The Historiographical Method of Abbasgholi Sepehr in Narrating the Life of Hazrat Zeinab (S) in Nasekh al-Tavarikh

Over the history, Shiites have always shown an interest in writing books on Imams, the family of the Holy Prophet and the lineage of Alawis. None of the outstanding Shiite scholars, however, have tried to compile an independent work on Hazrat Zeinab even in the Safavid era. This was not done until late Naseri era when Abbasgholi Sepehr (1342 AH), who was not as a scholar, but a court historian, compiled Nasekh al-Tavarikh on the Life of Zeinab Kobra (ناسخ التواریخ زندگانی زینب کبری (س)), which was known as Taraz al-Mazhab (طراز المذهب). The book was published as a one of the volumes of Nasekh al-Tavarikh on the life of Al Mohammad in 1314 AH. Abbasgholi Sepehr claimed that this book was the first one written about Hazrat Zeinab. Although some treatises and texts had been already written on Hazrat Zeinab, the work was the first one in Persian in this regard. Abbasgholikhan says that the aim of Nasekh al-Tavarikh on the Life of Zeinab Kobra, which was known as Taraz al-Mazhab, was producing a comprehensive history on the life of Hazrat Zeinab and he was proud of the innovation of the subject. Based on the title and the authors’ claim, as well as the historiographer and historian’s definition, one can call the work a historiographical text. It is worth mentioning that at the time of compiling the book, modern historiography was emerging and some changes were happening in traditional historiography. So far, no one has paid attention to the way Sepehr’s family, including Abbasgholi, as an outstanding representative of traditional historiography in the Qajar Era, dealt with such changes. As such, knowing the historiographical features of the work, especially the traditional histography could be important. Thus, the question of this research would be as follows: what was the reason Abbasgholi could not go beyond the classical historiography when writing on the life of Hazrat Zeinab though he tried to eliminate the drawbacks of traditional historiography? The study used the common descriptive-analytical method to provide the historiographical understanding and tried to discover the relationship between the text, writer, and sociopolitical and cultural context of the text in order to investigate how and why the text had been produced. The results show that in Taraz al-Mazhab, Abbasgholi Sepehr endeavored to eliminate the drawbacks of traditional historiography that his contemporaries had brought about, but he was successful only in improving some elements of historiography where there were no conflicts with his attitude. The success included mentioning all the references, writing simply, and avoiding redundancy and literary devices, poems, and long-running use of words. However, he was not successful in short writing. Facing the contrast between classical and modern historiography, the writer decided to mention narratives like Tabari. Most probably, his strong motivation for the preference was that he thought using that method was innovative and a superior feature of his book. This manner could make him prominent in the competition between the writers of religious and historical works of the time, especially in the eyes of the king and court. Abbasgholi’s main challenge was eliminating the drawback of the historians’ silence when facing contradictory news and deemed this as one of the features of classical historiography. He doubted assuming the allowance of telling his personal ideas and the historian’s presence in the text (the feature of modern historiography) and emphasized the necessity of staying silent because of his low status in divine knowledge and God-given knowledge of the infallibles (PBUH). The traditional look at history and interpreting the world from the perspective of religion formed his attitude towards history. Keeping far from the common traditional way of the historiography of the time, Abbasgholi Sepehr did not believe in the presence of historians when facing narratives and, mentioning repeatedly the inability of human beings in reaching the exact knowledge, avoided making decisive statements. Therefore, he preferred adhering to his second concern that was determining the real identity of Zeinab (PBUH) and Umm Kulthum from amongst the different existing narrations on the life of Hazrat Zeinab. It seemed that he did not pay attention to the drawback of his work that was leaving the readers with various possibilities. The most important achievement of his book was that it met the needs of his religious and traditional audience by stating all the news about Hazrat Zeinab and her status in the world. To him, the benefits of adhering to the methods of classical historiography in this text in his competition with the works of his contemporary translators and historians of religion were more than eliminating the drawbacks of this historiography style. The study showed that Abbasgholi Sepehr was successful in eliminating the shortcomings of the traditional method, but was not in choosing between the contradictory news and a consistent narration of the life of Hazrat Zeinab. The reasons were as follows: the classical method of historiography was institutionalized in him. He believed in the insignificant issue of the historians’ presence in restructuring the past. On the other hand, the benefits of adherence to traditional historiography brought about more acceptability of his book. This issue was more significant than solving the shortcomings of this method of historiography.