مستندات تاريخية: مصادر أولية

• Historical documents are defined as the original content that records news and events, containing both direct and indirect information
• Historical documents are also known as primary sources
• Documentation varies, including handwritten manuscripts, inscriptions on stone, and coins
• To be considered a historical document, over fifty years must have passed since its creation
• Historical documents encompass all aspects of political, religious, social, cultural, and economic life

Broad and narrow meanings

• In a narrow sense, a historical document refers to official state papers containing laws, treaties, and transactions
• In a broader sense, it encompasses written papers and oral narratives, including stories, legends, sayings, and wisdom, whether narrated or written
• It includes written or handwritten documents like images, historical scenes, movable and immovable material remains
• It also includes coins, tombstones, establishment plaques, mosques, fortresses, buildings, weapons, tools, clothes, official records, treaties, political documents, writings, inscriptions, and historical maps
• A historical map is a tool for historians, essential for pinpointing locations and expressing historical events or phenomena like population distribution and tribal movements

Importance in general

• Documents are vital for historians aiming to grasp human history and create a historical understanding of a specific era

Importance of the historical document

• Historical documents preserve heritage and history by documenting events and their details, preventing their disappearance
• They offer insights into and study ancient civilizations, aiding in preserving the identity of nations and peoples
• They serve as primary sources for researchers and historians, offering information for academic research and authoring works
• Research based on historical documents gains credibility and value, as these documents provide researchers with original sources for understanding events

Documents in writing history

• The practice of history entails researchers seeking diverse forms of human cultural products, both written and unwritten, to reconstruct human history

Importance of documenting on a historical scale

• Documents are fundamentally important in scientific research, but particularly in historical research
• Historians intensely seek and sometimes monopolize these documents
• Utilizing documents is considered a form of capital investment for researchers
• The scarcity of written historical documents related to specific historical periods, particularly in Islamic history and civilization, contributes to the immense importance of available materials

Lack of documents

• A major challenge in researching Islamic history and civilization is the scarcity of written historical documents
• Modern historians have attributed this scarcity to various political, economic, and social factors

Political aspects

• Political conflicts and successive eras in Islamic history led to intentional destruction and obliteration of written and material remains
• Important historical documents were lost, hindering historians and researchers' understanding

Mongol attacks

• The Mongol attacks on the eastern Islamic world, especially the destruction of Baghdad and its libraries, led to loss of documents and manuscripts
• Few scholars escaped, some fleeing to Cairo, while others moved east towards India establishing Delhi as a center of Islamic culture

Challenges

• Political strife often leads to the falsification and distortion of documents, posing a challenge for historical researchers

Economical aspects

• The scarcity of written documents can be attributed to economic factors
• The high cost and rarity of materials during the Islamic era led to the use of animal skins for writing due to their lower cost, despite being more susceptible to damage
• Paper use was limited due to high cost
• Paper primarily came from China (known as "Kaghad") or Egypt (made from papyrus), making full-scale writing difficult

Social aspects

• Various social factors led to the scarcity of historical documents
• Limited literacy led to reliance on oral tradition
• The use of oil lamps and candles for lighting also caused many official written documents and manuscripts to be burnt

Authorship

• To compensate for the scarcity of documents, historians and researchers often analyze diverse literary works, despite potential biases

Criticism

• The process of appraisal has created the need for historical criticism, which is used to critique and assess the reliability of documents
• Historical criticism has become critical to the process of historical research, requiring researchers to evaluate sources

External criticism

• External criticism, or criticism of sources, includes appraising the authenticity of a historical source
• It involves verifying the author's identity, determining the time of writing, the location, and overall credibility
• Requires both criticism of authenticity/ genuineness and criticism of sources

Criticism of authenticity

• Criticism of authenticity evaluates the accuracy and quality of a historical document
• This involves determining if the text is altered or contains false or misleading narratives
• Accuracy of the document strives to restore the most accurate form of original text

Source criticism

• Source criticism investigates the validity and reliability of the document source and author
• Assesses the truthfulness, reliability, writing style, and relationship with events

Scope of the text

• It should be used to assess if the text of the occurrence was something that the author wrote about, witnessed, or had been told about

Internal criticism

• Internal criticism is concerned with the content of the historical document
• It involves two phases: positive and negative

Positive criticism

• Positive criticism involves understanding historical text through analytical phases beginning with linguistical reviews of the wording
• Requires understanding handwriting in the writing or recording, the significance of the text from all ages
• It is essential to understand the terminology by checking with references

Understanding languages and history

• Meanings of the words can differ, therefore local vocabulary must be understood
• One needs to interpret in context
• The context is needed to understand the subject and writer, and their writing style

Meaning of the text

• Understand the meaning and reason for the text

Identifying traits

• Used by different works

Negative criticism

• Negative criticism is using different sources

Verifying and making sure

• Using different sources, to make sure
• The author is credible

Historical accounts

• The integrity has its faults and should look over the reasons such as following:
• Not understanding of the application
• Trust
• There are many mistakes

Other opinions on text

• Inability to implement that and should be used earlier if not.