Its Definition

In its linguistic sense, "history" (tārīkh) denotes the fixing of a date in time. As a scholarly term, it is the discipline that investigates the conditions of bygone nations, the tidings of ages past, and the records of events long gone — truthfully and in detail, from the dawn of life down to our own day. It is among the most essential of the sciences that a person cannot do without, for through it minds are illumined in coming to know the character of peoples, the causes of their downfall, and the reasons for their rise. Were it not for history, descendants would remain ignorant of the accounts of their forebears, and the tidings of those who came before would vanish from those who came after. It is, as Cicero the Roman orator described it, the witness of the ages, the light of truth, the life of memory, the guide of life, and the messenger of antiquity.

Its Subject Matter

Its subject is the accounts of those who have passed — prophets, sages, and famous figures — and of states, as regards their origin, their growth, and their decline; and of nations, as regards their morals, their customs, their lineages, their crafts, their beliefs, and their commerce. History thus comprises the investigation of all of this, together with the fixing of dates and the exposition of causes and reasons. History is not the mere recounting of stories and tales; rather, it consists of political and social facts bound up with letters, with economic influences, and with geographical location. Every historical event is the result of what preceded it and the cause of what follows it, so that when the causes are in place, their effects come about. History is nothing but a chain of events whose links are joined, drawn together by the principle of causation.

The Importance of History

History has great importance in view of the distinctions that set it apart from the other sciences. It awakens the spirit of zeal and attentiveness in the soul of its reader, and it kindles the fire of patriotic fervor in the heart of the one who studies it. A shining proof of its immense importance is enough for us: the intense care that Westerners devote to it, their excessive concern for teaching it in their schools, the remarkable ingenuity of their methods of imparting it to their students, and the astonishing breadth with which they have developed its branches — as they have with the rest of the modern sciences. Their educators grant it the foremost place among their lessons, assign it its fitting rank in school curricula, and rely upon it to instill the patriotic spirit and national feeling in the souls of the young among their people. Beyond this, experience has shown that history is among the powerful factors that pave the way to success for those who take up some national office, financial post, or social service. For a person rarely attains what he aims at in one of these posts unless he is fully acquainted with the historical facts and broadly conversant with their particulars — because, as Bacon, the master of the English philosophers, said, histories "make a man clever."

The one acquainted with the facts of his nation's history is not like the one ignorant of them. The former, by his knowledge of his nation's past and his grasp of the earlier phases through which it has passed, has kindled in his heart that fire of love for his own kind with which man is imprinted; he then devotes himself to serving it with utter self-sacrifice, extreme in his zeal for its welfare with all the might and strength he possesses, immoderate in his love for it. The latter, by his ignorance of his nation's past, holds its worth cheap in his eyes; he turns away from serving it, and its interests weigh lightly upon him. He cares nothing for any of its affairs, whether it rises or falls, for things are commonly deemed cheap in the eyes of their owners when they are ignorant of their value, and grow precious in their eyes once they know their price. It is an established matter that things are not valued until their true nature is known.

What is to be regretted is that we see the children of our people ignorant of the history of their nation and their nationhood, turning away from the study of its facts. The impact of this social deficiency upon the life of the people and its destiny is not hidden: patriotic love has all but faded from their hearts, and the community has come to weigh as lightly upon them as a penny does upon a spendthrift. One famous man likened nations ignorant of their history to children ignorant of their fathers.

The Benefits of History

The benefits of history are many, and they may be summed up as follows:

1. Through the study of history, a person comes to grasp all the upheavals that have befallen the world since its earliest age. He learns the events of humankind in ages past and comes to know the beliefs of vanished nations, their civilization, and all their other conditions in detail — as though he had lived since the beginning of the world and witnessed every event with his own eyes, even though a person's lifespan is very short. The study of history thus lengthens his life.

2. By studying the accounts of those who have passed, a person takes heed, drawing lessons and fine examples; for he learns the secret of the success of some states and the extinction or backwardness of others. There becomes plain to him the virtues of the great and elevated nations that outstripped their peers in the arena of civilization, and the vices of the base nations that extinction overtook on account of the corruption of their people's morals and their immersion in lusts and vices. He looks upon their conditions with an eye of insight and criticism, and draws from this lessons for himself and for the community to which he belongs.

The Sources of History

The reader may ask how the accounts of the ancients reached us, and about the sources on which historians relied in recording events and setting down tidings. We say that the sources of history that serve as references in its recording are all kinds of remains, and these remains are of three types, by which the accounts of the ancients have reached us:

The precise remains, the transmitted remains, and the ancient remains.

The precise remains: these are the compositions of authors who lived at the time the events they recorded took place — such as the History of Saladin by Ibn Shaddad, the Conquest of Jerusalem by ʿImad al-Din al-Katib, and the History of the Crusaders by the Patriarch Michael, called the Great. These are the soundest of all histories. Of the same kind are official documents, international treaties, and the terms of agreements concluded between different peoples, as well as journals and newspapers. Among them, too, are the historical poems of most peoples, such as the narrative poems of Homer, in which he embedded the history of the ancient Greeks and their triumph over [?] the earth known in that age.

The transmitted remains: these are the accounts handed down — that is, the unwritten tidings passed from one person to another over successive ages. In his earliest age, a person would recount to his children and grandchildren the events and happenings that had befallen him, and they in turn would pass them on to their sons and grandsons, generation after generation, clothing them in a garb of embellishment and strangeness that rendered most of them impossible. Things remained in this state until the invention of writing, whereupon people hastened to set down their deeds and inscribe them on plates of metal or on brick. These remains are rarely trusted or relied upon, for in their passage from one person to another they are marred by alteration and beset by addition or omission; only the rare few [?] remain sound and true.

The ancient remains: these are the buildings, statues, columns, weapons, sarcophagi, and coins surviving from bygone nations — that is, what the ancients left behind of ruins, such as the wreckage of Egypt, Baalbek, and Palmyra, and the remnants of their manufactures, such as engravings and vessels of pottery and stone. Upon many of these remains are inscriptions in strange scripts, from which much important information has been drawn — so much so that certain kingdoms, such as Egypt, Babylonia, and Assyria, had no known history except by way of the inscriptions and writings discovered upon their remains. These writings and inscriptions remained unknown for a long age, until the archaeologists succeeded in deciphering and reading them after enduring severe toil. The most important of these writings and scripts is the hieroglyphic script inscribed on the Egyptian monuments, which the French scholar Champollion deciphered in the year 1822, and the cuneiform script inscribed on the antiquities discovered in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates, whose symbols Henry Rawlinson was guided to decipher in the year 1837. All these remains bear witness to the truth of history, a testimony that speaks through their very condition to the soundness of their content.

The Ages of History

The historians of Europe divide the ages of history into two parts:

The first, the unknown ages, known as the ages before history (prehistory); this is the span that passed before the invention of writing. The second, the historical ages; this is the span that followed the invention of writing.

The ages before history: these are the phases through which humankind passed from creation to the age of the invention of writing. Nothing of the accounts of the nations that lived in those ages has come down to us except what the Holy Scriptures relate, and that is summary and does not quench one's thirst. Rather, scholars have inferred some of their conditions and customs from the remains they left behind — remains upon which excavators came, buried in the depths of the earth at vast distances, amid heaps of pebbles, sand, and dust that gradually accumulated, surrounding and preserving them from the action of the air and the heat of the sun. A group of researchers devoted themselves to studying and examining these remains, and their excavation led them to grasp many facts about the condition of the human being who lived in those ages, and brought them to lay down the principles of a new science — "archaeology," that is, the science of antiquities. It is among the modern sciences, no more than a hundred years old, and it investigates what is discovered of human remains.

They have divided these ages into four great eras, each named after the material from which humankind fashioned its tools and weapons in that phase, namely:

The Stone Age, the New Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age.

The Old Stone Age: this is the phase in which humankind took its weapons and tools from flint flakes, without carving or refining them; life in this phase was simple and rudimentary.

The New Stone Age: in this phase humankind began to use tools and weapons made of stone that was carved and finely polished.

The Bronze Age: in this phase humankind was guided to bronze and began to smelt it and use it for the necessities of life.

The Iron Age: this is the last of the phases of the ages before history, in which humankind took an important step along the roads of civilization by discovering the metal of iron. This phase is regarded as a bridge linking the historical ages with the ages preceding history.

The Historical Ages and Their Divisions

The historical ages are the eras through which humankind has passed from the invention of writing down to our own day. Historians customarily divide them into four great phases, namely:

(1) the First Centuries, (2) the Middle Ages, (3) the Later Centuries, (4) the Modern Centuries.

The First Centuries: this is the span that passed from the dawn of history to the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the year 476 AD. In that year the invasions of the barbarians against the said empire came to a head [?], so that it vanished and became extinct, and Europe entered a new phase; affairs came to be run on a modern system from which arose the kingdoms [?] known in our present day.

The Middle Ages: these centuries begin with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the year 476 AD and end with the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire and the conquest of Constantinople at the hands of the Ottomans in the year 1453. The span of this phase is 977 years. The Middle Ages were called the Dark Ages because of Europe's deep immersion at that time in darkness and ignorance.

The Later Centuries: these begin with the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire in the year 1453 and end with the French Revolution in the year 1789 — that revolution which raised the banner of justice and liberty and brought about a great upheaval in the conditions of the world. The span of this phase is 336 years, during which the nations took wide strides toward civilization and the lights of culture dawned on the horizon of Europe.

The Modern Centuries: these comprise the events and happenings that have taken place from the French Revolution of 1789 to our present time.

The Divisions of History

History is divided into: civil history, already mentioned; religious history; and natural history.

Religious history investigates the affairs of religion from the time of its revelation to our own days, and it has three branches:

The first, that which recorded the religious tidings preceding the time of Christ — this is the history of the Old Testament, whose foundation is the ancient divine books.

The second, that which set down the accounts of Christ and the life of the Savior — this is the history of the New Testament, drawn from the tidings of the New Testament.

The third, that which recorded the religious conditions after Christ — this is the history of the Church, its origin, its growth, and its triumph over the people of heresy, together with an account of its councils and the lives of its prelates.

As for natural history, it investigates the organic and inorganic beings of which the terrestrial globe is composed, and it is known as the science of the three kingdoms. It is divided into three great divisions, namely:

(1) zoology, (2) botany, (3) mineralogy.

The divisions of civil history: civil history is divided into general and particular. General history investigates the events and happenings of the whole world. Particular history investigates the events of a single people or state only, without investigating other nations unless they had some connection with that people. When particular history is confined to the account of a single person, it is called a translation [biography] or a life.

History is also divided, with regard to its subject, into several categories, among them: the history of politics, the history of the judiciary, the history of commerce, the history of literature, the history of society, and the history of economics.