The First Muslims: History and Memory

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)

In The First Muslims: History and Memory, Asma Afsaruddin gives an overview of the development of Islam from the time of Muhammad to the early Abbasid period. Afsaruddin aims in this book to tell the story of al-salaf al-salih, "the pious forebears," which are defined as broadly as possible to include not only the first generation of companions but also the successors and successors to the successors (p. xiii). The book follows a chronological approach to the material and shifts between biographical description and more topical concerns such as jihad or the place of women.

Looked at in one way, this book fills a real gap in current work on Islam. Academic approaches to the early history of Islam focus on sources and social questions concerning the expansion of Islam, but there exists at the same time a widely accepted "pious history." This pious history is contained in hadith, the biographical dictionaries, early histories, and other genres. These works give rise to the contemporary accounts of early Islam that fill the shelves of religious bookstores throughout the Islamic world. Afsaruddin's book is at its best when it fills in details of this pious history of early Islam. Chapter 5, "The Age of the Companions," consists of biographical sketches of important first-generation characters such as Ibn Mas[MODIFIER LETTER LEFT HALF RING]ud, A,isha bint Abu Bakr, Umm Umara, and Bilal ibn Rabah. Reading such a chapter is not too different from reading sections of a work such as Al-Tabaqat al-Kubra by Ibn Sa[MODIFIER LETTER LEFT HALF RING]d...