Introduction

MucH ARABIC PROSE material has come down to us from the early Islamic period up until the fall of the Umayyad dynasty in 132/750. This prose consists of several genres, including orations, sermons, epistles, treatises, historical accounts, traditions ( ḥadīth) of the Prophet Muḥammad, and wisdom sayings. Each of these genres must be handled separately, not only because of the immense quantity of each that has been preserved in the sources, but also because each genre poses for the researcher different sets of problems which must be addressed through recourse to methodologically different tools and techniques. This does not mean that the various genres share no common problems; but assigning first priority to the establishment of basic criteria for work within each genre is the only way by which research can reach reliable results, which may then be assessed for their more general relevance and utility.

At the outset, then, I should say that the present paper will not deal with any orally transmitted material. This immediately eliminates genres which were oral by their very nature, such as orations, sermons, wisdom sayings and, albeit for different considerations, the traditions of the Prophet, as well as genres which were oral at least in their earliest stages of transmission before they came to be recorded in writing, such as historical accounts. Nor will it consider written materials which have no literary or artistic purpose, in other words, material the sole aim of which was “communicative”, whether polemical or otherwise. This eliminates all treatises, be they theological, exegetical, or legal. What remains then, are the epistles, and these, unlike many treatises, have seldom been studied for the purpose of addressing the question of their authenticity.

A great deal can be said about the Arabic literary epistles of this period, but for present purposes only a few observations are required. The first is that almost all of these epistles (in Arabic, rasiiā'il) were letters written by one person and addressed to one person or a group of people, rather than essays written for a general audience. The second is that although these letters are of varying content- official, personal, or a combination of both-it is noteworthy that the majority of them are of a “public” nature, most dealing with official matters and some comprising testaments, proclamations, letters of instruction, and so forth. This means that the relation between the letters and the various symbols of political authority (caliphs, governors, notables, and military leaders, as well as their contestants: rebels and critics) is a very close one indeed. This observation finds further confirmation when one examines the names of the individuals who wrote these letters (or those on whose behalf they were written) and those of the persons addressed: they are mainly either members of the actual ruling groups (the state) or those who entered into dialogue with them, more often than not in order to disavow or overthrow them (e.g. enemies and rebels).