Description
Why did non-Muslims convert to Islam during Muhammad's life and under his immediate successors? How did Muslim historians portray these conversions? Why did their portrayals differ significantly? To what extent were their portrayals influenced by their time of writing, religious inclinations, and political affiliations? These are the fundamental questions that drive this study. Relying on numerous works, including primary sources from over a hundred classical Muslim historians, Conversion to Islam is the first scholarly study to detect, trace, and analyze conversion themes in early Muslim historiography, emphasizing how classical Muslims remembered conversion, and how they valued and evaluated aspects of it. Ayman S. Ibrahim examines numerous early Muslim sources and wrestles with critical observations regarding the sources' reliability and unearths the hidden link between historical narratives and historians' religious sympathies and political agendas. This study leads readers through a complex body of literature, provides insights regarding historical context, and creates a vivid picture of conversion to Islam as early Muslim historians sought to depict it.
About the Author
Ayman S. Ibrahim is the Bill and Connie Jenkins Professor of Islamic Studies at Southern Seminary and Director of the Jenkins Center for the Christian Understanding of Islam. He is the author of The Stated Motivations for the Early Islamic Expansion.
Reviews
... Ibrahim has written a significant contribution to the study of Arabic historical writing, on one hand, and the phenomenon of conversion to Islam, on the other. The bulk of material that Ibrahim uses as his source is vast, and the analysis of it is of high quality. * Ilkka Lindstedt, University of Helsinki, Journal of Near Eastern Studies *
Thought provoking, meticulously researched, and clearly written. * Prof. Mohammad H. Faghfoory, Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies *
This remarkably thorough book overturns the facile notion that the first Muslim historians had little to say about conversion to Islam. Ayman Ibrahim tracks down the myriad stories they told about the all-important conversions of Muhammad's inner circle, showing how the political and religious commitments of each writer guided his narrative. He has given us an authoritative account of conversion themes and topoi in the debates that tore the early Muslim community apart. It is a book that has much to teach us about how conversion was represented and imagined in early Islamic history * Luke B. Yarbrough, University of California, Los Angeles *
Reading Conversion to Islam is an education. Ibrahim has used his vast knowledge of early Arabic historical works and encyclopedic grasp of secondary scholarship on them to produce a compelling and important study of how medieval Muslim historians wrote about conversion. This book is a wonderful achievement * Jack B. Tannous, Princeton University *
Ayman Ibrahim's newest study is his most comprehensive so far. Until now, Ibrahim has demonstrated a thorough grasp of the Arabic sources, and this volume on conversion, which could almost serve as an introduction to the early Islamic sources in Arabic, does not disappoint. He gives the reader a very thorough discussion of the issue of conversion to Islam as it is portrayed in the earliest sources, not shying away from the many problematic issues such a study entails. This survey is sure to be a fundamental work not merely on conversion but also on Arabic historiography for years to come * David B. Cook, Rice University *
How was conversion to Islam remembered by medieval Muslim scholars? Working at the intersection of history and historiography, Ayman Ibrahim illuminates multilayered discourses on conversion and offers a sensible typology of evolving literary themes and narratives in the source material. In so doing, Ibrahim sheds a fresh light on the memory of one of the most significant social and cultural changes of the formative period of Islam * Antoine Borrut, Author of Entre memoire et pouvoir *
Book Information
ISBN 9780197530719
Author Ayman S. Ibrahim
Format Hardback
Page Count 320
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 1g
Dimensions(mm) 160mm * 236mm * 25mm
About the Author
Ayman S. Ibrahim is the Bill and Connie Jenkins Professor of Islamic Studies at Southern Seminary and Director of the Jenkins Center for the Christian Understanding of Islam. He is the author of The Stated Motivations for the Early Islamic Expansion.
Reviews
... Ibrahim has written a significant contribution to the study of Arabic historical writing, on one hand, and the phenomenon of conversion to Islam, on the other. The bulk of material that Ibrahim uses as his source is vast, and the analysis of it is of high quality. * Ilkka Lindstedt, University of Helsinki, Journal of Near Eastern Studies *
Thought provoking, meticulously researched, and clearly written. * Prof. Mohammad H. Faghfoory, Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies *
This remarkably thorough book overturns the facile notion that the first Muslim historians had little to say about conversion to Islam. Ayman Ibrahim tracks down the myriad stories they told about the all-important conversions of Muhammad's inner circle, showing how the political and religious commitments of each writer guided his narrative. He has given us an authoritative account of conversion themes and topoi in the debates that tore the early Muslim community apart. It is a book that has much to teach us about how conversion was represented and imagined in early Islamic history * Luke B. Yarbrough, University of California, Los Angeles *
Reading Conversion to Islam is an education. Ibrahim has used his vast knowledge of early Arabic historical works and encyclopedic grasp of secondary scholarship on them to produce a compelling and important study of how medieval Muslim historians wrote about conversion. This book is a wonderful achievement * Jack B. Tannous, Princeton University *
Ayman Ibrahim's newest study is his most comprehensive so far. Until now, Ibrahim has demonstrated a thorough grasp of the Arabic sources, and this volume on conversion, which could almost serve as an introduction to the early Islamic sources in Arabic, does not disappoint. He gives the reader a very thorough discussion of the issue of conversion to Islam as it is portrayed in the earliest sources, not shying away from the many problematic issues such a study entails. This survey is sure to be a fundamental work not merely on conversion but also on Arabic historiography for years to come * David B. Cook, Rice University *
How was conversion to Islam remembered by medieval Muslim scholars? Working at the intersection of history and historiography, Ayman Ibrahim illuminates multilayered discourses on conversion and offers a sensible typology of evolving literary themes and narratives in the source material. In so doing, Ibrahim sheds a fresh light on the memory of one of the most significant social and cultural changes of the formative period of Islam * Antoine Borrut, Author of Entre memoire et pouvoir *
Book Information
ISBN 9780197530719
Author Ayman S. Ibrahim
Format Hardback
Page Count 320
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 1g
Dimensions(mm) 160mm * 236mm * 25mm
