(Al-Baladhuri's vision of the Rashidun era in his book Ansab al-Ashraf through the narratives of Al-Waqidi)

Abstract

The title of this research is (Al-Baladhuri's vision of the Rashidun era in his book Ansab al-Ashraf through the narratives of Al-Waqidi). This study sheds light on this vision, and given that this era represents a milestone in the history of Islam due to its clear importance and great danger at the same time. This era was ruled by figures that had a great impact on its political and religious history, and the writing of its history was surrounded by the swords of politics and sectarianism through authors who were under the patronage of the ruling Abbasid authority at that time. This research follows the qualitative method and focuses on answering a set of questions such as; How did Al-Baladhuri draw a picture of the Rashidun era through Al-Waqidi's narratives in light of both of their affiliation to the Abbasid political institution? Did this affiliation affect the process of transmitting and writing history for them? This research concludes with a set of results, the most important of which are: The danger of the historian when he falls under the influence of political authority and writes for us a history that has no connection to the truth, but rather aims through it to serve the goals of the institution or sect to which he belongs. We found Al-Baladhuri working to ideologize the narrations in favor of the Abbasid state, which aims to praise the history of the two caliphs Abu Bakr and Omar, as they represent a symbol of the legitimacy of the Abbasid rule, in contrast to the clear attack and distortion of the history of the two caliphs Uthman and Imam Ali, and the goal behind that is to strike the two parties opposing the Abbasid state, namely the Umayyad camp, which sees Uthman as its symbol, and the Alawite party, which rallies around its supreme spiritual leader Imam Ali bin Abi Talib.

This research consists of an introduction in which we introduce Muhammad bin Omar Al-Waqidi and brief stages of his life and his relationship with the Abbasid authority and the most important political events that his era witnessed, as well as the case with Al-Baladhuri; the aim behind that is to learn as much as possible about the time period in which each of them wrote the history of the Rashidun era in a way that serves the ruling Abbasid authority. In the second stage, we present examples of Al-Waqidi’s narrations about the caliphates of Abu Bakr, Omar, Othman and Imam Ali, highlighting the most important points that Al-Baladhuri focused on in his historical narrations, then the conclusion which includes the most important results that we reached.