Volume 38, Number 20 · December 5, 1991
In Search of Islam's Past
By Bernard Lewis
Islamic History: A Framework for Inquiry, Revised Edition
by R. Stephen Humphreys
Princeton University Press,, 401 pp., $12.95 (paper)
For Muslims, history is important. The mission of Mohammed and the promulgation of the Qur'an are events in history, and knowledge of them was preserved and disseminated through historical memory and record. In this respect Islam takes the same view as its two predecessors, Judaism and Christianity, and indeed the earliest Islamic narratives bear a generic resemblance to those of the Jews and Christians, in scripture and elsewhere. The Muslims too had their kings and their prophets, their saints and their martyrs, and preserve the memory of their lives and their deaths in history and biography, in tradition and commemoration.
Review, 4388 words
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