Muhammad Jamil Bayyuhum as a Muslim historian: an early study about three selected books

Abstract

This writing focuses on the making of an early biography of a historian and Arab nationalist, Muhammad Jamil Bayyuhum (1887-1978). This research had been done based on a statement mentioned by Zuhayr Mardini (1979) that mentioned despite all the efforts are done by Muhammad Jamil Bayyuhum during his lifetime, however, he was not been recognize or mentioned widely in history as the ceremony that will make his name shine in 1973 was postponed when Lebanon was involved in a war crisis that year. Since that time, the political situation in Lebanon was not stable and the ceremony remain cannot be organized until he died in 1978. However, after his death, there was an initiative taken by his friends to commemorate his contribution towards nation as published in a magazine al-‘Irfan for January and February issues for year 1979 which was a year after his death. Also, Widad Sakakini's (1979) called him as al-Mufakkir al-Kabir (the Great Thinker) to show how Muhammad Jamil Bayyuhum was a prominent person during his lifetime. Thus, this paper had been done to achieve two main objectives which are to construct a biographical narrative about Muhammad Jamil Bayyuhum and to analyse his contributions in the field of history based on his three selected books which are Falsafat al-Tarikh al-‘Uthmani, Awwaliyyat Salatin Turkiyya dan Falsafat Tarikh Muhammad. In order to carry out this research, the researcher used the historical chronological approach and content analysis to figure out all the facts related to the subject. So, this paper will begin with the biography of Muhammad Jamil Bayyuhum and followed by his contribution in the field of history. The results showed that actually Muhammad Jamil Bayyuhum was a prominent and great Muslim historian with all his books focused on the history of Islam. However, as there is still no study about him, his name as a historian did not been recognised like the other historians who had been studied today.