On History and Historiography

For sometime I wanted to list down articles and books related to the themes that I am interested in. Basically, a bibliography with titles that I have found useful or that I have read good reviews about and want to read soon. It's going to be a list of personal favorites, not a comprehensive list on the subject.

I start with Philosophy of History and Historiography in this post.

First, a quick note on how I distinguish the two. The philosophy of history, as it is understand here, is an attempt to find patterns and causes in social and historical changes. Historiography is about ways of writing history. It's about interrogating the research methodologies and social perspectives that inform selection of data, focus on certain historical agents (and not others), and questions that a historian/historical-sociologist pursues. The two - Philosophy of History and Historiography - are analytically separate enterprises, but closely related.

So, for example, Ibn Khaldun starts his "The Muqaddimah" with a critical appraisal of the history-writing of his time and proposes to present his own method, which he claims was based on ilm al-'Umran (Science of Population or Civilization). He outlines that science in 'The Muqaddimah' (the 'Prologue' to his Grand History, written in multiple volumes). The science was informed by his realistic and careful reading of history (realistic in terms of trying to find objective causes in history). He identified tribes and tribal solidarities as the core principle of social organization of his time and as a primary agent of historical change. His narrative focused on tribal groups to explain the rise and fall of dynasties.

The below list is in no ranked order:

"Trends of History in Qur'an" by Muhammad Baqir Sadr (Book, Online)

"The Muqaddimah" by Ibn Khaldun (Book, Online)

"On the Sociology of Islam" by Ali Shariati (Book, Citation)

"Social and Historical Change" by Murtaza Mutahhari (Book, Citation. Many parts are available Online. See "Man and Universe", Chapter V - "Society and History")

"On the Plight of the Oppressed People" by Ali Shariati (Article/Speech, Online)

"Marxism and other Western Fallacies" by Ali Shariati (Book, Citation)

"What is History?" by E. H. Carr (Book, Citation)

"Orientalism" by Edward Said (Book, Citation)

"Silencing the Past" by Michel-Rolph Trouillot (Book, Citation)

"Event, Metaphor, Memory: Chauri Chaura, 1922-1992" by Shahid Amin (Book, Citation)

"The Holocaust industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering" by Norman G. Finkelstein (Book, Citation)

"Remembering partition: violence, nationalism, and history in India" by Gyan Pandey (Book, Citation)

"Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference" by Dipesh Chakrabarty (Book, Citation)

"The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories" by Partha Chatterjee (Book, Citation)

"Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time" by Reinhart Koselleck (Book, Citation)

Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities" by Marshall David Sahlins (Book, Citation)

"The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" by Max Weber (Book, Citation)

"Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison" by Michel Foucault (Book, Citation)

"Vision and Method in Historical Sociology" By Theda Skocpol (Book, Citation)

"Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons" by Charles Tilly (Book, Citation)

"Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation" by William Hamilton Sewell (Book, Citation)