Document Type

Book Chapter

Edition

1

ISBN

9789811040719

Editor

Trinidad Rico

Series

Heritage Studies in the Muslim World

Publication (Name of Journal)

The Making of Islamic Heritage: Muslim Pasts and Heritage Presents

Department

Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, London

DOI

10.1007/978-981-10-4071-9_2

Publisher

Palgrave Macmillan

City

Singapore

Abstract

This chapter argues that Islamic history should be imagined as an ever-expanding web of overlapping and competing discourses about the past. Islam’s transhistorical presence is an illusion that is borne of the historiographical process. Clusters of evidence we can identify pertaining to Islam are traceable to moments with their own distinctive senses of past, present, and future. Consequently, what is to be regarded as Islamic heritage depends fundamentally on the frame within which it was produced. Moreover, scholarly appreciation of heritage is itself a value-laden enterprise that participates in the creation of Islamic meanings. I advocate that we pay utmost attention to the particularities of the Islamic evidence we encounter, while simultaneously avoiding reification and being mindful of our own interpretive commitments.

Comments

This work was published before Shahzad joined Aga Khan University.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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