Explaining the place of divine providence in the works of historians in the third to sixth centuries AH

Different views on the issue of predestination and liberty have spread to the realm of history with little difference. Historians have different tendencies depending their regard to history as the arena of human play or the manifestation of God’s will. Providence is a general term for referring to a range of approaches that make God's will effective in historical events. fatalism can be considered as one side of this range, which considers man with no will, and captive in God's providence and conditional legalism is the other side of this range which, while believing in the will of human beings, considers God that have general attention in all fields and direct involvement in some affairs. This article has tried to examine the belief in divine providence in the works of Muslim historians in the third to sixth centuries AH using the method of qualitative content analysis as well as quantitative. The research findings indicate that Tabari and Beihaqi can be considered among the historians of fatalism, and Yaqubi, Masoudi, Miskawayh, and Moghaddasi can be considered as conditional law-abiding historians.