Hagemann (Hannah-Lena), The Kharijites in Early Islamic Historical Tradition. Heroes and Villains, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, ("Edinburgh Studies in Classical Islamic History and Culture"), 2023, 328 p. ISBN 9781474450898 (Paperback). (First edition: 2021)

Author

Hannah-Lena Hagemann is based in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Hamburg University, where she leads a research group on rebellion in early Islam. She is co-editor of Transregional and Regional Elites: Connecting the Early Islamic Empire (De Gruyter, 2020).

Presentation

Why are stories told about the Khārijites? The Islamic tradition portrays Khārijism as a heretical movement of militantly pious zealots, a notion largely reiterated by what little there is of modern scholarship on the Khārijites. Hannah-Lena Hagemann moves away from the usual studies of Khārijite history ’as it really was’ and instead examines its narrative function in early Islamic historiography. From the Khārijites’ origins at the Battle of Ṣiffīn in 657 CE until the death of the caliph ʿAbd al-Malik b. Marwān in 705 CE, Hagemann’s literary analysis provides a fresh perspective on Khārijite history and highlights the need for a serious reassessment of the historical phenomenon of Khārijism as it is currently understood in scholarship.

Contents

Part I: Preliminaries

Part II: Early Islamic Historiography and Literary Khārijism

1. Literary Approaches to Islamic Historiography and Khārijite History

2. Portraying Khārijism

3. Composing Khārijism

Part III: The Portrayal of Khārijite History from Ṣiffīn to the Death of ʿAbd al-Malik

4. Narratives of Khārijite Origins

5. Khārijism During the Reign of Muʿāwiya b. Abī Sufyān

6. Khārijism from the Second Fitna until the Death of ʿAbd al-Malik

Part IV: Observations and Conclusions

7. Observations Regarding the Historiographical Tradition on Khārijism

Conclusion

Bibliography