RESOURCESon poetry, or that discounted information which had passed through
an anti-UmawI filter in the 'AbbasI period. T. Noldeke's arguments
for the latter view in "Zur tendentosen Gestaltung der Urgeschichte
Islams," ZDMG 52 (1898): 16-53, are still quoted. The arguments
of J. Schacht in favor of a rather late date for a written Arabic literature
and for the identification of a chain of transmitters (Ar. isnad) in "A
Revaluation of Islamic Traditions," jRAS (1949), pp. 143-54, have
enjoyed widespread influence. More recently, A. Noth has based his
criticism of Arabic accounts of the Muslim conquest on the repetition
of motifs in "I~fahan-Nihawand. Eine quellenkritische Studie zur friih-
islamischen Historiographie," ZDMG 118 (1968): 274-96; "Der
Charakter der ersten grossen Sammlungen von Nachrichten zur friihen
Kalifenzeit," Der Islam 47 (1971): 168-99; and Quellenkritische Stu-
dien zu Themen, Formen und Tendenzen fruhislamischer Geschichts-
uberlieferung (Bonn, 1973).
Meanwhile, a countertrend of revisionist historiography opposing
this tradition of hypercritical skepticism has emerged over the last
three decades. This includes a more serious consideration of accounts
concerning early Islamic history in Arabic literature, based partly on
the internal evidence for the early existence and use of written texts.
The arguments of N. Abbott in "Early Islamic Historiography," in
Studies in Arabic Literary Papyri, Historical Texts (Chicago, 1957),
I: 5-31; of A. A. Duri in "AI-ZuhrI: A Study on the Beginnings of
History Writing in Islam," BSOAS 19 (1957): 1-12, and "The Iraq
School of History to the Ninth Century-A Sketch," in Historians of
the Middle East, ed. B. Lewis and P. Holt (London, 1962); of C. Cahen
in "Considerations sur l'utilisation des ouvrages de droit musulman
par l'historien," in Atti del Terzio Congresso di Studi arabi ed islamici
(Naples, 1967); of U. Sezgin in Abii Mi!Jnaf: Ein Beitrag zur Histo-
riographie der umaiyadischen Zeit (Leiden, 1971), and others have
sought to restore confidence in the usability of the Arabic literary
sources, and have pushed back the beginnings of historical composition
to the eighth or ninth decades of the first century of the Hijra. Noth
is commonly and easily criticized for failing to recognize that ster-
eotyped formulas and topoi can be used to describe separate but similar
real events. But to be fair, he should be given credit for arguing that
there is something fundamentally authentic behind these literary ac-
counts and that those with an ad hoc character can be used to recon-
struct the arrangements between Muslims and non-Muslims at the
time of the conquest; see "Die literarische iiberlieferten Vertrage der