The Oxford History of Historical Writing Volume 2: 400-1400

How was history written in Europe and Asia between 400-1400? How was the past understood in religious, social and political terms? And in what ways does the diversity of historical writing in this period mask underlying commonalities in narrating the past? The volume, which assembles 28 contributions from leading historians, tackles these and other questions. Part I provides comprehensive overviews of the development of historical writing in societies that range from the Korean Peninsula to north-west Europe, which together highlight regional and cultural distinctiveness. Part II complements the first part by taking a thematic and comparative approach; it includes essays on genre, warfare, and religion (amongst others) which address common concerns of historians working in this liminal period before the globalizing forces of the early modern world.

Sarah Foot is the Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Christ Church, Oxford. She is the author of AEthelstan: the First English Monarch (2011); Monastic Life in Anglo-Saxon England, c. 600-900 (2006) and has written widely on perceptions and uses of the past in the early medieval West.


Chase F Robinson is Distinguished Professor and Provost of the Graduate Center, The City University of New York. A specialist in early Islamic history and historiography, he is the author or editor of several books, most recently The New Cambridge History of Islam, Volume 1: The Formation of the Islamic World, Sixth to Eleventh Centuries (2011, ed).

Editors' Introduction, Sarah Foot and Chase F. Robinson
PART I: THE TRADITIONS OF HISTORICAL WRITING, 400-1400
1. The Growth of Historical Method in Tang China, Charles Hartman and Anthony DeBlasi
2. Chinese Historiography in the Age of Maturity, 960-1368, Charles Hartman
3. The Birth and Flowering of Japanese Historiography: From Chronicles to Tales to Historical Interpretation, John R. Bentley
4. Indian Historical Writing, c.600-c.1400, Daud Ali
5. Kingship, Time, and Space: Historiography in Southeast Asia, John K. Whitmore
6. The Tradition of Historical Writing in Korea, Remco Breuker, Grace Koh, and James Lewis
7. Coptic and Ethiopic Historical Writing, Witold Witakowski
8. Syriac and Syro-Arabic Historical Writing, c.500-c.1400, Muriel Debie and David Taylor
9. From Reciting to Writing and Interpretation: Tendencies, Themes, and Demarcations of Armenian Historical Writing, Theo Maarten van Lint
10. Byzantine Historical Writing, 500-920, Anthony Kaldellis
11. Byzantine Historical Writing, 900-1400, Paul Magdalino
12. Islamic Historical Writing, Eighth through the Tenth Centuries, Chase F. Robinson
13. Islam: The Arabic and Persian Traditions, Eleventh-Fifteenth Centuries, Konrad Hirschler
14. The Shaping of Past and Present, and Historical Writing in Rus', c.900-c.1400, Jonathan Shepard
15. Historical Writing in Central Europe (Bohemia, Hungary, Poland), c.950-1400, Nora Berend
16. Slavonic Historical Writing in South-Eastern Europe, 1200-1600, Petre Guran
17. Annals and Chronicles in Western Europe, Sarah Foot
18. The Vicissitudes of Political Identity: Historical Narrative in the Barbarian Successor States of Western Europe, Felice Lifshitz
19. History, Story, and Community: Representing the Past in Latin Christendom, 1050-1400, Charles F. Briggs
20. Scandinavian Historical Writing, 1100-1400, Sverre Bagge
PART II: MODES OF REPRESENTING THE PAST
21. Universal Histories in Christendom and the Islamic World, c.700-c.1400, Andrew Marsham
22. Local Histories, John Hudson
23. Institutional Histories, Peter Lorge
24. Dynastic Historical Writing, Charles West
25. The Abbasid and Byzantine Courts, Nadia Maria El Cheikh
26. Historical Writing, Ethnicity, and National Identity: Medieval Europe and Byzantium in Comparison, Matthew Innes
27. Historical Writing and Warfare, Meredith L. D. Riedel
28. Religious History, Thomas Sizgorich
Index