A Critical Review of Tarikh -i Islam of Dr. Fayyaz

Tarikh -i Islam of late Dr. Ali Akbar Fayyāz (dead 1350 Š/ AD 1971-2) is one of the earliest works on reviewing the history of Islam in modern times. It covers in a thin volume a long stretch of Islamic history since initiation up to the end of Abbasids. The book despite its useful positive points mentioned in publisher’s foreword raises criticism on the chapters dealing with the time of the Prophet (PBUH) and the first four caliphs, which some of them are dealt with in this paper from a historical and ideological point of view and each one is classified according to its subject matter. The main incentive to this work was that the author has presented an unjustifiable strict picture of the prophet, along quoting many shaky accounts which present biased image of the life and deeds of him. So the present work opens with quoting one of these accounts (which in present author’s view) is “one of the harshest accounts quoted about the Prophet and his desciples.