If we define the historical consciousness (Geschichtsbewusstsein) asany narrative effort to construct a meaningful past,we can say that it is an anthropologicaluniversalism. By telling, retelling, reconstructing,and remembering their experience of temporality,people shape, reshape, and reassure their personaland collective identity.

In this wider sense, the illiterate north Arabiantribes of pre-Islamic times might not have developeda historiography, butthey still had a historical consciousness. Theytalked proudly about the past of their tribe andabout the deeds of their ancestors, and theycontinued doing so after the coming of Islam byreciting poetry and narrating accounts about famousevents in the so-called ayyāmal-ʿarab (battle-days of the Arabs).

However, in early ʿAbbāsid times, a new, specificallyIslamic historicalmaster-narrative emerged. In consequence, seriousideological objections arose which questioned thisconcern for a period which lay before of qurʾānicrevelation and which could not be embedded into theprophetical pattern of Salvation History. Withinthis teleological monotheistic scheme, thepre-Islamic Arab past,the so-called jāhiliyya, was interpreted as a dark,barbaric and violent period of ignorance, againstwhich the period of Islam built a contrasting worldof virtue, peace, salvation and knowledge.

Notwithstanding this increasingly dominant Islamicdiscourse in early ʿAbbāsid times, many people didnot only continue talking about their tribal past,but made a considerable effort to preserve this“barbaric” tradition. Scholars and transmitterscollected Arab “Antiquities”, put them into awritten form and transformed them gradually into apart of the Arab cultural heritage, by creatingpre-Islamic poetry, proverbs, tribal genealogy,legends and historical accounts. As Rina Droryempha- sizes in her fundamental article on thetopic, the early ʿAbbāsid times can be duly regardedas the period in which the jāhiliyya was constructed as a powerfuland canonized cultural model which was tosubstantially affect the perception of thepre-Islamic past.

With respect to this fascinating cultural process, thefollowing article will give an insight into onerather neglected aspect: The collection andtransmission of the ayyāmal-ʿarab or “battle-days of the Arabs”narratives, its classification within the differentfields of knowledge, and its social and culturalfunction. However, due to the scarcity of earlierstudies and the complexity of the topic, thisarticle represents only a preliminary treatment ofthe question.