ABSTRACT

This study reflects on the room for manoeuvre – or the agency – that medieval authors of Arabic historical narratives disposed of in composing their texts. It will therefore ask what the authors’ degree of agency was in composing the works in terms of the social context in which they acted, the learned tradition in which they stood, and the textual environment in which they composed their works. Agency here means:

the capacity of socially embedded actors to appropriate, reproduce, and, potentially, to innovate upon received cultural categories and conditions of action in accordance with their personal and collective ideals, interests, and commitments.