In the 11th and the 12th centuries two voluminous biographical dictionaries, the Tarikh Baghdad by al-Khatib al-Baghdadi and the Tarikh Madinat Dimashq by Ibn Asakir respectively, made clear connections between the geographical imagination and questions of political loyalty and religious belonging among the ulama of those periods. While the cities evoked in both titles acted as the organizing principle for the selection of biographical entries to be included, they – and the regions in which they were located – should also be seen as objects of representation themselves in the introductions to the two works. In this paper, I will compare the representations of Baghdad and Iraq on the one hand and Damascus and Syria on the other to illuminate the discursive strategies employed by the authors to endow geographical space with particular political and religious meanings. What this comparison reveals is that the representation of geographical space cannot be reduced to a gesture of local pride or a formulaic convention of the genre but needs to be read, rather, as part of a carefully conceived discourse that allowed the authors to express loyalty and belonging particular to their historical contexts in evocative and compelling ways. Among the contrasts to be explored in this paper are: Syria as a territory of the Bible vs. Iraq as a territory of the Hadith; Iraq as the center of the wordly world (surrat al-dunya) vs. Syria as the holy land (al-ard al-muqaddasa); Damascus as a landscape of mosques and mazarat vs. Baghdad as a landscape of palaces and iqtaat. Among the similarities: both cities are linked closely to, and sometimes interchangeable with, their regions; both cities and regions are represented as threatened by wrong belief; both cities and regions have the capacity to attract the human capital of Islam; and both cities and regions act as foils to each other, and to other territories. By interpreting such contrasts and similarities as the products of discursive strategies and situating them within their historical contexts, I argue that the authors were tapping the geographical imagination selectively to articulate a language of loyalty and belonging appropriate to the challenges they perceived themselves to be facing in their respective periods. In other words, I engage the introductions to the Tarikh Baghdad and the Tarikh Madinat Dimashq as significant intellectual contributions to a politics of place in medieval Islamdom.

This paper will examine Ibn ‘Asakir in order to determine what motivated him as a scholar: the duty of passing down the “authentic” words of the prophet Muhammad, his curiosity for history and fables, or his eagerness to rectify the Muslims of his day. Invariably, scholars examine Ibn ‘Asakir in order to learn about sources and information that are otherwise lost. Hence we treat his works as a depository. Few studies have examined his biases in reporting about early Islam (e.g. the studies in James Lindsay’s Ibn ‘Asakir and Early Islamic History). What I propose is to move beyond the fact that his works are valuable depositories of resources, and that he exhibits significant though often subtle biases in the way he reports the events and figures of the past. My paper will contextualize Ibn ‘Asakir and his works in the very peculiar twelfth century (the early period of the Crusades), thus showing the project he was serving as well as the goals he was aspiring to achieve as a great Hadith authority, historian, and religious reformer, and which of the three preoccupations defined his career the most.

This paper will address issues of sacred geography in the narrative sources relied upon by Ibn 'Asakir in his massive compilation, *Tarikh Madinat Dimashq*. While scholars have addressed Ibn Asakir's use of geographical sources for his topographical introduction to this text, this paper will focus explicitly on our earliest narratives in the "construction" of sacred landscapes in the tradition of "Religious Merits" literature, the fada'il genre. As such, it will also touch on the trajectory of fada'il in Islamic historiography, and that genre's relationship to tarikh in post-Abbasid versus Umayyad periods

Ibn Asakir’s biography of Khalid al-Qasri, nearly 30 pages in length, is the longest extant biography of this important Umayyad-era figure. Curiously, a careful examination of Ibn Asakir’s biography of Khalid confuses our image of this central Umayyad character rather than explaining him more clearly. Instead of filling in details of earlier, sketchy descriptions of events, Ibn Asakir deviates substantially from the standard narrative of Khalid’s life and presents an alternative explanation for most of the significant events in Khalid’s career. For example, he includes a different version of the reason for Khalid’s dismissal from his post as governor of Iraq and he provides a detailed, alternative narrative of Khalid’s downfall that casts al-Walid b. Yazid’s decision to turn him over to his enemy Yusuf b. Umar in a different light. Despite its length, Ibn Asakir’s biography of Khalid excludes the poetry laden with tribal animus that was central to al-Tabari’s well-known account. This omission is particularly notable, given that Ibn Asakir also emphasized Khalid’s patronage of Bedouin poets. This paper will describe Ibn Asakir’s biography of Khalid in detail, emphasizing his deviation from the standard narrative offered by al-Tabari and other earlier sources. It will examine Ibn Asakir’s use, and perhaps abuse, of earlier sources to construct his alternative narrative of Khalid’s career. Based on this analysis of sources and on a broader reading of Ibn Asakir’s biographies of late Umayyad figures, the paper will also offer some suggestions about what agenda Ibn Asakir might have been pursue in his revisionist biography of Khalid al-Qasri. The implications of this agenda for our reading of Ibn Asakir’s biographies of other Umayyad figures will also be considered.