Carl Wurtzel's translation of a portion of Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ’s Taʾrīkh is a welcome addition to the growing collection of Arabic sources in translation. The translation derives from Wurtzel's 1977 PhD dissertation. One can only speculate about the impact the work might have had if its publication had come earlier.
Wurtzel includes a lengthy introduction to the translation, which provides the most complete discussion of Khalīfa's life and work to date. In the introduction, Wurtzel pieces together available sources to reconstruct a semblance of Khalīfa's life and outlook. The result is a very traditional, but thorough, description of Khalīfa's life and works. Wurtzel lists Khalīfa's teachers and students, notes his lack of significant travel, and cites Khalīfa's evaluation as a muḥaddith in later biographical sources. He also underscores the importance of Khalīfa's Taʾrīkh as the earliest extant annalistic work in the Arabic historical corpus. Wurtzel notes the brevity of some of Khalīfa's reports, suggesting that Khalīfa abbreviated them because they were available elsewhere. Wurtzel asserts that Khalīfa's longer, more detailed citations included unique, or at least rare, material, spurring him to provide a more complete record. While Wurtzel's theory has merit, his assumptions about what was and was not circulating during Khalīfa's time are a bit speculative.
In addition to providing basic details about Khalīfa's life and works, Wurtzel uses the introduction to present his evaluation of Khalīfa's political and religious sentiments. He argues that Khalīfa held pro-Umayyad views, or at least harboured less disdain for them than did other historians. He points to the fact that fully half of Khalīfa's Taʾrīkh is devoted to the Umayyad era, while also pointing out that Khalīfa omitted the sordid stories of Umayyad depravity that feature so prominently in other sources. Wurtzel also notes that Khalīfa did not laud the ʿAbbāsid revolution, and excluded any discussion of the lengthy ʿAbbāsid conspiracy leading up to the revolution. He also notes that Khalīfa treats various ʿAlid uprisings in a cursory fashion, focusing more attention on the Khawārij. This is a compelling and important argument, which would have benefitted from more examples and from parallel readings of other sources to underscore Khalīfa's biases. Wurtzel also emphasizes Khalīfa's connections to the Nābita, opponents of the Muʿtazila who were connected to the early Ḥanbalīs. He asserts that the Nābita were more amenable to the Umayyads and labels Khalīfa as “orthodox,” a term Wurtzel neglects to define or discuss.
In general, Wurtzel's introduction to the translation is both useful and thorough. Even though some of his conclusions are speculative, they remain plausible. The historiographical discussion is somewhat dated, reflecting the fact that this is a lightly-revised 1977 work. Wurtzel's analysis would have been enriched by consideration of the works of John Wansbrough and Albrecht Noth, along with more recent research on narrative and historical memory. Despite these shortcomings, Wurtzel's introduction to his translation of Khalīfa's Taʾrīkh remains the best treatment of Khalīfa to date.
The translation itself is based on two published editions of the text, edited by S. Zakkār (Damascus, 1967) and A.D. al-ʿUmārī (al-Najaf, 1967). Unfortunately, Wurtzel was unable to consult the Rabat manuscript (the only extant copy of Khalīfa's Taʾrīkh) or search other collections for the fragments that surely exist, given the frequent citations of the work. It would also have been helpful to have a listing and evaluation of the later editions/reprints of the work.
The translation itself is accurate and manages to capture Khalīfa's matter-of-fact prose style quite effectively. Wurtzel deals with the isnāds appropriately, and includes footnote references to biographical sources on the transmitters, though these references are at times dated. For instance, he cites EI rather than EI2 in several instances.
Wurtzel's translation begins rather abruptly with the year 41/661–62. While this makes sense, given his intention to include only the Umayyad era, perhaps it would have been helpful to include Khalīfa's brief introduction to the overall work as a preface to the Umayyad material. He concludes equally abruptly with the year 132/750. This prompt ending is true to Khalīfa's own approach, since he provides nothing resembling a conclusion to the overall work. Consequently, Wurtzel's translation presents a fragment of Khalīfa's work, without introduction or conclusion. Given the nature of the text, this is perhaps unavoidable.
As in any translation, there is room to quibble about choices the translator made. There are no egregious errors in Wurtzel's work, though a few peculiarities stand out. In a number of instances, Wurtzel translates terms that have specific ideological importance in a generic way that loses the nuance of the original. For example, in the description of the uprising at al-Ḥarra in 63/682–83, Wurtzel translates daʿū illa al-riḍā wa-l-shūrā as “a council was called to [elect] an acceptable [leader]” (p. 100). While this is an accurate rendering, the polemical significance of the term al-riḍā is lost. The importance of the term riḍā is not noted in any of the several places it appears (e.g. pp. 266, 269), erasing possible implicit references to Shiite/ʿAbbāsid propaganda. The phrase waqaʿat al-fitna appears sometimes as “civil strife occurred”, (p. 111) and sometimes as “civil war broke out” (p. 266). Qaṭaʿ al-jisr appears both as “crossed the bridge” (p. 272) and “cut the bridge” (p. 305). Inexplicably, Wurtzel renders wilayat al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī as “the caliphate of al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī” (p. 53). Al-ʿUmarī’s edition notes some confusion in the manuscript about whether Yazīd b. Muhallab's rebel forces reached Basra on laylat al-qadar in Ramaḍān or on laylat al-badar, the night of the full moon (Umarī, p. 341). Here, it would have been helpful if Wurtzel could have examined the actual manuscript. Given the symbolic importance of laylat al-qadar, rather than simply choosing the full moon, Wurtzel should at least have included a footnote (p. 212). Wurtzel's decision to resort frequently to the passive voice in the ubiquitous lists of officials Khalīfa provides occasionally creates confusion about who is appointing whom, even though the original text is clear.
These and other minor errors and quibbles do not detract from the overall quality of the translation. They do, however, obscure some of the richness of the original Arabic. This is, of course, unavoidable in any translation. While Wurtzel's work makes Khalīfa's text accessible to a broader audience, specialists will still have to consult the original Arabic to grasp Khalīfa's meaning. Non-Arabists will benefit from exposure to a contrast in style and content to the more widely read translations of al-Ṭabarī’s Taʾrīkh. Wurtzel's translation, and particularly his introductory material on Khalīfa, will remain an important contribution to the field.
