News from Timbuktu

[Duncan Head]

The Guardian had a story - https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/12/why-the-chroniclers-of-timbuktu-are-the-citys-most-innovative-writers - about the mediaeval chronicles of Timbuktu, notably the Tarikh al-sudan and the Tarikh al Fattash; and about a recent work analysing mediaeval inscriptions, which suggests that the chroniclers borrowed, distorted, or made up a lot of their history. The recently-published book on the inscriptions is here - it is rather on the expensive side.

I suppose this should serve as a warning against uncritical belief in ancient historians, at least the non-eyewitness ones.

[Patrick Waterson]

A shame to throw the baby out with the bathwater, e.g. quite a few items turn up from time to time confirming details in Herodotus, and I would certainly not lump Polybius and Ammianus together with the Tale-spinners of Timbuktu.

I gather than Islamic historians as a whole tend to be notorious for fact taking second place to enthusiasm, though even here it is possible to find some who are distinctly more reliable than others.

[Dangun]

Please insert here a proforma rant about over-priced and out-of-print academic titles.

In general, I think the times we can demonstrate an ancient historian is wrong, should leave us more soberly considering that information which we can not test in the same way.

Looks like an interesting book though...

[Patrick Waterson]

In general, I think the times we can demonstrate an ancient historian is wrong, should leave us more soberly considering that information which we can not test in the same way.

And similarly the times when we think an ancient historian is wrong, but then he is proved right by new evidence.  Of late, this seems to have been happening more often than the other way around.

This is why my standard approach is to assume the source is likely to be correct, and meanwhile ask: if the source is in fact correct, what could we expect to see?  And what would be an indication that it is wrong on this particular point?  Events cast their shadows around them and the shape of the shadow may give clues to the events themselves.

[Duncan Head]

This is why my standard approach is to assume the source is likely to be correct,

Whereas my first reaction tends to be more Paxmanesque (or Herenesque, it appears).

[Dangun]

This is why my standard approach is to assume the source is likely to be correct, and meanwhile ask: if the source is in fact correct, what could we expect to see?  And what would be an indication that it is wrong on this particular point?  Events cast their shadows around them and the shape of the shadow may give clues to the events themselves.

I think this is reasonable and almost inevitable.
If a piece of information is unique to a literary history and basically un-checkable from other sources, what else can we do, other than assume that its true?

But I would just caveat heavily and sobrely if prior to the un-testable piece of information, the same history has given us demonstrable error after demonstrable error.

[Jim Webster]

This is why my standard approach is to assume the source is likely to be correct,

Whereas my first reaction tends to be more Paxmanesque (or Herenesque, it appears).

I feel that it's always wise to assume that the author has an agenda and you have to somehow unpick that agenda as you're reading the work

[Erpingham]

This is why my standard approach is to assume the source is likely to be correct,

Whereas my first reaction tends to be more Paxmanesque (or Herenesque, it appears).

I feel that it's always wise to assume that the author has an agenda and you have to somehow unpick that agenda as you're reading the work

Agreed.  I don't think the majority of ancient and medieval historians set out to mislead.  But their intention was not simply a recitation of facts.  Also try to gain some idea of how they gained their information and from whom and assess their agendas too. 

[Patrick Waterson]

I feel that it's always wise to assume that the author has an agenda and you have to somehow unpick that agenda as you're reading the work

Agreed.  I don't think the majority of ancient and medieval historians set out to mislead.  But their intention was not simply a recitation of facts.  Also try to gain some idea of how they gained their information and from whom and assess their agendas too.

Never a bad idea.  Someone like Orosius sets out to prove that pagans were just as bad as Christians, and holds to that lodestone throughout his work.  This results in his using an eclectic range of sources whose quality ranges from highly accurate to sheer invention, as we can judge by comparison with steadier historians.  We often get this ability to compare accounts during the classical period, with archaeology thrown in to add further perspective (cf. the discovery that Maximinus Thrax did indeed penetrate as far into Germania as described by Herodian).

Going back to the Biblical period, we can also use such comparisons, usually between nations as it is uncommon to have more than one source within a nation for a particular event, but this works only if the synchronisation of chronologies is correct.  Mess that up and you have two problems: 1) your accounts do not match and 2) because they do not match, you degrade their authenticity.

In addition to agendas (and recording events can be an agenda) historical sources will almost certainly contain errors.  If however one takes the source as most probably correct as opposed to assuming it to be most probably wrong, one limits oneself to the original set of errors without introducing any more.  If one finds an error (e.g. one has a list of consuls from Roman sources and Polybius is a year out with one of his consuls) one can identify it as an error but need not assume that all other entries for consuls will similarly be a year out.

This is why my standard approach is to assume the source is likely to be correct,

Whereas my first reaction tends to be more Paxmanesque (or Herenesque, it appears).

In essence, "Why is this lying b*st*rd lying to me?"

There is noting wrong with validating source information, nothing at all.  I would highly recommend it where it can be done.  A priori dismissal, on the other hand, simply deprives one of potentially useful information.

This is one reason why interviewers make terrible historians.  I cringe when Max Hastings blithely decides that the BEF in 1914 could not really manage fifteen rounds per minute - full in the face of period evidence that some veteran units (e.g. the Lincolns) could manage as many as thirty rounds per minute.

[Andreas Johansson]

If a piece of information is unique to a literary history and basically un-checkable from other sources, what else can we do, other than assume that its true?

Well, in practice we apply a criterion of plausibility. We routinely disregard claims of supernatural intervention, and most of us discount troop numbers that beggar logistic belief.

(Unless you count this sort of thing as as "checkable from other sources" I guess, but the assumption that that Shamash does not, in fact, intervene in battles is hardly what's commonly understood as a "source".)

[Dangun]

(Unless you count this sort of thing as as "checkable from other sources" I guess, but the assumption that that Shamash does not, in fact, intervene in battles is hardly what's commonly understood as a "source".)

Yeah, I meant that, although I wasn't clear.

What I meant by uncheckable were things like "there were 10,000 combatants", or "Fred died in 367BC."
Now if it says there were 10,000,000 combatants, or Fred died when he was 138yo, that is firmly in the realm of your plausibility test.

[Erpingham]

Now if it says there were 10,000,000 combatants, or Fred died when he was 138yo, that is firmly in the realm of your plausibility test.

I am currently reading a text book on medieval history and it begins with a discussion of the nature of evidence.  The concept you relate is apparently referred to as one of "brute physical facts", things which are drawn from the physical realities of existence like mechanics, nutrition, human physiology, physical geography.  By and large, we can agree on these (though debates have taken place here that suggest I might be being optimistic). 

[Tim]

Experience here has taught me that the extent of our by and large agreement is usually limited to:

- We are the Society of Ancients
- We can't really be sure

other than that everything is up for grabs...