Seeing Islam as a Historian Sees It

Abstract

When historians employ the term “Islam” to interpret and explain the medieval past they tend to conceive of it as a religion, a civilization, or a world, reflecting not only their own assumptions, priorities, and concerns, but also those of the medieval authors on whose writings they rely. Rather than improving our understanding of the past, however, prevailing ways of handling the category Islam tend to weaken our grasp of historical processes. They are problematic and require critical attention to disentangle webs of meanings across a vast number of pertinent texts and contexts, medieval and modern.