Caliphal and Moral Exemplar? ‛Alī Ibn ‛Asākir’s Portrait of Yazīd b. Mu‛āwiya

Iqbal and Karbala

“…Karbala's construction in the Sunni narrative is as an unfortunate, aberrant event. Remembering this event sporadically, Sunni historical authorities have often shied away from situating it in the larger discursive framework of the Prophet's succession (Abbasi, 1964;al-Tabari, 1990; Baali and Wardi, 1981;Lindsay, 1997). One group of Sunnis that has fondly recalled Karbala-though divorcing it from the issue of succession-is that of the Sufis.…”

SAPPING THE NARRATIVE: IBN KATHIR’S ACCOUNT OF THESHŪRĀOF ʿUTHMAN INKITAB AL-BIDAYA WA-L-NIHAYA

“…21 Ibn Asakir, for example, had allocated approximately one-third of his Ta rikh Madinat Dimashq to figures dating to the rāshidūn and Umayyad periods, including "very lengthy biographies" of the four rāshidūn caliphs. 22 Al-Bidaya wa-l-Nihaya was thus history written with a dedicated purpose: to advance a stringently Sunni historical methodology, to restore Syria's good name (as Ibn Asakir, and after him Ibn al-Adim, had attempted to do), 23 and thus to undermine not only what he saw as the pro-Alid bias of the 9th-century historical accounts, but also the narrative basis of contemporaneous Shi a's historical grievances and sectarian-based political arguments. These Shi i concerns were Ibn Kathir's targets; his weapons of choice were narrative asides, reframing of the story, and criticism of his sources.…”