Characteristics of Arabic Identity in Intellectual System of Hisham Kalbi based on his Books on Genealogy

Science of "Genealogy" was one of the branches of History and Historiography during the age of Jāhilīyah (age of ignorance) which has grown rapidly in the Islamic era. In this context, Hisham Kalbi (d. 204 AH. / 819 AD.), as the first author and editor of Genealogy, has a great contribution to the formation and prosperity of this science, with two important texts, the Jamharat Al-Ansab and Nasab Ma'ad wa-l-Yaman al-Kaybir, which had remained from him in this field and their characteristic feature is to refer to the descendants of all the Arab tribes. However, his books on Genealogy have not yet been taken into consideration by the researchers as required. Therefore, the issue of this article is to study and analyze Ibn Kalbi’s books on Genealogy in order to find out why he had gone beyond the predominant tradition and traced the linage of more tribes for producing the aforementioned texts during the first period of Abbasid era. The approach adopted in this analysis is a semantic approach in which the conversation between the text of Geologies with the writer (Hisham Kalbi) and the contexture of thought and culture of the text will be studied and examined. The results of this analysis indicate that Ibn Kalbi was influenced by the necessity of the need for Arab ethnicity for identifying themselves and produced these texts on Genealogy. He created prideful Arabic-Islamic identity for Arab nation in his texts through representing the Genealogy of Arab nation, using elements such as common historical past and :union: belief and selection of the Prophet from the heart of Arab nation.