Tabari's Biography of Mu'tasim interpreted at AUB

Professor Tayeb El-Hibri

An interpretation of Tabari's literary use of the military career of Mu'tasim (the eighth Abbasid caliph) was the topic of a lecture given at AUB's West Hall on January 15 by Professor Tayeb El-Hibri from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Organized by the Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies (CAMES), the talk focused on how Abi Ja'far Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari, a prominent and famous early Persian historian, employed exaggeration in his literary work to establish a certain image of al-Mu'tasim (Mohammad ibn al-Rashid) in the minds of a medieval audience. El-Hibra used some extracts of literary accounts to point out Mu'tasim's portrayal as a strong, athletic and strategically-minded caliph, who followed very clever military tactics and even made use of shrewd espionage in his campaigns.

Though well-deserved, Mu'tasim received more credit and more mention for his diplomatic and tactical ingenuity than other Abbasid caliphs, even ones he was trying to emulate, like Harun al-Rashid. El- Hibri expounded the reasons for that with references to the historiography.

El-Hibri further urged readers of medieval Arab chronicles to consider literary accounts more like stories with moral foundations rather than as actual facts. He underscored the need to do some "detective" work in the reading of Tabari's narratives, as they involve a great deal of reading between the lines and "connecting the dots."

El-Hibri has published articles on the Abbasid Caliphate in various journals and is the author of Reinterpreting Islamic Historiography, Harun al-Rashid and the Narrative of the Abbasid Caliphate, which received the Albert Hourani Book Award Honorable Mention at the annual MESA convention in 2000. The book specifically refers to the early Abbasid caliphs to analyze the boundaries between history and literary constructs in the medieval chronicle of Tabari.