Historians as Actors in the Report of Historical Events; A Comparative Study of Saqῑfe Narrative in History of Tabarῑ and History of Bal‘amῑ

Narratology enables historians to study and critique different historical narratives and understand them. This knowledge helps researchers understand narratives by examining elements such as Time (in the form of order, duration, and frequency), Character and Characterization, Angle of vision and Focalization, Semantic levels, and so on. This article uses narrative critique to show the difference between Saqīfe Narrative in terms of time duration and frequency in History of Tabarī and History of Bal'amī. It shows that Tabarī, using repetitive frequency and presenting six narratives of Saqīfe, provides the possibility of representing Abūbakr and 'Umar as the center of the narrative, and while doing this, ignores some of the voices in Saqīfe. Quite contrary, by expanding the duration of the Saqīfe narrative, the history of Bal'amī allows more characters to include. In this way, on the one hand, it adds more voices in the narrative, and on the other hand, it challenges Tabarī narrative. Therefore Bal'amī can introduce the voices of Ali and Abbᾱs᾿ advocates in the Saqīfe Narrative. In this way, Bal'amī and Tabarī can be considered independent narratives about Saqīfe. That shows historians as actors of history.