Efforts to define the concepts “Islam” and “history” have separately engendered rich debates with long intellectual genealogies. Both debates serve as a foundation for this essay's attempt to delimit the subject of “Islamic history.” However, the essay also argues that a close examination of the interaction between the two categories offers its own insights. Chief among these is the argument that a reliance on subjects’ self‐ascription as “Muslims” for definitions of “Muslim” and “Islamic” is far more than the empty or “nominal” approach that some critics have described. Rather, Islamic self‐ascription is historically entangled, both an artifact of historical processes and an evocation of them, even an integral element of the phenomenon it seeks to define.

中文翻译：

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什么是伊斯兰历史？

定义“伊斯兰”和“历史”概念的努力分别引发了具有悠久知识渊源的丰富辩论。两次辩论都为本文划定“伊斯兰历史”主题奠定了基础。但是，本文还指出，仔细研究两个类别之间的相互作用可提供自己的见解。其中最主要的论点是，对某些主题的“穆斯林”和“伊斯兰”的定义依赖主体自我称呼为“穆斯林”，远远超出了一些批评家所描述的空洞或“名义上”的方法。相反，伊斯兰自我归因在历史上是纠结在一起的，既是历史过程的产物，又是历史过程的唤起，甚至是它试图定义的现象的组成部分。