Sources in studying history of Islam
When we look at all the works released under the label of “History of Islam” we’ll notice that scholars in this field have studies six different categories:
1) History of prophet and nations before Islam
2) Studies of sirat and maghazee. Sirat means life style and total sum of behavioral characteristics of one person. Here, in the field of History of Islam, it means all kind of behaviors of Prophet Muhammed(saw). Maghazee means history of military expeditions and other types of conflicts.
3) According to their chronological order, history of sahaba, Rasulullah (saw) companions. Also in this field, we have works about life story of imams and scholars of certain madhabs(sects)
4) History of political sciences according to different Islamic states and empires.
5) All kind of “prophetic news” according to Quran and Hadith, the kind of expected happenings before the judgement day. In other words, this is the “history” of end times.
6) History of cities that play important role in the history of Islam. Here, cities other than Madina and Mecca, like Damascus and Baghdad.
Since it is one of the pillars of Islamic aqeedah to believe in all holy books and since Rasullah(saw) did not forbid his followers to look upon Old Testament and Bible on certain matters if there is not “historical” note about such subjects in Quran and hadith, some early sahaba relayed some interpretations of historical events from Old Testament and Bible.
However, there were some early Islamic scholars and mufassirs did not rely of “early holy books” but based their interpretations only from Quran and hadith when they were studying subjects of history of Islam
History of Islam is like colossal body of spiritual and philosophical wisdom. And it is crucially important to study and share it in this modern age of Islamophobia since “non-believers” are fully at work trying to stain Islamic faith by trying to twist and distort historical events of Islam.
Cultural differences will also play an important role while studying Islam. It is not just the events of “who-did-what” in the western sense of “history” important but also “spirit” of such age is also integral to understand the true roots of Islam.
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