Encyclopedia of Islam

autobiography

Autobiography is a kind of literature in which 

authors write primarily about their own lives and 

about the people, places, ideas, and events that 

affected them. It is sometimes also called self-

narrative. In the 20th century, most European 

and American scholars held that autobiography 

was a product of individual self-consciousness 

that originated uniquely in “Western civilization” 

inspired by a Christian outlook and that it rarely 

occurred anywhere else in the world or in other 

religious communities before the modern period. 

This view has been seriously questioned in recent 

years as the literature of other civilizations has 

been further studied and translated. Scholars are 

now finding significant evidence for traditions of 

premodern autobiographical writing in non-West-

ern cultures, especially in Islamicate ones.

Islamic autobiographical literature before 

the 20th century was written mainly in Arabic, 

Persian, and Turkish, the three leading literary 

languages of Muslims during the Middle Ages. 

The first Muslim autobiographies that we know 

anything about were written by ninth-century his-

torians, mystics, and officials. In later centuries, 

this list grew to include religious scholars, jurists, 

philosophers, poets, physicians, scientists, rulers, 

politicians, soldiers, and converts. Pre-Islamic 

autobiographies that had been translated from 

Persian and Greek may have influenced some of 

these authors, but many were more inspired by 

the biographies of m

Uhammad

 (d. 632) and the 

first Muslims, who were regarded as ideal role 

models. Later writers, in their turn, wanted to set 

examples of themselves for their readers. Oth-

ers wanted to use their life stories to show how 

God had blessed them. In Sufi literature, auto-

biographical narratives recounted the spiritual 

journeys of the authors, including their dreams 

and visions. Among the most famous Sufi auto-

biographical writings are those of a

bU

  h

amid

al

-g

hazali

 (d. 1111), r

Uzbihan

  b

aqli

 (d. 1209), 

i

bn

 

al

-a

rabi

 (d. 1240), and Shah Wali Allah (d. 

1762). Other prominent Muslims who have left 

autobiographies are the physician and philoso-

pher  i

bn

  s

ina

 (d. 1036), the Syrian warrior-poet 

Usama ibn Munqidh (d. 1188), the historian i

bn

k

haldUn

 (d. 1406), and Babur (d. 1530), the 

founder of the m

Ughal

 

dynasty

 in i

ndia

. Much 

later, several West Africans brought to the U

nited

s

tates

 as slaves in the 19th century wrote short 

autobiographies in Arabic, much to the surprise 

of the American public.

When authors in Islamicate lands fell under 

the influence of European literary traditions dur-

ing the 19th and 20th centuries, indigenous 

autobiographical traditions underwent significant 

changes. The number of autobiographies pub-

lished in Muslim countries increased with the 

introduction of the printing press, they were writ-

ten in many different modern languages (includ-

ing English), and they included new secular 

and national perspectives, as well as more tradi-

tional ones. Egyptian author and educator Taha 

Husayn’s (d. 1973) autobiography, which recalls 

his village childhood and his student days at al-

Azhar University in c

airo

, embodies the fusion 

of the traditional with the modern, and it is still