Chase F Robinson is a distinguished professor and provost at the Graduate Center, The City University of New York, specializing in early Islamic history and historiography. His work delves into the formation of the Islamic world, examining its historical development from the sixth to the eleventh centuries. Robinson's approach emphasizes the complexity and nuance of historical narrative, offering readers a deeper understanding of a pivotal period in Islamic history.
An accessible introduction to pre-modern Islam, showcasing the individuals -
caliphs, law-makers, theologians, poets, mystics and scholars - who shaped the
course of early Islamic history.
How was history written in Europe and Asia between 400-1400? How was the past understood in religious, social and political terms? And in what ways does the diversity of historical writing in this period mask underlying commonalities in narrating the past? The volume, which assembles 28 contributions from leading historians, tackles these and other questions. Part I provides comprehensive overviews of the development of historical writing in societies that range from the Korean Peninsula to north-west Europe, which together highlight regional and cultural distinctiveness. Part II complements the first part by taking a thematic and comparative approach; it includes essays on genre, warfare, and religion (amongst others) which address common concerns of historians working in this liminal period before the globalizing forces of the early modern world.