An unspoken “Islamic city” in the guise of a biographical dictionary. Notes on the Ta’rīkh Baghdād by al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī (5th/11th century) and the genre of local histories

In the last century, the Islamic city was the topic of important reflections that tried to trace the defining historical elements that would classify a medieval city as “Islamic”. Such approaches were constantly marked by a comparison to the historical experience of medieval Latin cities, and from such a perspective the medieval Islamic city was defined negatively as lacking an institutional profile. Not until the second half of the last century was this approach challenged, by pointing out its limitations and, above all, by refining its interpretative parameters. This paper, devoted to al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī’s Ta’rīkh Baghdād, aims at resetting the issue of the medieval idea of Islamic city, by seeking to shed light – beyond the silence on the political and institutional history of Baghdad – on the process which leads two genres of early Islamic historical writing – namely, local histories and biographical dictionaries – to coalesce with each other, becoming the specific feature of “narrating the Islamic city”. Focusing on the opening section of the Ta’rīkh Baghdād devoted to the ṣaḥāba who passed through al-Madā’in makes it possible to understand how al-Khaṭīb and his readership conceived of an idea of Islamic city (Baghdad as a place of a transmission of religious knowledge) inspired by the model of the community of believers of Medina. Behind the presence of the ṣaḥāba, apparently inexplicable in the history of a city founded after their death, it seems possible to perceive a continuity of al-Khaṭīb’s work with the earliest Islamic local histories – being themselves, probably, the outcome of a reception, by early Muslim historians, of Syriac hagiographical models. Furthermore, the ṣaḥāba who open a history of Baghdad prove to be an important clue to understand the implicit criterion of inclusion and exclusion, marked by an unexpected silence, which in fact cuts out from participation in al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī’s project of a ta’rīkh Baghdād mathematicians, scientists and philosophers (with their related scholarly traditions): in the idea of a city where c itizenship stands for participation in transmission of religious knowledge, ḥukamā’ have no entry.