Revisiting al-Ṭabarī on Maqtal ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib: An Early Report from Historical Learning to Practical Prescription

Abstract

This paper examines the report (khabar) that relates the reasons behind the killing of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (d. 40/661), as transmitted in the famous History of al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923), exploring its historical, poetical, and practical facets. After considering its formal and historiographical structure, the paper analyzes some of the report’s phonetical, lexical, and textual elements, revealing its affective poeticity, or capacity to move readers in various ways. A review of different citations of the report in other Arabic medieval compilations positively sheds light on the practical morality that Muslim compilers were orienting their readers to observe, in their employment of titles, subtitles, explicit evaluations, and contextual arrangements among other constructions. The paper aims to attest to the report’s diverse potentials to aid its readers in ultimately answering the ethical question of “What to do, here and now?”