Hichem Djaït (1935-2021) is a key name that stands out among the contemporaneous Arab
historians and intellectuals. The Tunisian historian advocated for the necessity of subjecting
especially the early period of Islamic history to a process of rigorous scientific
re-examination and published several studies of the foundational period of Islamic history
through which he sought to offer a critical and unsanctimonious reading of the early period of
Islamic history. His intellectual endeavour begins at the Sorbonne in Paris with an
investigation of the emergence of the city of Kufa during the first century after the Hijra. He
also broached a topic considered taboo namely the Islamic civil strife (al-fitna). His
three-volume work Fi s-sira an-nabawiyya is the outcome of a scholarly endeavour that lasted
for more than a decade in which he took on the task of excising from the biography of the
Prophet Muhammad all the myths and falsehoods that it had accumulated over the years thus
freeing it of the prevailing notions which had gradually developed in people's minds into
certain facts that could be neither challenged nor questioned. Further Djaït's work on early
Islamic history did not only deal with the Arabian Peninsula and the Middle East. He also wrote
on the beginnings of Islam in the region now referred to as the Maghreb. The present volume is
a collection of readings and critical reviews of Djaït's various works on early Islamic history
both regarding their content and the methodologies which underpin them.
