of view. In Iqtisaduna (Our Economy), Sadr argues that the inductive laboratory methods used in the natural sciences cannot be applied to historical research. In Al-Madrasah al-Qur'aniyyah (The Quranic School), while acknowledging that historical science is different from other sciences, he affirms the possibility of scientific historical research using historical induction. This study assumes that the logical connection between these two positions can be found in his Logical Foundations of Induction, where he proposes three key arguments: first, Sadr equates science with certain knowledge (ma'rifah yaqiniyyah) and claims that induction - as explained in his theory of intrinsic knowledge (maktab al-dhati lil-ma'rifah) - can lead to certain knowledge in all fields of research (from nature to history). Second, induction inherently involves the deduction of universal principles from particular cases, which makes the deduction of historical laws/sunnah from singular events a valid form of this deduction. Third, Sadr claims that not all inductive inferences require experimental manipulation; historical induction can also work through diachronic observation. The paper subsequently elaborates on Sadr's views regarding the characteristics, scope, and manifestations of historical laws (sunan al-tarikh), emphasizing why human awareness of these divinely ordained laws is essential for meaningful historical agency.

Mohammad ibn Mohammad al-Yamani was one of the authors at the court of al-Aziz Billah, the fifth Fatimid caliph. The short treatise Sirat al-Hajib is the only surviving text by him that has historical content. This treatise, commissioned by the caliph of the time, recounts the events surrounding the Fatimid rise to power between 286 and 297 AH, based on the narratives of Ja’far ibn Ali al-Hajib, the personal advisor of Ubaydullah al-Mahdi. An eleven-year period in Fatimid history that began with the proclamation of the Imamate by Ubaydullah al-Mahdi and ended with the establishment of the Fatimid government in Raqqada. This treatise is the only Fatimid source that specifically describes an ambiguous period of Fatimid history from an internal organisational perspective. It seems that the treatise Sirat al-Hajib can be assigned to the Isma'ili historiographical discourse, as it exhibits characteristics of a sacred historiography with a theological approach, a combined method in narrating events, and reliance on eyewitness accounts and reliable sources of the Isma'ili historian. The research method in this article is qualitative content analysis and data collection based on library research.

The most prominent manifestation of animal motifs in the history of art in the Ancient Near East up to the flourishing period of Safavid art can be observed in visual arts and crafts. The widespread use and remarkable similarities of animal motifs in the Kashan carpets and the Shahnameh of Tahmasp during the Safavid period reinforce the hypothesis that the natural world may have been conceived as a powerful source of political legitimacy for the Safavid rulers.This article aims to present a mythological interpretation of animal motifs in Kashan carpets and the Shahnameh of Tahmasp in order to gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between authority and legitimacy within the Safavid political system, and its connection to the art and culture of this period. The central research questions are as follows:What relationship can be established between mythological notions of power and the depiction of animal motifs in Kashan carpets and the Shahnameh of Tahmasp during the Safavid era? What thematic and visual similarities exist between the animal motifs of the Kashan carpets and those in the Shahnameh of Tahmasp, considering their contemporaneity, and do how they differ?This study applies a qualitative, historical-analytical method with a comparative approach. The findings reveal that the Safavid rulers attempted to reinterpret and recontextualize animal myths by incorporating them into various art forms such as manuscript illumination and carpet weaving, thereby embedding them within the structures of political power.Accordingly, the use of similar animal motifs in the Kashan carpets and the Shahnameh of Tahmasp can be seen as a deliberate engagement with mythological narratives to produce and reproduce essentialist notions of Safavid political legitimacy. The considerable similarities in the use of animal motifs in these works suggest that the Safavids, through symbolic mythological imagery, endeavored to reflect the worldview of political power discourse within Iranian art and culture.

In the field of  Islamic Revolution studies, there are many examples where researchers have used a theological approach in analyzing human events and phenomena. They have tried to make the Islamic Revolution appear sacred. The question of the importance of historiography without theological foundations among historians and academic researchers and whether history has been able to achieve a position independent of theological propositions among them is the subject of the present article. This article examines examples of academic works in the field of historiography of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, each of which has in some way used theological ideas in analyzing the events related to the Islamic Revolution. Although the theological approach has been of primary interest to many seminary scholars in their consideration of the Islamic Revolution, a critical examination of these works reveals that the adoption of this approach is not limited to seminary scholars. For many researchers who studied the Islamic Revolution in the academic and university environment, the historical approach is not the mainstay and there is little adherence to the principles and criteria of historical methodology. Therefore, it can be said that there is still no scientific approach to the knowledge of history among many academics and experts.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the scholarly community of the Indian subcontinent witnessed the formation of a new type of biography of the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him). From the advent of Islam to the 20th century, biographies written in the Indian subcontinent had elements of descriptive and narrative historiography. With the emergence of Islamist political parties and movements, their attention to the biography of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) led to the creation of a new style in this field, which can be called critical biography. The most important component of this new style is its connection with the political thought of Islamist parties. As the founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, Abul A'la Maududi is considered one of the most important critical biographers of the subcontinent. Therefore, one should ask what is the relationship between the critical biography of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) and Islamic political ideology. The claim, using historical analysis, is that Abul A'la Maududi, using the three components of prophethood, phasing, and anticipating acceptance of the status derived from the life of the Holy Prophet (PBUH), develops the history of human society into an ideological reading. The achievement of Maududi's critique of biography using the three functions of mythmaking, legitimization, and integration provides grounds for consolidating the position of the ideology of political Islam in Pakistan through the application of research conducted.

The Socratic conversation of "Lysis" is one of the first works of Plato. In this conversation Achaemenid empire and issues related to it were mentioned twice. At first, the great Achaemenid king with his domination of Asia and his legacy to his son are mentioned. It is also written about Darius I and her wealth in this conversation. The purpose of this article is to reflect on some of the images and appearance of the Achaemenid Empire in the minds of its contemporaries. From this point of view, in this article, only one of these two cases, namely Plato's words about rulership and dominion of the great king of Persia over the entire land of Asia, has been studied. This research, through a critical reading of "Lysis" and a several contemporary Achaemenid Greek texts, tries to investigate what ideas caused the image and concept of the Persian king dominating Asia in the minds of the Greeks of the 5th and 4th centuries BC to be created.

The history textbook for first-year high school students in Turkey is an idea-oriented, and we will try here to explain the scientific motivations of its author in an objective and problem-oriented way. The method applied in this article is content analysis, which is commonly used to describe the characteristics of the message in order to achieve the research results, which is to identify the values ​​and theories used in the textbooks. The aim of the research is to provide a clear picture of the state of history textbooks or history teaching in Turkish schools.The results of the research indicate that in today's Turkey, besides to the idea of ​​transferring past knowledge to the present generation, the teaching of historical thinking and problem-solving skills has replaced the previous methods. As a result of such a method, the correct learning of history relies on two basic factors, namely " the design of the teacher's narrative " and "a good educational textbooks". From this perspective, a thorough analysis of the curriculum frameworks of other countries, will help Iranians keep pace with global advances in education, eliminate educational gaps, and also be creative in defining content and educational policies. The achievements in the study of the newly printed history textbook are cited as follows: arrangement of information or data in the format of various standard tables and processing textbook data based on a statistical population such as teachers and students, extracting important components of the content dimensions of the work and processing them for compliance with predefined educational goals, examining the evolution of the Turkish education system's attitude towards the history of the ancient world, the position of basic components such as local, world, and Islamic history in a textbook, providing tangible examples of soft skills considered in the Turkish educational system, examining the attitude of modern history in the writing of history textbooks, and the effects of the political dominance of Islamists on the category of history writing in Turkish schools.

Without ever claiming to be methodical in his individualistic historiography, Mohammad Ibrahim Bastani Parizi (1304-1391) repeatedly used negative criticism and ijtihad as well as positive criticism and ijtihad to disambiguate historical texts in all his works. The main question of this study is how Bastani Parizi used the weapon of historical criticism and ijtihad to infer the truth not mentioned in the sources and how this was reflected in his historiography. The results of this study will show that Bastani Parizi used negative criticism (ijtihad) and positive criticism (ijtihad) in all his famous works to respond to historical ambiguities and that he saw this technique as a way to achieve historical truth and objectivity. Thus, that it can be argued that this issue is the distinguishing feature and one of the most important features of his historiographical style. Accordingly, Bastani Parizi should be considered among the objectivist historians who believe that it is possible for a historian to achieve objectivity and historical truth in the light of historical criticism and ijtihad.

In the late Qajar period, particularly during the constitutional era, the emergence of a more open political and social atmosphere led to the discussion of new issues concerning women—issues that had not been addressed publicly before. This included the question of polygamy, which became the focus of certain newspapers, intellectuals, and educated elites. Research shows that these newspapers and their authors, who saw a change in the status of women as a fundamental prerequisite for  social change in Iran, initiated a critical discourse on traditional women’s issues, including polygamy. The findings of this study demonstrate that these writers employed direct prose, satirical criticism, popular poetry, and caricatures to critique polygamy and examine its social and economic causes and consequences. This article uses thematic analysis of narratives—a method of content analysis- to examine how and why a critical discourse on polygamy emerged in the newspapers and journals of the time, and how this discourse played a significant role in shaping the cultural transformation of Iranian society.

The history of mentalities is an approach that emerged from the historiography of the Annals school and can be seen as influenced by the approach of cultural history, but it was not limited to this framework and found many ramifications and branches. Today, the history of spirits and the history of emotions are in fact the fruit of the history of mentalities, and each is gradually finding an independent mechanism. The main axis of the history of mentalities, launched by Febvre and Bloch, two of the founders of the annals school, is the study of the impact of culture on other aspects of life. The main assumption of the historians of this historiographical approach is that there are grand cultural plans on which the members of a society largely agree, and that individuals act culturally within their boundaries. While praising the comprehensive approach of this history, which includes the various social classes without distinction, critics have taken aim at the coercion and imposition associated with this assumption. The history of mentalities undoubtedly offers a novel picture of the past by focusing on the sometimes invisible and largely neglected role of culture in political, economic and social actions. This essay aims to familiarize Iranian historians with new approaches to historiography. It takes a descriptive-analytical approach and draws on first-hand sources from historians of the history of mentalities as well as reliable sources of study to provide definitions of the history of mentalities, introduce famous historians and works of this school, and finally suggest some criticisms of it.

As one of the greatest imperial powers in history, the Mongols played a pivotal role in shaping the political, social, and cultural changes in the Middle East and Asia Minor.This article examines the way in which the Mongols were represented and interpreted in Ottoman historiography. In the founding legends of the Ottoman Empire, as well as in the works of historians of the Seljuks of Anatolia and the early Ottomans, the Mongols were predominantly depicted as destructive enemies. Nevertheless, in universal and multidynastic histories, the Mongol rulers were often portrayed in a positive light, celebrated as innovators of religion, and sometimes even integrated into the Ottoman genealogical tradition. This study seeks to address how and why Ottoman historians' perceptions of the Mongols evolved over time. It argues that this change resulted from a confluence of factors, in particular the confrontation with the Safavid state and the profound influence of Persian historiographical traditions, and that it was strategically employed as an instrument to legitimize the Ottoman dynasty. Using a historical-analytical approach, the authors emphasize the pivotal role of Persian historiography, especially the narratives of the Seljuqs of Rum and the Mongol Ilkhanids, in shaping the intellectual and cultural foundations of the Ottoman world.The article further underscores the contributions of Iranian literati and intellectuals, who transmitted their ideological models into Ottoman historiography and played an essential role in the cultural and political formation of the Ottoman Empire.Ultimately, the findings reveal that the Ottoman engagement with the Mongol heritage and Persian historiographical models exerted a profound influence on the evolution of Ottoman political legitimacy and state structure.

As an interdisciplinary approach, religious anthropology examines the position of man in relation to the divine teachings. This concept has found a distinct form in the Imami tradition, especially from the point of view of the idea of the "perfect man" and its connection with the religious system. Using a descriptive-analytical method, the present study attempts to answer the question of how the reflection of religious anthropology is formulated in two important Imami texts, namely Al-Gharat by Ibrahim ibn Muhammad Thaqafi Kufi (283 AH) and Al-Naqz by Abdul Jalil Qazwini Razi (560 AH). Despite the difference in the intellectual orientation of these two authors, Thaqafi as a hadith scholar and Qazwini as a theologian, both used history as a tool to present the image of the religious man and defend Shi'i identity on three common axes: identity- formation based on reason and ethics, use of historical narratives, and interaction with social contexts.  Al-Gharat’s emphasis on moral coherence and the tendency of negation towards a religious approximation indicate the transition of the Imami discourse towards an interactionist perspective. In this framework, the perfect human being is a multidimensional being who plays a reforming role in society through reason, morality and sharia. The authors based on rationality have outlined two complementary paths: the intra-religious path with the consolidation of Shiite identity and the extra-religious path with the tendency towards multicultural dialogue. In their view, history is not simply a narrative of events, but an epistemological tool for explaining human and saving values, and meanwhile the concept of “perfect man" as a comprehensive model of human” perfection occupies a central place in the Imamiyya epistemological system.