A Survey of Explanation of Muslim Historians of Causes of Absence of Imam Ali from the Tabuk Battle: A Methodological Introduction

Writer of the present essay holds that Muslim historians, like other classic historians, considered only political issues, causes, and dimensions in their analysis of historical events and rarely paid attention to cultural, social, economic, and especially emotional dimensions and motivations. Such an affair created a collection of histories absolutely governed by political discourse. Hence, most of contemporary Muslim historians still avoid dealing with non-political factors in their analyses is spite of appearance and prevalence of new traditions and discourses in historiography. Taking an objective example into consideration, writer of the present essay compares political analyses of some old and new Muslim historians concerning Imam Ali’s absence from the Tabuk battle with an analysis of Abdolhosain Zarrinkoub who, despite all others, has contributed human emotions of the Prophet to the subject more.