Those dear to us already know: we have begun writing a book called “The Philosophy of the Free Person.”

Assalamu alaykum!

Those dear to us already know: we have begun writing a book called “The Philosophy of the Free Person.”

We present Chapter 2 for your attention.

We would like to warn you in advance: this chapter contains a great deal of information, and in fact it is information in its most condensed form, that is, stated as briefly as possible.

We hope you will read it through without haste.

Please send us your thoughts on the text.

Chapter Two

Back to the Past: The Origin of Man

What we know about history goes no further than school textbooks. But those books are at the level of reference guides. No textbook teaches analysis and description. On the contrary, as if to say “don’t you dare think,” they pile up dense information. As if to say “don’t ask questions,” they state every sentence in the tone of a verdict.

To know in what place, in what station and in what condition we find ourselves today, we are compelled, whether we like it or not, to go back to the past and deal with it.

Let us begin our discussion with libraries.

Where are the richest and most important fortresses of books in the world, and what books are kept in them? In our view, in order to get to the main question, one should have at least a general idea of such matters.

The Library of Congress in Washington, a library holding roughly 178 million 200 thousand books and printed items, has 78 and a half million manuscripts. 5 million 800 thousand maps. Close to sixteen million photographs. Around 4 million 300 thousand sound recordings. The noteworthy point is the 78 and a half million manuscripts.

In London, the capital of England, there is the British Library. More than 170 million items are kept there. At present, some 310 thousand manuscripts, give or take, have been catalogued.

The collection of the National Library of France in Paris holds some 40 million items, give or take. We could not find information on its website about how many manuscripts are kept there.

In London, too, the Bodleian (Bodlein) Library was built. It holds 14 million items. This library is considered a unified system of 22 libraries in Oxford. Unfortunately, its website, too, gives no information about manuscripts.

Besides these, there are huge libraries in Cambridge, Berlin, the Vatican, St. Petersburg, Alexandria and Istanbul, all of which hold millions of books. Taken together, they hold 600 million items, more or less. The number of actual books is estimated to reach 3 million.

Of course, just as not all of these manuscripts can be called reliable, usable sources worthy of research and yielding conclusions, using them as historical documents is also open to question. The point is that over the centuries humanity has been eager to write down its ideas, its life, its past and bygone days. What matters is that, revealing its heart and its thought, it has left something written — whether on paper, on hide or on stone.

Today there are a number of sources for studying history. Books are not accepted as the only source. The first of these sources is material artifacts. That is, excavators dig, researchers search, and they find all sorts of things. For example, bones, pottery shards, some small tools or other. They blow and blow on them to clean off the dust. Then there are various apparatuses — devices.

That device analyzes the evidence found chemically, you see, and tells you that the age of this object is approximately (one may as well say roughly) so many hundred years. Relying on this, they search for more odds and ends at the place where the object was found, find some more traces, and then declare that so many years ago there was a city or a village here.

Looking at dishes and crockery, bowls and platters, or some idols or images, they say that the inhabitants of this place followed such-and-such a religion. And so a science called history comes into being — the history of cities, the history of people.

In the same way, finding the bones of apes, they also say that an ape-man lived here so many thousand years ago. For some reason their word is then accepted as absolute truth, you see, written into books and poured into schoolchildren’s heads.

What is more, this work is called scientific research, science. Even more curious, almost everyone believes the conclusions of this science and scholarship to be undoubtedly true.

Besides material artifacts, historians accept old ruins, old palaces and the like as evidence. After that they turn to what is said in books.

When world history is discussed, for some reason Herodotus is called the father of history. Why Herodotus in particular? First, let us read through the information about Herodotus:

The work “Histories” by Herodotus (484–425 BC) is believed to be the first complete prose and historical work in European literature and scholarship to have survived in full.

The “Histories” is traditionally accepted as consisting of 9 books. This arrangement does not belong to the author himself. Later, the textual scholars of the Library of Alexandria divided the work logically and chronologically into 9 parts and named each book after one of the 9 Muses (spirits of inspiration) of Greek mythology. The content of these books is outlined below:

Book I (Clio): describes the history of the Lydian kingdom, the rise of the Achaemenid state and the reign of Cyrus II, his war against the Massagetae and their queen Tomyris, and his death.

Book II (Euterpe): devoted to the history of ancient Egypt, it analyzes in particular detail, from a geographical and ethnographic point of view, the nature of the country, the features of the Nile, the customs and religion of the people, and the history of the pharaohs.

Book III (Thalia): gives information about the conquest of Egypt by the Persian king Cambyses, the rise to power of King Darius I, and the tax and administrative system (the satrapies) he introduced in the empire.

Book IV (Melpomene): describes the origin, social life and nature of the Scythians and the unsuccessful campaign of Darius I into Scythia. Peoples of the inner regions of Central Asia, such as the Sakas and the Issedones, are also mentioned here for the first time.

Book V (Terpsichore): covers the nature of Thrace and Macedonia, as well as the Ionian revolt, which was the direct cause of the Greco-Persian wars, and its consequences.

Book VI (Erato): contains the final defeat of the Ionian rebels, the first Persian campaign into Greek territory, and the details of the famous Battle of Marathon in 490 BC.

Book VII (Polyhymnia): depicts how King Xerxes, to fulfill the will of his father Darius I, gathered a huge army and set out against Greece, the Battle of Thermopylae, and the courage of the Spartans led by King Leonidas.

Book VIII (Urania): analyzes how in the naval battles near Artemisium and Salamis the strategic initiative passed into the hands of the Greeks, and the important victory won over the Persian fleet.

Book IX (Calliope): covers the utter rout of the Persian forces at the battles of Plataea and Mycale, the liberation of the Greek cities, and the close of the work with the common victory.

According to the tradition of antiquity, Herodotus’s work was kept and circulated not in the form of a book (codex), as today, but in papyrus rolls (scrolls).

Research says that originally the text consisted of 28 logoi (a series of independent lectures or oral stories) intended for public listening.

Herodotus read the information he had gathered on his travels to the people of the Greek poleis, following these logical parts. The text is written in the Ionic dialect of ancient Greek and has a distinctive smooth and artistic style.

By modern publishing standards, the total length of the “Histories,” depending on the translation, commentary and font size, amounts on average to between 600 and 800 pages.

The original manuscript (autograph) of Herodotus, written by the author in the 5th century BC, has not survived.

The texts known to scholarship today and used as the basis of scholarly editions are mainly the product of the labors of medieval (Byzantine-era) copyists. In textual criticism, these manuscripts are divided into two main branches (stemmata) according to their origin and textual accuracy:

The Florentine or Roman group (Stemma A): the most authoritative and valuable representative of this group is the 10th-century manuscript Codex Laurentianus (pluteus LXX, 3), kept in the Medicea Laurenziana Library in Florence. This text is considered closer to the author’s style and freer of errors than the other copies.

The Theodorean or German group (Stemma B): this includes manuscripts from the 11th–14th centuries. The chief among them is the 11th-century manuscript Codex Vaticanus (Vat. Gr. 67), kept in the Vatican Library in Rome. Although it differs somewhat from the Stemma A group, it is believed to be an important scholarly source for restoring passages missing from the text.

Now let us turn our discussion away from Herodotus.

For example, a man named Khondamir — you know him, he was brought up by Hazrat Alisher Navoi — wrote a work called “Habib al-Siyar.” The full title of the work: “Habib al-siyar fi akhbar afrad al-bashar.”

The book was written between 1521 and 1524 and fully completed in 1529.

A brief outline of the work:

Introduction

In this part the author gives general notions about the benefit and importance of the science of history in the life of society, the creation of the universe, the geographical climes and various countries.

Volume One

Part 1. The history of the prophets beginning with Adam, peace be upon him, and the chronology of the kings of ancient Iran (the Pishdadians and the Kayanians).

Part 2. The life of Muhammad ﷺ, his military campaigns, and the spread of the religion of Islam.

Part 3. The era of the first four caliphs (the Rightly Guided Caliphs), as well as the history of the later Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates.

Volume Two Part 1. The dynasties that became independent in various regions during the Abbasid era (the Tahirids, Saffarids, Samanids, Ghaznavids, Buyids and Seljuks).

Part 2. The Ghurids, the Khwarazmshahs, the Ismaili dynasty, and the local rulers in Azerbaijan and Fars.

Part 3. The history of the Mamluks and the Fatimid caliphate that ruled in Egypt and Sham (Syria).

Volume Three

Part 1. Genghis Khan, his origins, the Mongol conquest, and the history of the Mongol khans in the Dasht-i Qipchaq, the Chagatai ulus and Mawarannahr.

Part 2. The era of the Ilkhanids (Hulaguids) and the local dynasties after them (the Muzaffarids, the Kurds and others).

Part 3. The era of Amir Temur and the Timurids. This section covers in great detail the social, political and cultural life of Khorasan and Mawarannahr in the time of Shahrukh Mirzo, Abu Said and especially Sultan Husayn Boyqaro, in whose service the author spent many years. It also describes the decline of the Timurids, the activities of Babur, and the rise of the Uzbeks led by Shaybani Khan and of the Safavid state (Shah Ismail I)

Conclusion

This part presents descriptions of the various climes of the earth, its great cities, mountains and rivers (geographical information), as well as the wonders and natural phenomena of that time.

This was a brief note about Hazrat Khondamir. In general, what other historians lived in the East? Let us mention the names of the greatest of them:

1. Ahmad ibn Abi Ya’qub al-Ya’qubi (? – after 897) was born in Baghdad. In his youth he was in Armenia, then in the service of the Tahirids in Khorasan; he traveled to India, Egypt and the Maghreb. As a result of his travels he wrote the geographical work “Kitab al-buldan” (The Book of Countries).

His work “Ta’rikh” (History) set out world history within Islamic historiography. The first part of the work covers the history, culture, science and beliefs of the peoples before Islam — Israel, India, Greece, Rome, Iran, China, the Turks and the Arabs — and the second part covers the history of Islam up to the year 872. The author presented the history of Islam together with the history of other civilizations as a single process.

2. Abu Ja’far Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari (839–923) was born in the city of Amul in Tabaristan. In pursuit of knowledge he was in Rayy, Baghdad, Basra, Kufa, Sham and Egypt. He spent most of his life in Baghdad and is also famous as the author of the tafsir “Jami’ al-bayan.” He died in Baghdad.

“Ta’rikh al-rusul wa-l-muluk” (The History of Prophets and Kings) is the first and most perfect example of the tradition of general historiography set out year by year (chronologically). It covers events from the creation of the world up to the year 915. The author cited each report with the chain of narrators who transmitted it — its isnad — placing different reports about the same event side by side and leaving the conclusion to the reader. Thanks to this impartial approach, the work became the main source for all later Islamic historians.

Manuscripts and editions. No single complete manuscript of the work exists; the text has been restored on the basis of copies in libraries in Istanbul, Leiden, Berlin, Oxford and elsewhere. An international group of scholars led by M. J. de Goeje published it in Leiden (1879–1901).

A 40-volume English translation was published by the State University of New York Press (1985–2007).

Several copies of the “Ta’rikh-i Bal’ami,” the Persian reworking of this work written in 963 by the Samanid vizier Abu Ali Bal’ami, are kept in the collection of the Abu Rayhon Beruni Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan.

3. Abu’l-Hasan Ali ibn al-Husayn al-Mas’udi (896–956) was born in Baghdad. He traveled in person through Iran, India, the shores of the Indian Ocean, the Caspian coast, Armenia, Sham and Palestine, and wrote on the basis of his first-hand observations of the culture, customs and beliefs of peoples. He spent the end of his life in Egypt and died in Fustat.

His “Muruj al-dhahab wa ma’adin al-jawhar” (Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems) is a unique work that brings history together with geography, ethnography and the natural sciences.

It sets out the creation of the world, the face of the earth, the seas, the history of various peoples — Indians, Chinese, Greeks, Romans, Persians, Turks, Slavs — and then the history of Islam up to 947.

The events are grouped not by years but by topics and dynasties.

Manuscripts and editions. Its manuscripts are kept in Paris, Istanbul, Leiden and other libraries. C. Barbier de Meynard and A. Pavet de Courteille published the work with its Arabic text and a French translation in 9 volumes (Paris, 1861–1877); later Ch. Pellat prepared a corrected edition (Beirut).

4. Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni (973–1048) was born in the city of Kath in Khwarazm. He worked in Jurjan at the court of Qabus ibn Wushmgir and in Gurganj among the scholars at the court of the Ma’munids. From 1017 he lived in Ghazni, took part in the campaigns into India and learned Sanskrit. He died in Ghazni.

“Al-athar al-baqiya ’an al-qurun al-khaliya” (Monuments Left by Ancient Peoples) is a work that comparatively studies the calendars, eras, festivals and religious traditions of the world’s peoples. In it, the reckoning of years and the history of the Persians, Sogdians, Khwarazmians, Greeks, Jews, Syriacs, Arabs and other peoples are reconstructed through critical comparison of sources.

His work “Tahqiq ma li-l-Hind” (India), for its part, is a classic example of studying another civilization impartially through its own sources and language.

Manuscripts and editions. A copy of “Al-athar al-baqiya” with miniatures, made in 1307, is kept in the Edinburgh University Library, and other copies in Paris and Istanbul.

Its critical text was published by E. Sachau (Leipzig, 1878). The Uzbek translation was printed in Volume I of the “Selected Works” (Tashkent, 1968). It was recently published again.

5. Izz al-Din Abu’l-Hasan Ali ibn al-Athir al-Jazari (1160–1233) was born in the city of Jazirat ibn Umar on the Tigris (present-day Cizre in Turkey) and spent most of his life in Mosul. He was in Baghdad, Damascus and Aleppo, and took part in campaigns against the Crusaders in the ranks of Saladin’s army. He died in Mosul.

“Al-kamil fi-l-ta’rikh” (The Complete History) is a general history from the creation of the world up to 1231 and one of the most reliable sources for the era of the Crusades and the Mongol invasion.

He abridged al-Tabari’s material, dropping the isnads, presented events as a continuous narrative, and brought scattered information about various regions of the Mashriq and the Maghreb into a single system.

In the final parts of the work he wrote, as a contemporary, about how Genghis Khan’s armies destroyed Bukhara, Samarkand, Otrar and Urgench, and he judged the Mongol invasion to be one of the gravest calamities ever to befall humanity.

Manuscripts and editions. Its manuscripts are kept in Istanbul, Paris, Leiden and other libraries.

C. J. Tornberg published the work in 14 volumes (Leiden – Uppsala, 1851–1876).

6. Rashid al-Din Fazlullah Hamadani (1247–1318) was born in Hamadan into a family of physicians. He was a physician at the Ilkhanid court, then chief vizier under Ghazan Khan and Öljeitü. Near Tabriz he built the “Rab’-i Rashidi” complex, consisting of a madrasa, a library, a scriptorium and a hospital. As a result of court intrigues he was executed in 1318.

“Jami’ al-tawarikh” (Compendium of Chronicles) is recognized by many researchers as the first true world history in historiography.

Its first volume sets out the history of the Turkic and Mongol tribes, of Genghis Khan and his descendants, and its second volume the history of Oghuz Khan and the Turks, China, India, the Jews and the “Franks” (the peoples of Europe). The work was created by the method of collective research — with the participation of Mongol, Chinese, Indian, Kashmiri and European experts, relying on the written tradition of the Mongols.

Manuscripts and editions. According to the deed of endowment (waqfnama), it was stipulated that the work be copied every year in Arabic and Persian at the “Rab’-i Rashidi.”

Parts of an Arabic copy with miniatures dated 1314 are kept in the Edinburgh University Library and in the N. D. Khalili Collection in London, and important Persian copies in the Topkapı Palace Library in Istanbul.

A Russian translation was published in 1946–1960, and W. M. Thackston’s English translation in 1998–1999.

7. Shams al-Din Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Dhahabi (1274–1348)

“Ta’rikh al-islam wa wafayat al-mashahir wa-l-a’lam” (The History of Islam and the Deaths of Famous People and Notables) and “Siyar a’lam al-nubala” (The Lives of Eminent Scholars) are the largest historical and biographical encyclopedias of the Islamic world.

In “Ta’rikh al-islam” the history of Islam up to the year 1300 is set out by hijri decades, and after the events of each period information is given about the scholars, statesmen, hadith scholars and men of learning who died in those years; the number of biographies in the work is estimated at nearly 40 thousand. The author systematically applied to historical biography the method of jarh and ta’dil (critical assessment of narrators) from the science of hadith.

We have mentioned seven famous Muslim historians; now let us also look at the historians of the West.

1. Polybius (c. 200–118 BC) was born in the city of Megalopolis in Arcadia and was one of the military leaders of the Achaean League. In 167 BC he was taken to Rome among a thousand Achaeans held as hostages and became close to the circle of Scipio Aemilianus. He witnessed the destruction of Carthage (146 BC) and was in Spain, Africa and the Alps.

His “Historiai” (Universal History) is said to be a work showing how in 220–146 BC the destinies of the peoples of the Mediterranean world merged into a single process around Roman rule.

Polybius was among the first to give a theoretical grounding to the idea of universal history: in his view, the histories of separate peoples cannot give a complete picture. He put forward the principle of “pragmatic history” and the theory of the cyclical succession of forms of government, and he criticized historians who did not verify their sources.

Manuscripts and editions. Of the 40 books, only Books 1–5 survive in full. Their main manuscript is the 10th-century “Vaticanus graecus 124” (Vatican). Fragments of the remaining books have come down through the collections of Byzantine excerpts compiled under Emperor Constantine VII.

2. Diodorus of Sicily (c. 90–30 BC) was born in the city of Agyrium in Sicily. Around 60–56 BC he was in Egypt, then lived in Rome for many years and, collecting sources, worked on his book for nearly thirty years.

“Bibliotheke historike” (Historical Library) is a major general history of antiquity, setting out world history from legendary times up to 60 BC in 40 books.

The work covers the history of Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, Ethiopia, the Scythians, the Arabs, the Greeks and the Romans. The particular value of Diodorus’s work is that it preserved the information of many authors now lost — Ctesias, Megasthenes, Ephorus and others.

Manuscripts and editions. Of the 40 books, Books 1–5 and 11–20 survive in full; the rest are known in fragments through Byzantine excerpts and the “Bibliotheca” of Patriarch Photius. The surviving books have come down mainly through Byzantine manuscripts of the 10th–15th centuries.

The Greek text of the work with an English translation was published in 12 volumes in the “Loeb Classical Library” series (1933–1967).

3. Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 260–339) was born in the city of Caesarea in Palestine and was educated in the library of the scholar Pamphilus. From about 313 he was Bishop of Caesarea and became known as a person close to Emperor Constantine.

The “Chronicle” (Chronikoi kanones) is a work that sets out, for comparison, the events of world history from the time of the Prophet Abraham up to 325 in parallel columns according to the reckonings of the Assyrians, Jews, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans.

It is said to have served as the model for all the world chronicles of medieval Europe. His “Church History” (10 books), in turn, laid the foundation of church historiography; the author used the method of quoting documents and letters in full.

Manuscripts and editions. The “Chronicle” has not survived complete in Greek: it is known through Jerome’s Latin translation and an Armenian translation.

The Greek manuscripts of the “Church History” date from the 10th–12th centuries; a manuscript of a Syriac translation from the 5th century has also survived.

4. Paulus Orosius (c. 385 – after 420) “Historiae adversus paganos” (Seven Books of History Against the Pagans, 417–418) is the first Christian general history, setting out world history from Adam up to 417.

The work was written on Augustine’s commission as a response to the view that the sack of Rome by the Goths in 410 happened because of Christianity.

Orosius interpreted world history according to the scheme of the succession of four great empires — Babylon, Macedonia, Carthage and Rome. For a thousand years the work served as the main textbook of world history in Europe.

He came from the city of Bracara (present-day Braga in Portugal) in northwestern Spain. Around 414, because of the tribes that had invaded Spain, he went to North Africa, to the city of Hippo, to Augustine.

In 415 he went to Palestine, to Jerome in Bethlehem, and then returned to Africa.

Manuscripts and editions. More than 200 manuscripts of the work are known, the oldest of them the 6th-century “Laurentianus 65.1” (Florence). At the end of the 9th century it was translated into Old English. There is a critical edition by K. Zangemeister (Vienna, 1882).

5. Otto of Freising (c. 1112–1158) was the son of Margrave Leopold III of Austria and the uncle of Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa. He studied in Paris, became a monk at the Morimond monastery in Burgundy, and from 1138 was Bishop of Freising (Bavaria). He took part in the Second Crusade (1147–1148). He died at Morimond. “Chronica sive Historia de duabus civitatibus” (Chronicle of the Two Cities, 1143–1146) is a work that interprets world history from the creation of the world up to 1146 on the basis of Augustine’s idea of the “City of God” — as the relationship between the heavenly and the earthly “city”; its eighth book is devoted to the end times.

The author developed the idea of the transfer of power and learning from East to West (translatio imperii).

In the work we find an echo of the news of the victory of the Qara Khitai over the Seljuks at the Battle of Qatwan near Samarkand in 1141 — the first written record of the legend of a Christian king in the East, “Prester John.”

Manuscripts and editions. Its most famous manuscript — a copy with miniatures from the late 12th century — is kept in the library of the University of Jena. A. Hofmeister’s critical edition appeared in the “Monumenta Germaniae Historica” series (1912).

6. Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704) was born in Dijon in Burgundy. He was a preacher in Metz and Paris, and Bishop of Condom and then of Meaux. In 1670–1681 he was tutor to the Dauphin, heir of King Louis XIV, and wrote the work for his education. He died in Paris.

“Discours sur l’histoire universelle” (Discourse on Universal History, 1681) is a work that interprets world history from the creation of the world up to the time of Charlemagne (800) as a whole from the standpoint of divine providence.

It is the last major example of the providential philosophy of history, and the Enlightenment philosophy of history took shape precisely as a response to it.

Manuscripts and editions. The work was published in Paris in 1681; reprints with the author’s corrections appeared in later years. Most of Bossuet’s manuscripts are kept in the National Library of France.

7. Voltaire — François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778) was born in Paris. In 1726–1728 he was in exile in England; later he lived at the Château de Cirey and at the court of King Frederick II of Prussia (Potsdam), and spent his last twenty years at Ferney near Geneva. He died in Paris.

“Essai sur les mœurs et l’esprit des nations” (Essay on the Customs and the Spirit of Nations, 1756) is a work that sets out to write world history not as a history of dynasties and wars, but as a history of culture, customs and civilizations.

In opposition to Bossuet, Voltaire began his work with China, India and the Islamic world, calling for an end to Eurocentrism.

It was also he who introduced the term “philosophy of history” (1765).

Manuscripts and editions. Voltaire’s personal library (more than 6,800 books, with his marginal notes) and part of his manuscripts were bought by Catherine II in 1779 and are now kept in the National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg.

8. Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886) was born in the town of Wiehe in Thuringia. From 1825 he was a professor at the University of Berlin, and in 1827–1831 he worked in the archives of Vienna, Venice and Rome. He died in Berlin.

He is regarded as the scholar who turned history into an independent professional discipline through the critical method based on archival documents and the seminar system. His principle that the historian must show the past “as it actually was” became the motto of 19th-century historiography. In the last years of his life — at the age of 85 — he began the work “Weltgeschichte” (World History) and by his death had brought it up to the Middle Ages; its final volumes were prepared for publication by his students on the basis of his lectures.

Manuscripts and editions. The “World History” was published in Leipzig in 9 volumes (1881–1888). Ranke’s personal library and most of his manuscripts were moved in 1887 to Syracuse University in the USA and are still kept there.

9. Oswald Spengler (1880–1936) was born in the town of Blankenburg at the foot of the Harz Mountains. He studied at the universities of Halle, Munich and Berlin, was a gymnasium teacher in Hamburg, and from 1911 lived in Munich as an independent scholar; he died there.

His book “Der Untergang des Abendlandes” (The Decline of the West, 1918–1922) is a work that interprets world history not as a single linear progress, but as the morphology of separate high cultures — Egyptian, Babylonian, Indian, Chinese, Classical, Arabian (Magian), Western and others — each passing through stages of birth, flowering and decline.

Spengler stressed that each culture, in its final stage, turns into a “civilization” and becomes rigid. In the 20th century the work had a great influence on the comparative study of civilizations, including on A. Toynbee.

Manuscripts and editions. The first volume of the work was published in Vienna (1918), the second in Munich (1922). The author’s scholarly legacy and manuscripts are kept in the Bavarian State Library in Munich.

10. Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889–1975) was born in London and educated at Oxford. He was a professor at the University of London and, in 1925–1955, director of studies at the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

His book “A Study of History” (12 volumes, 1934–1961) is the most wide-ranging work of the 20th century, a comparative analysis of world history as the emergence, growth, breakdown and disintegration of more than twenty civilizations.

Toynbee put forward the theory of “challenge and response”: a civilization develops thanks to the fitting response of a creative minority to natural or social challenges. He paid special attention to Islamic civilization and judged Ibn Khaldun’s “Muqaddimah” to be one of the greatest works of its kind.

Manuscripts and editions. The work was printed by Oxford University Press. Toynbee’s scholarly archive is kept in the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

So we have gathered, in the briefest form, information about eight classical historians who lived in the Muslim East and eleven from the West.

If we analyze them comparatively, both traditions sought to take history beyond the bounds of a single people or a single state and to write it as the common history of humanity. This aspiration brings them closer together, yet each tradition reached this goal in its own way.

The ancient authors began history with the creation of the world and brought history together with geography and ethnography.

Eastern historiography stands out for its consistent continuity: al-Tabari’s work became the foundation for later historians, Ibn al-Athir continued it, and Khondamir enriched this tradition with the history of the Timurids and Mawarannahr.

In the West, historical thought renewed itself stage by stage: from the testimony of antiquity it moved to the providential interpretation, and from there to cultural history and the theory of civilizations.

In terms of impartiality and scholarly verification, personal observation, citing a source in its original form, and critical checking are found in both traditions. Eastern historians applied systematic methods of verifying the reliability of the person transmitting information — isnad, jarh and ta’dil, as well as al-Biruni’s method of critical comparison of sources — as early as the 9th–14th centuries.

Al-Tabari placed conflicting reports side by side and left the judgment to the reader.

In the West, systematic archival criticism became established only in the 19th century, with Ranke.

Explaining history on the basis of a unified theoretical scheme, on the other hand, has been the strong side of Western historiography from Polybius to Toynbee, although this approach also increases the influence of the author’s own concept.

In terms of the reliability of manuscripts, in both traditions the authors’ originals have not survived, the texts have been restored by comparing several copies, and scholarly critical editions were prepared mainly in the 19th–20th centuries.

But the noteworthy point is that the copies of Eastern works are much closer to the author’s time: Rashid al-Din’s work was copied in his lifetime, and its regular reproduction was guaranteed through a waqf.

A rare copy of al-Biruni’s work was made two and a half centuries after him.

The works of the ancient West, by contrast, have come down through copies made more than a millennium later, and in many cases only in part.

On the whole, Eastern historiography stands out for the reliability of its sources, the consistency of its narrative, and the preservation of its texts close to the author’s time.

The distinctive feature of Western historiography, meanwhile, lies in theoretical generalization and the diversity of historical views.

Of course, even if we look through the lens of modern scholarship’s principle of impartiality, the historians of the Muslim East stand out for having treated their subjects on the basis of precise documents and for the strength of their evidence.

The faithfulness with which copies were preserved, copied and passed down to our day is an achievement in its own right. In this sense, it is quite incomprehensible that the history taught to us relies mainly on Western sources. Voltaire’s views on this are very significant — he rejected portraying the West as the center of the world.

Indeed, placing the West at the center in the study of history seems to be connected with the colonial policy of recent centuries. For the master wants to present himself as the most ancient and the finest.

The main question we want to focus on once again concerns the origin of mankind.

Al-Tabari says that mankind spread from Adam. He cites the report that Adam was created from soil taken from different parts of the earth, and that this is why people differ in color and nature. He holds that after the Flood all peoples spread from the three sons of Noah, peace be upon him — Shem, Ham and Japheth.

Al-Ya’qubi, too, begins history with Adam and sets it out through the line of prophets, making wide use of the reports of the People of the Book. He then moves on to the ancient history of the Indians, the Greeks and other peoples.

Al-Mas’udi begins with the story of Adam in the Quran. He describes the spread of peoples from the sons of Noah, while also recording other peoples’ views about the world and man.

In al-Biruni’s view, since no one witnessed the beginning of the world, knowledge about it can be obtained only through reliable transmission, that is, through the divine scriptures, and its exact date cannot be calculated.

Ibn al-Athir followed al-Tabari on this question: he gave the story of creation and of Adam without isnads, in the form of a short narrative.

Rashid al-Din begins world history with Adam and the prophets. In the Turko-Mongol part he traces the Turkic peoples to the descendants of Japheth, son of Noah, and carries the genealogy down to Oghuz Khan. In the part on the history of China he also cited the Chinese people’s own traditions.

Khondamir begins the first volume of “Habib al-Siyar” with Adam. Along with the history of the prophets he also presents the Pishdadian kings of the Iranian tradition, the first of whom is Kayumars.

Herodotus does not offer his own theory of the origin of man, but he cites the claims of peoples on this matter. The Egyptians claimed to be the most ancient people. To test this, Pharaoh Psammetichus raised two infants without letting them hear human speech. Because the first word the children said turned out to be Phrygian, the Phrygians were found to be more ancient. He also writes that the Egyptian priests counted 341 generations. The Scythians, for their part, considered themselves the youngest people and said that the first man was Targitaus.

Diodorus records two views: that the world is eternal and that the world was created. He then sets out a natural explanation. According to it, the first people arose from moist earth warmed by the sun, lived like animals, and banded together out of fear of wild beasts. Language they created gradually from sounds, out of need. That is why different languages arose in different places.

Polybius was interested not in the creation of man but in the origin of society. In his view, floods, plagues and famines wiped out humanity again and again. The survivors herded together like a flock and submitted to the strongest, and in this way the cyclical succession of forms of government began.

Eusebius accepted the biblical account of creation, but he began his chronological tables with the Prophet Abraham, because he considered the dates of the period before him unreliable. He criticized the excessively ancient reckonings of the Chaldeans and the Egyptians.

Orosius begins history with Adam. For him, the history of humanity is the history of the misfortunes that followed Adam’s sin.

Otto, following Augustine, holds that the “two cities” began with Cain and Abel. Cain founded the earthly city, Abel the heavenly city.

Bossuet begins the “Discourse on Universal History” with the epoch of “Adam, or the Creation,” and dates the creation, on the basis of biblical chronology, to 4004 BC.

Voltaire openly criticized biblical chronology and began history with China as the oldest civilization with a reliable reckoning of years. He also advanced the view that humanity is divided into different races that arose separately (polygenism).

Ranke held that history should begin from the period for which written documents exist. That is why he began his “World History” with the ancient peoples of the East and did not count the beginnings of humanity among the tasks of historical science.

Spengler rejected the very notion of a single “history of humanity.” In his view, humanity has no common goal or plan. History begins with the emergence of separate high cultures, while the primitive man before them lived in a “historyless” state.

Toynbee left the biological origin of man to the natural sciences. He stressed that while primitive societies existed for a very long period, civilizations arose relatively recently, within roughly the last six thousand years.

He explained the emergence of civilization by “challenge and response”: for example, the Egyptian and Sumerian civilizations arose as a response to the challenge of drought.

To sum up, the historians of the East and the Western authors of the Christian era begin the history of humanity from a single source — from Adam. They explain the origin of peoples through their spread from the sons of Noah.

On both sides there were attempts to determine the date of creation, for example by Eusebius and Bossuet.

On both sides there were also those who criticized other peoples’ claims to antiquity. While al-Biruni exposed the contradictory reckonings of various peoples, Eusebius criticized the reckonings of the Chaldeans and the Egyptians.

The historians of the East remained faithful to tradition on this question. Without rejecting the views of other peoples (Kayumars, the Indian cosmic cycles, the Chinese traditions), they followed the path of recording and comparing them.

In the West, views changed sharply: from the natural explanation of antiquity (Diodorus) there was a shift to history based on the Bible. And in modern times this question was thrown out of historical science altogether (Ranke, Spengler, Toynbee).

Al-Biruni’s idea that the date of creation cannot be determined by rational calculation stands, in terms of scholarly caution, close to views that took shape in the West much later.

What we want to say is this: until roughly the 19th century, humanity believed itself to be descended from Adam. Histories were written on that basis. Then, suddenly, the denial of this began. As examples we cite historians we have named, such as Ranke, Spengler and Toynbee.

I wonder, did people suddenly become “clever” in modern times and come to deny Adam, peace be upon him? Or did someone instill this view, which had never existed in human history?

It is impossible to give a definite answer to this question. But what is certain is that in schools, in history books, children are being taught not about Adam, peace be upon him, but that mankind arose from some ape-like animal, on the basis of “bones” claimed to have been “found” at Olduvai or in the Neander Valley.

Let us end this long, drawn-out chapter of our book with a question: what happens if a person believes himself to be descended from Adam, peace be upon him — or what happens if he believes that the history of man’s origin is uncertain and that he perhaps arose from some ape-like animal? How much does this affect his way of life, his conduct and the state of his heart, his nafs and his reason?

The esteemed reader has surely not forgotten that we began speaking about the philosophy of the free person. You, too, of course, know well that for a person to come to a reliable and firm conclusion about his own self, his nature and his origin matters greatly in this question.

Akrom MALIK