Early Sunnī Historiography: A Study of the Tārīkh of Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ, by Tobias Andersson

Abstract

https://doi.org/10.12730/13091719.2020.112.214

(First paragraph)

My first encounter with Khalīfah ibn Khayyāṭ (d.240AH/854CE) was during my undergraduate study, where in one of the courses I was assigned to review the development of the genre of ṭabaqāt (prosopography arranged by affiliation or generation) in early Islam. It was then that I learned that Khalīfah has gained his reputation as a distinguished scholar of history, particularly among the sunnī scholars of post canonization of ḥadīth scholarship, by virtue of his two works Ṭabaqāt and Tārīkh. The scholar marks the emergence of a distinct genre of ḥadīth-influenced historical writing in Muslim tradition as illustrated by Akram al-ʿUmarī who studied the methods and sources of Khalīfah in his edition of Tārīkh. Recently, al-ʿUmarī’s treatment proves to be a useful source for both Ḥusayn ʿĀṣī in his Arabic survey of Khalīfah’s method in Ṭabaqāt and Tārīkh, and Tobias Andersson, the author of the present work in review. ...