The Politics of Periodization: Culture, History and the Transition from Late Antiquity to Early Islam

It has become standard to generalize that the period from late antiquity to early Islam was one of a good deal of continuity.  While we should take seriously the warning against joining what amounts to a “cult of late antiquity,” or being too quick to make “Islam look Christian” and “Byzantium [look] Islamic,” part of the inaccuracy of these terms is that we take for granted that general categories like “late antiquity” and “Islam” are discretely meaningful in the first place. In fact, they are often more convenient than descriptive. Furthermore, narrative is an effective lens through which to problematize the rigidity of artificial periodization in the late antique and early Islamic world. The formulation of Islamic historical narratives was not instantaneous, nor did these stories persuade and encourage, edify and teach, because they were concocted out of thin air. Meaning is socially embedded and mediated through enduring material and literary tradition. Both the challenge and the enormous potential of narrativity lie, therefore, in understanding how historians of the middle ages composed texts that corresponded to a system of meaning and memory, to a way of conceiving of the world.

Nancy Khalek is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Brown University and specializes in Islam in the early classical period. She received her Ph.D. in history from Princeton University in 2006. In addition to her focus on the formative period of Islamic history, other interests include hagiography and historiography in the Byzantine and Islamic worlds, relic and saint veneration, Christian-Muslim dialogue, and the relationship of material culture to religious life. Professor Khalek has conducted field and survey work in Syria, Turkey, and Greece. She is currently working on a book on Damascus in the Umayyad era.