The Umayyad narrative in the universal chronicles -a study in relation to Islamic historiography- (3-6/9-12)

This study focuses on the Umayyad narrative in general historical works written between the 3rd-6th/9th-12th centuries. The Umayyad period is well suited to historiographical study because of the lack of contemporary sources and because the surviving historical texts were written during the Abbasid period, which overthrew the Umayyads. As a matter of fact, a literature has emerged in which many opinions have been expressed on the nature of the defects in the historical records of the Umayyad dynasty, or on the perspectives of which they bear the traces. These assessments have also opened the door to debates about the reliability of Islamic historical sources and ideological historiography in general. A sample of texts by al-Dīnawarī, Yaʿqūbī, al-Tabarī, al-Masʿūdī, Ibn Miskawayh and Ibn al-Jawzī was selected to examine these claims, which have various implications for Islamic historiography. Then the accounts of the Umayyad period in the works of each historian were analysed comparatively, focusing on their sources and content. The first chapter focuses on the sources and analyses of the information on the Umayyad period. On the one hand, it is shown how and to what extent the historians in the sample indicated their sources, and the possibility of characterising the names that could be identified as anti-Umayyad and the claims about their sectarian-political loyalties are touched upon. Meanwhile, the motivations of the historians analysed were considered. Finally, the two historians were compared in terms of the names they used, and the changes in the general historical works presented as the bibliography of the Umayyad period were analysed. The second part focuses on the content of the texts in the sample during the Umayyad period. Examples are given to show that each topic can be contextualised differently and different themes can be focused on, even though the works are selected from a common historiographical category and deal with the same events. It also discusses some of the more controversial events of the Umayyad period and the narratives about the much-criticised members of the dynasty, focusing on whether the narrative choices of historians, each of whom is associated with different sectarian-political loyalties and has different historical agendas, are affected by this. As a result of all these investigations, it has been observed that the Umayyad narrative in general historical works cannot be evaluated by reducing it to a question of partisanship, and that although there are many narratives that bear traces of an antidynastic perspective, these narratives coexist with other narratives that reflect opposite tendencies. This complex content calls into question both claims that the Umayyad narrative is overshadowed by the Abbasid narrative and the validity of categories such as Sunni, Shia and Mutazilite historiography. On the other hand, it has been observed that many preferences in historical sources, from the organisation of the narrative to the names used and the narratives selected, are related to the place of the source in the scholarly debates of the period, the different tendencies of the scholarly circles, and the specific aims of the author for his book - to make a different narrative, to compile an encyclopaedic content, etc. - and the conception of history. - and the concept of history.