A Critical Examination of Masʿūdī’s Solitary ʿĀshūrāʾ Narrations in Murūj al-Dhahab(مقاله علمی وزارت علوم)
حوزههای تخصصی:
The account of the martyrdom of Ḥusayn (AS) in al-Masʿūdī’s Murūjal-Dhahab (d. 346 AH) holds a special place among extant ʿĀshūrāʾ sources due to both its antiquity and the author’s stature in Islamic historiography. Part of al-Masʿūdī ’s report reflects the concise narrations of earlier authorities, while another part contains solitary reports found only in his transmission. An analysis of these unique reports, constituting the central problem of this study, shows that some of them suffer from textual inconsistencies and conflict with established historical and transmitted accounts. Nevertheless, these reports influenced later historians’ narratives. Hence, al-Masʿūdī’s Maqtal is at once a valuable source and a subject of caution and scrutiny. Using a descriptive-analytical method and a critical approach, this article seeks to clarify al-Masʿūdī ’s method and perspective in narrating the events of ʿĀshūrāʾ and, through comparison of his unique reports with other historical and narrative sources, to evaluate their content reliability. The findings show that assessing al-Masʿūdī ’s solitary narrations is only possible through historical-narrative analysis; without such scrutiny, parts of ʿĀshūrāʾ literature remain confused and ambiguous. Accordingly, this study reexamines and evaluates these unique reports.