The Impact of Political Tyranny on Historical Writing in the Early Islamic Centuries

Abstract

Muslims in their connection to Islam are of two types: the first is the general Muslims, who are the majority, and the second is the scholars, who are the minority. Generally, Muslims practice the rituals, customs, and traditions of their religion through the ideas produced by the scholars. The scholars’ output varies between fatwas and intellectual opinions.

On the other hand, the teachings of this religion, which shaped the people of the Arabian Peninsula differently from the pre-Islamic era, were not documented and preserved. Instead, they were confined to oral culture when the state decided to prohibit the documentation of prophetic traditions at the beginning of the Rashidun era. The early Muslims, according to these instructions, preferred oral narration as it was the easiest means available to convey ideas to others. Thus, Islamic intellectual production became captive to human memory due to the prohibition of writing and documentation at that time.

As Muslims developed, life forced them to resort to documentation, or what scholars call “the restriction of knowledge.” However, this happened after the situation had become complicated, landmarks had changed, and people who were not originally from the Arabian Peninsula had entered and played a role in this documentation. At the same time, they had their own goals, interests, and conflicts, which negatively affected the documentation process.

Since politics has the final say, political decisions and orientations had the upper hand in documentation. Because politics is characterized by oppression, dominance, and tyranny, the historical documentation of events in the early stages of Islam was one of the results of this political tyranny. This negatively reflected and produced oppressive results that played a significant role in changing the mentality of the Muslim individual and their doctrinal affiliation in particular, which is the focus of this research.