Factors Affecting Muslim Historians’ Historiography: A Case Study of Moqaddasi and Bal’ami Historiography

Parvin Torkamani Azar[1]

Abstract

The present study falls within the category of epistemology and focuses on religious epistemology and conventional epistemology and has been conducted through internal analysis. The researcher aims at exploring the extent to which historians are under the influence of conventional epistemology of their place of living in their historiography; to what extent they are being influenced by their personal and social epistemology; and how their perception of history determines their method of historiography. In view of that, the attitudes and historiography of two historians have been studied. Motahhar Moqaddasi, Arab in origin, was born in Sistan—as one of the great lands of Iranian culture—grew up there, and later dedicated his book to one of the Samanid governors. Contemporarily, Bal’ami, who was a member of an Iranian family in Khorasan, lived in Bokhara and was engaged in cultural and administrative affairs of Samanid government.  The findings of the study reveal that Moqaddasi was exclusively influenced by his personal religious epistemology and has authored his book disregard of the cultural and political conditions of his place of living. Contrary to him, Bal’ami in his supplements to Tabari History shows how he has been influenced not only by the religious epistemology but also the conventional epistemology of his society. Moreover, their perceptions of religion differ. In addition, their attitudes have been influential in their historiography in a way that Moqaddasi deployed a rational, analytical, and critical methodology in his writings while Bal’ami, Ash’ari in religion, wrote descriptively.