Talk:Historiography of early Islam

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Prompted by an anon editor's entry in History of Islam, I created this page. It is just an outline, at the moment, and I've probably left out quite a few historians who should be included. This is an academic field I'm still exploring. Help from anyone more conversant with the field would be greatly appreciated. Zora 05:56, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Caveat to Readers/Contributors

I smell a potential for this being either an exceptionally good & useful page or a battleground. Before commenting/reverting etc., Please take the time to read Historiography if you are not very familiar with the subject (it is not the same as History!!) I sense this as a good starting point for understanding how Western, Islamic, and other understandings of Islam came to be from a study of those who studied it, as well as potentially a good scholarly reference point for what the sources are and why certain people/factions feel certain ways about them. In other words, not a judgement of the right, wrong, or otherwise of those understandings and theories. The fact they 'exist' at all is important. There will thus no doubt be controversial statements here - often they must be here if we are to understand why certain people and their descendants have certain POVs.Bridesmill 21:52, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Needs references

Useful article in deperate need of a "References" section and a set of inline citations and a "Footnotes" section to house them. Some could be brought across from the Mohammad article (ref it's talk page). :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page) 10:29, 4 April 2006 (UTC)


before muslim hijra to medina, they actually hijra to habsyah but only a few of them that went to hijra and for only a few years. After that, they had to back to makkah.

actually muslim change the Qibla to Makkah after the Hijra, before hijrah muslim Qibla was at jerusalem. i hope the writer make more studies to Qoran before making some statement that can be confused.

the Qoran also accept that the jews is from prophets decsendent thus its never condemn jews. insteadt its only show what had happen to the prophet before Muhammad.

Studying Qoran is not like reading a book, its need a teacher and also it need a research. even me is not finish studying Qoran.

and also you must never relies to a greek to studying arab culture because they are only watching not blend with the arab. As you know the greek never came to hijaz except the byzantine. How can they make some journal about arab culture.

the Makkah are only influential and significant to the arab and thats why before Islam there are many idols and dolls around the kaabah and Makkah . The Greek and byzantine are not a pagan why should they go to Makkah.

[edit] Put Western scholars back in chronological order

Cltfn, you mixed up scholars a hundred years apart by listing them alphabetically. I put them back in a rough chronological order. However, I need to do a better job on this -- birth and death dates would help. Also, the descriptions of scholarly trends are mine. I need to find a "history of Islamic scholarship" -- or two, or more -- and quote that, not my own opinions.

Alphabetical or chronological is a matter of preference , I thought that alphabetical would make it easier to spot authors on the list , however if you want to group them in time periods you can , though obviously there is no clear time periods that they can be grouped in since their birth dates spans and overlaps many centuries.--CltFn 14:32, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
You will notice that they aren't grouped by time period, they are actually listed by birth date. Zora 17:17, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

You also added some names I just didn't recognize, and I've been doing a lot of reading. I need to check them out, one by one. I will go back to your version and check. Zora 06:18, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

All the scholars I added have articles in Wikipedia already so it should be fairly easy to check them out.--CltFn 14:32, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
It's proving surprisingly hard to come up with birthdates for contemporary scholars. Zora 08:24, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes that is true, thus the footwork we do here in Wikipedia will serve to remedy this for the benefit of all.--CltFn 14:32, 21 May 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Dr. Liaquat Ali Khan' commentary

I do not see that Khan's commentary is notable as we do not source info that is based on a submission to a web site that anyone can do.here--CltFn 03:59, 22 May 2006 (UTC).

This controversy about Khan's commentary has a more conclusive treatment in another Wikipedia site discussion page Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic WorldAmilsum 21:14, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Western-style secular scholarship

I've put a cleanup tag on that section, as too many strange things pop up there with which I have no time to deal right now. For example, Margoliouth was Jewish and not a Christian scholar. Furthermore, it's incorrect to say that Margoliouth or Caetani just translated the sources and commented on them in a critical fashion; they did much more than that. I find the grouping by the degree of scepticism towards sources justified, but it must be consistent: stitching together Lammens, Schacht, and Watt is inappropriate because they all held entirely different views on the reliability of Muslim sources. Finally, I would like to see at least one reliable source to which the material in the section is referenced. Pecher Talk 11:41, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it would be interesting to get a picture of the criteria used to qualify sources. It sounds quite similar to the what the Islamic scholards themselves did, though undoubtedly their criteria had religious moorings. So if someone could expand upon that it would be interesting in this article to contrast with Muslim scholars whenever that stub gets filled in. Generally there are some very sweeping comments across the board in this article that have not been supported either by sources or further material in the article. I understand the article is very sparse right now and was just pointing at directions to improve and expand it.--Tigeroo 22:18, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] what?

Under what authority exactly did whoever it was who did it erroneously add the notion that there were simply "none" 7th century Islamic sources? Its a fairly easy to disprove, and yet it stood here for some time. Why was such a blanket term added, who added it, and under what scholarly authority ? --Irishpunktom\talk 16:02, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

What 7th-century Islamic sources can you name? Pecher Talk 21:01, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
The ones I've added to the article, there are some other inscriptions around the place, but they'll be added when the book detailing them arrives at my house. --Irishpunktom\talk 09:18, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
Ah, inscriptions... What is the book confirming their dating? Pecher Talk 12:44, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
You will find out in due time, the inscription marking the death of Umar has already been added, so too has the Kufic quranic verse that still adorns the haram al Sharif. Where, exactly, was your source confirming that there was absolutely not one single solitary Muslim source from the 7th century? --Irishpunktom\talk 15:16, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
"You will find out in due time" Not exactly helpful and friendly. I never said "there was absolutely not one single solitary Muslim source from the 7th century"; I simply enquired about your sources. Pecher Talk 15:21, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
Considering I don't know whats in the book, I'm not going to go making claims about what it says exactly, yet, so, yeah, you will find out in due time. I apologise, maybe I screwed up in the history, but I thought you were the one who added the "none" to the section on 7th century Islamic sources. Sorry about that. --Irishpunktom\talk 15:26, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Non-Muslim sources

I removed the whole dang list of "sources" for non-Muslim accounts of Islam. It was grotesquely misleading. Giving a date and saying "anti-Muslim polemics" means absolutely nothing. Giving the name of a historical personage covered by WP is not the same thing as giving a reference to an actual composition by that person. I had the strong impression that the list had been bulked up to support the assertion that we could write a whole history of Islam without any reference to Islamic sources. Crone and Cook tried, and failed, and won't let their book be reprinted. I have kept the link to the online list of sources, which contains links to the sources themselves, and is thus highly useful, and also added Hoyland as a reference. I don't have Hoyland, so I hesitate to say much more about the work, but it is referenced in many of my books and seems to be regarded as trustworthy.

I agree that the Abbasid histories are problematic and I wish to heck that we had more primary sources. I have high hopes for archaeological excavations, if politics ever allows them. Zora 05:21, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

  • If this is about the Historiography of early Islam, why is a dated inscription, using the Islamic calendar, the bismillah and dating the death of the second of the Rashidun being removed? The combination of these three surely make it Islamic, and why, exactly, does the lack of the word "Islam" mean it should be removed entirely from the page? Further, why are we to say it is not Islamic, when UNESCO explictly calls it the "Earliest Islamic (Kufic)Inscription"? --Irishpunktom\talk 10:24, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
The reason is that that source is ambiguously and inconclusive . The Jews and Christians also say in the name of God , ie Bismillah so that inscription ,does not establish a reference to early Islam. Furthermore some early historiographers of Islam (Yehuda D. Nevo and Judith Koren) have advanced the notion that the early caliphs were not Muslim or Islamic at that time.--CltFn 11:12, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Thats a nice theory, but its got a solid source as being "Islamic", and it uses the AH calander. Further, that simply does not explain why you completely removed it. --Irishpunktom\talk 11:27, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
Zora , In an effort to move this article forward , I had added the early non muslim sources to the article, that is , the ones that that are claimed to be few in numbers or to not exist . thus I do not subscribe to moving this article backwards by blanking them out then adding commentary like "like clearly based on prejudice or misinformation". I have thus re-inserted the sources as otherwise we are simply turning this article into a reference to an external source rather than having a properly covered topic in Wikipedia. You also state that you have not read "Islam as others saw it", well I would like to point out to you that it is a major repository of non-muslim primary sources for early Islam which any serious student of early Islam ought to have access to. Hoyland quietly compiled this momentous tome , without fireworks or fanfare leaving its implications and ramification to future generations . I have been gradually develloping the individual wikipedia article regarding those sources, but be patient it takes time . AS far as Crone and Cook are concerned , I might mention that they are refered to in nearly all works of early historiography of Islam including your favorite modern author Reza Aslan, a matter you might check in your copy of his book --CltFn 11:12, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
I agree with most of the edits made by Zora, when I read this article it struck me straight up that this was turning into a rehash and of Crone and Cook's POV on Islamic historiography, because a lot of the concepts are not mainstream and specific to them a few others.

More specifically:

  1. Muslim historians and theologians also find the written sources problematic but for different reasons, and have developed their own methodology of source criticism to tackle their concerns with it much as western academia is evolving its own methods. That does not imply that the traditional version is problematic. The difference is that they worked from a certain POV of belief in Islam while Western academics work from a POV of non-belief and this POV is equally problematic to each other. Implying either POV of addressing the matter is the correct or wrong way is POV, stating that the treatment of those sources by traditional muslim historians is problematic to western historians is more accurate. Don't forget muslim historians and sources are part of the historiography of early islam.
  2. That argument non-muslim sources are exhaustive, is stoods on its head because the whole reason Abassid and other early muslim historians are still used as sources, though with caveats is because of the lack of exhaustiveness of other sources. Which was one of the criticisms of Crone and Cooks work and driving this article exhaustively into that corner is not appropriate
  3. If your information is sufficiently large and your interest in an article sufficielty focused you may want to seriously consider an article dealing exclusively with Non-Muslim sources for the historiography of early Islam. It may however be significant to mention that most of the historiography of early Islam carried out by non muslim scholars has infact been a literary evaluation of Islamic sources because of both limited access to archaelogical sits and evidences as well limitation imposed by the avaliabiliy of translated material.
  4. It is not legit to hypothesize either way on dates for Puin or his work without references.
  5. I would be interested out of curiousity to see what Reza Aslan has to say about Crone and Cook. I am going to make an assumption here and see how it plays out; to reiterate pretty much what a personal literary review of historians opinion has laid out for me and summed up as: A good idea executed poorly.
  6. The Bismillah reference I agree there is no way to differentiate by the term if the user is a muslim or a jew or christian except by known social norms. I would be interested in knowing if the term was infact used by non-muslim arabs prior to Islam, it is conceivable that it could have been. Especially from the angle that Crone uses it.--Tigeroo 12:48, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Cltfn, your list is not a list of sources. It's just a list of names, or in some cases, categories. List named literary works or archives. You're just handwaving, asserting evidence that might or might not be there. At least the link takes you to actual excerpts. Give us references as they would appear in a scholarly text!

Criticizing me because I don't have Hoyland upsets me. If you want to send me the money for the book, do. I have spent hundreds of dollars on reference books over the last couple of years, but I still lack the resources of a good university library. I live in Honolulu. There is one large university here, University of Hawaii at Manoa, and their holdings in Islam-related materials are extremely limited. I now have a better collection than the university library!

Your insistence that Hagarism is a reliable source demonstrates extreme lack of familiarity with the field. Yes, the book is cited in many bibliographies -- if only because it is harshly criticized in the text! If even the authors no longer support the book, why are you insisting that it's reliable? It was useful as a corrective to a slavish adherence to early Islamic texts, as a call to scepticism, but many of its claims have since been disproven. Zora 01:41, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I beg to differ , the list is a list of sources , each of which is in the process of having their own wikipedia page develloped. By the way the external reference list that you refer to comes from "Islam as others saw it". I am not critizing you , how did you read that into my comment? In any case Hagarism is not debunked, have you read the book? It is not something that can be debunked, as all it does is discuss primary sources and present historical evidence that support them. And many world class Historigraphers seem to re-affirm Hagarism, Bernard Lewis, Robert G. Hoyland, Reza Aslan, G. R. Hawting, Herbert Berg, Francis Edwards Peters, S. N. Eisenstadt, Ziauddin Sardar, Malise Ruthven,Richard Landes, Ibn Warraq and John Wansbrough quote hagarism not as a criticism but as supporting Crone's thesis. Furthermore , Crone re-affirms Hagarism the validity of Hagarism in her later work Slaves on horses. Perhaps there might be variant interpretations of the implications of the primary sources, but they are an important part of the historiography of Early Islam. Thus I am puzzled as to why you insist on blanking them out of this article. This does not seem very scholarly to me .--CltFn 12:28, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
I think the Hagarism article does a good job of explaining the acceptance of the book which is very little (even the authors don't accept the thesis). BhaiSaab talk 19:30, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
Also, as the Hagarism page explains, most of the sources that CltFn inserted are thought to be inauthentic. BhaiSaab talk 19:31, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Slaves on Horses

That book by Crone is a reworking of her dissertation. It was published in 1980, three years after Hagarism. The introduction is weaselish -- it says, basically, well, yes, I've based the whole thing on Islamic sources after saying that Islamic sources are worthless, but these are SECULAR sources, so they're different.

You'd have to read God's Caliph and Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam to see just how extensive her volte-face has been. She is accepting theses that she denied in Hagarism. The skepticism is still there, of course, and I find it refreshing. She's still right in seeing the early history of Islam as having been "retconned," to use a comic-book term, reworking the past into something that supports the present. Every religion does that ... Jesus as a Methodist or Presbyterian :) It's one way to make religion relevant to its time. Unfortunately, it's not historically defensible. Zora 20:27, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bridging the divide

Before removing this section, I'm giving its author a chance to explain how the listed authors are relevant to the historiography of early Islam. Pecher Talk 20:14, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Because both of them have written on the early history of Islam. Fazlur Rahman was a professor at the University of Chicago and has written a number of books; I believe that he's considered innovative in hadith studies for considering the matn as well as the isnad. Suliman Bashear wrote Arabs and Others in Early Islam, put out by Darwin Press in 1997, and in terms of Islamic studies, that is a very prestigious imprint. Both of them have impeccable academic credentials. Why challenge these guys when you aren't challenging any of the Westerners? Zora 05:42, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
I can't speak about Bashear but Rahman is an important person and 'bridging the divide' is a perfect title (whether or succeeded or not is debatable, of coruse). His works were reviewed by Schacht and Rippin and both do have a critical tone for parts. Schacht reviewed Islamic Methodology in History which he saw as an important attempt to reconcile modernist views with the Pakistani ulama. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 29, No. 2. (1966), pp. 394-395 contains that review. There is no reason that you should remove it... gren グレン 07:04, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reverting CltFn

CltFn, you completely changed the meaning of the paragraph on the Sana'a manuscripts. In his academic publication, Puin says that the Quran fragments support the "early composition" theory, and that's what the WP article said. You changed it to supporting the "late composition" theory and added some material from an interview with Puin published in the popular press.

I think that Puin would prefer to represented by a refereed publication, not by a journalist's quote. I agree that there's some disconnect between the academic and popular statements (which I think is covered in the Puin article) but that's no reason to alter the article to support your preferred POV.

I simply do not understand your insistence that Hagarism was right, that the Qur'an was composed late, etc. That's certainly not the sense I get of the state of academia right now. Also, if you're interested in discrediting Islam, this isn't necessarily the weakest point to attack. Was Muhammad divinely inspired? If you don't think he was, then it doesn't matter whether the Qur'an is an accurate record of his utterances or not. I could consume vast quantities of drugs, start talking nonsense, and tape it all. My rant could be accurately transcribed, but it would still be a crazy rant.

I may regret this but ... in order to get you to raise your eyes from Hagarism and Luxenburg, allow me to suggest a book called Twenty-three Years, by Ali Dashti. It was written by a Iranian Muslim with both a clerical education and exposure to Western learning, one who admired the early Muhammad of Mecca and rejected the later Muhammad of Medina. All based on a traditionalist reading of Muslim texts. Zora 06:59, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, that's interesting, CltFn. You didn't even wait for me to finish typing up my talk page explanation before reverting on the grounds that I hadn't justified my edits. I should perhaps add that you have completely misunderstood palimpsests. Zora 07:02, 9 September 2006 (UTC)


Zora, I have been following Puin's work for quite sometime and I am familiar with a lot of it. You say that Puin states that he supports the early composition theory , that is not what I have read , however you may have a citation that I have not seen , so please do cite it so that I can look it up.
regarding my insistance that Hagarism was right , I am only trying to present what the book says accurately.
In your comment you use the word academia , as a general term as though it was composed of one monolythic point of view but as you know academia is made up of a spectrum of diverse opinions, not one general prevailing view, thus we should not say in the article that there is just one opinion on the matter.
Regarding Muhammed , I can tell you quite directly that I did not witness what went on in the 7th century in the middle east, and there is noone alive today that was there either. The only thing we have are the remnants of accounts from non-muslim sources at the time, a bunch of people spread over the region reporting on the events of their time. What they reported is collected in Hagarism and Seeing Islam as others saw it.There is no compelling archeological evidence of anything Islamic before the end of the 7th century. Thats it . We can all form our own conclusions from there , but as far as wikipedia goes we should be able to present this information as it is.
I will take a look at that book, thanks

--CltFn 07:29, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I think one problem is that you are pushing the view that the only evidence we can use is the earliest documentary evidence. This is not a view readily accepted in the past because with a lack of good documentary evidence they were willing to accept the basic Muslim narrative with some changes. The problem isn't that you are presenting Hagarism. The problem is that you're presenting Hagarism as a neutral framework that we should all use to draw our own conclusions from Hagarism's sources.
I have also removed the quote that is completely irrelevant to this article. When he says every fifth sentence of the Qur'an just doesn't make sense he is not a study of history--it is textual criticism. I have no idea why you would put that in this article. The Qur'an could be a Dr. Seuss book and it wouldn't matter here. gren グレン 08:42, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 7th Century Islamic sources

How is this a 7th century Islamic source:? In the name of God (Bismillah), I Zuhair wrote the date of the death of Umar the year four and twenty (AH). This could have been uttered by any monotheist, and the date only indicates an era without reference to religion.--CltFn 04:21, 12 September 2006 (UTC) (644 - Inscription marking the death of Umar, Saudi Arabia.)

Islam is not a light that was all of a sudden turned on. Actually, maybe Muslims believe that but most modern scholars, especially the ones you like view it as an evolution from some early belief system the eventually arose to become what we think of as Islam. By calling it an Islamic source it only means it's part of that tradition--just like if the Hagarism hypothesis is true then the Hagarenes were the harbingers of Islam. If you reject prophetic beginnings then the theory is you had "pagan", Christian, and Jewish influences and at some point they influenced a new movement which we later definitively called Islam. I don't see the problem here. gren グレン 08:48, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
OK but the point I was making is that there is no evidence that the statement "In the name of God (Bismillah)", refers to "Islam", when it could refer to Chrisitianity or Judaism or Zoroastroanism.--CltFn 13:29, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
I don't know much about this inscription, but the UNESCO site says it's marking the death of Omar bin al-Khattab. That means it's clearly in the Islamic tradition--whatever Islam was back then be it Hagarism, Crazychristianism, etc. It's not of a random Arab grave from the time period. Also, did Christians use the bismillah in that time period--they do in later periods but I don't know about then. But, see why it's in the "Islamic tradition"? gren グレン 13:49, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

ALso Gren, why did you delete the Puin quote , I thought this quote made the case for the position he has taken in regards to the early historiography of Islam.--CltFn 13:30, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I stated at in the section above, but I'll restate it here--more or less. I deleted it because it wasn't about the historiography of early Islam. The quote was criticizing how every fifth word in the Qur'an doesn't make sense. That is not a point to be made here. In fact, you want to argue that the Qur'an was formed late--which would mean that the text he is referring to didn't even exist at this time. This article is not concerned with the text, it's concerned with the dating of things. gren グレン 13:49, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] some editors are led this article off topic

This article is about the historiography of early Islam , it is NOT al list of short biographies of historians. This will have to get cleaned up, if this article is to reflect the topic of its title.--CltFn 12:35, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The book of Sulaym

It's the first time in wikipedia that I should prove my claim even though there are four reliable source in the text.

User:Mike Young, Why do you replace[1] the text on the basis of the reliable sources with something supports by a site like this.

I added what is written in the sources and I hope it ensure you about its verifiability. All of these clarify that the author lived in the 7th century and wrote a book at that time.

You can also find discussion about its authenticity in Modarressi, Tradition and survival, v1, pp. 82-88. However we don't discuss here about the authenticity of it.--Seyyed(t-c) 03:55, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Reply

OK, the contention is that the book was written in the 7th century, (before the rest of the Hadith) as opposed to the claim that it was written in the 10th Century (after most of the rest of the Hadith). There are several tools that historians use to "date" books. Evidence of the following would be a really good way to support your claim. Can you find any of these?

  • Another source, written before the 10th Century, that mentions or quotes it.
  • Carbon Dating of a manuscript.
  • Indirect dating of a manuscript (i.e. form of letters etc)
  • Historical knowledge (e.g. the Book of Daniel in the Bible shows a good knowledge of Selucid history, when it "predicts" what will happen, but a poor knowledge of history of the start of the exile - the time it is claimed to have been written - this implies a late date for Daniel)

This would be much more effective than quoting people who agree with you and say it is old. Do they have any more proof than you?

It would be really helpful if you could put some quotes from the books in your footnotes, a web link to an entire book is difficult to read, a link to a book with no way of looking it up on the web also doesn't help much.

This source [2] says:

“ An alleged Kufan disciple of Imam `Alī (d. 40/661) Sulaym ibn Qays al-Hilālī is widely considered an anti-Umayyad polemical invention. The book ascribed to him is, however, very old, perhaps "the oldest surviving Shi`ite book" (Modarressi, 2003: 82). It evidently went through various stages of rewriting but still throws important lights on nascent Imami Shi`ism during the earliest period. ”

Mike Young (talk) 13:20, 11 December 1007 (UTC)

P.S As you can see, I claim to have written the above comment 1000 years ago. You can prove that I didn't by indirect evidence (e.g. Wikipedia wasn't around then, other dates in Wikipedia). This is the kind of evidence that you should use to date the book Mike Young (talk) 13:26, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

P.P.S. Why do you say we can't discuss the authenticity of it? This is an article about Historiography, which is specifically about Historical authenticity (or not). Mike Young (talk) 13:38, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Excuse me Mike, but do you familiar with WP:NOR. In wikipedia we don't do original research by ourselves. We just narrate information from reliable sources. I think all of the sources which I used are reliable so you can't say This would be much more effective than quoting people who agree with you and say it is old. Of course there may be some reliable sources which disagree with what I've narrated. So we should add them too. --Seyyed(t-c) 16:09, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm not suggesting that you do the Carbon Dating yourself! I'm suggesting that you look for secondary sources etc on the subject who have done this kind of research, rather than just quoting somebody who agrees with you. At least let me know why they think it is authentic. I also notice this is a big Shi'a / Sunni disagreement, so stating some arguements in favour of either view would not come amiss. Mike Young (talk) 17:10, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
Whatever is written in this book is completely in contrast with Sunni beliefs. Therefor almost all Sunni consider it as a fabricated work either by Sulaym or by somebody else. For example Karim p.194 and Karim, p.197. However as you quoted from Modarressi it has been considered the oldest Shia book which means it had been written befor Muhammad al-Baqir (713–743) and Jafar al-Sadiq era(743-765 CE), which most of the Shia hadit has been narrated.
I also searched google book. You cvan try to by using these keywords:Sulaym, book and Kitab. These are the books which refers to this book:Bernards, p.167, Momen, p.29. Among these works justCrone, p.85 clearly says it belong to later time(8th CE). Others like Madelung and Nasr usually uses the words such as attributed and ascribed, while use it as their source.( Nasr, p.15 and Madelung, p.37). There are some other authors who use it as their source without any discussion about its authenticity like Bar-Asher and Afsaruddin. I suggest you try yourself and make it more NPOV. --Seyyed(t-c) 03:18, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
Also you asked me to mention some of the earliest work of Shia. Al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya is the most famous one. Of course it doesn't relate to history. But it has written at the beginning of the 8th CE before Shia has been divided to Zaydi and Imami. Therefor the earliest book of Shia must have been written before it.--Seyyed(t-c) 03:24, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
OK, now we are getting somewhere! Good. So we have a book that the Sunni and Secularists/ Orientalists say is late and the Shi'a say is early. What reasons apart from "It says things I agree with / don't agree with" are there to support or refute the dating of it?
I'll be polite for a couple of days and leave the article itself for you to alter, but I think you should mention the dispute, and any any non-original arguments you can find for or against. Thanks for your interest. Mike Young (talk) 11:35, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
How did you find that we have a book that the Sunni and Secularists/ Orientalists say is late!!! As you can see most of the secularists and Orientalists have used it as an early source, although some of them -just some of them- are doubtful. Even in those cases they thought it belong to 8th CE. In the case of Sunnis I just said they think it's fabricated. It means it can fabricated early or late.--Seyyed(t-c) 15:35, 12 December 2007 (UTC)