Partisan Dreams and Prophetic Visions: Shi'i Critique in Al-Masudi's History of the Abbasids‪.‬

Abu al-Husayn Ali ibn al-Husayn al-Masudi (d. 956), whom Ibn Khaldun called the Imam of the historians, is a well-studied figure. (1) These studies suggest that a close analysis of al-Masudi's work reveals, at times, a Shi'i bias. The historian's skill at concealing his views can be credited, in some measure, by explaining how such claims rest on circuitous interpretations of his texts. (2) Al-Masudi's critical historiography is difficult to appreciate, moreover, because of our ignorance of the literary code he used. This paper takes a step towards deciphering this code, and presents new and direct evidence of al-Masudi's partisan critique of the Abbasids--a dynasty notorious for its betrayal of Ali's family, in whose name it had made a successful bid for power. In terms of methodology I propose, quite simply, that we pay closer attention to the reports containing dreams in al-Masudi's history of the Abbasids. While modern studies of al-Masudi's work enhance our understanding of his critical standpoint, they generally ignore dreams in their analyses. (3) This represents a hermeneutical lapse in our approach to early Islamic historiography: that is, a general tendency to prefer fact over "fiction" and material over "immaterial" reality. In contrast, I argue that the dream belongs to the lost "intellectual scaffoldings" with the help of which early Muslim historians constructed narrative. (4) Knowledge of this literary device is not lost to us; enough clues exist for a feasible attempt at its reconstruction. Accordingly, the first half of this study makes a case for a literary-critical approach for interpreting oneiric anecdotes in early Islamic historiography. The second half will apply this methodology to al-Mas udi's treatment of the Abbasids.