Historically speaking, the turbulent events of the year after the death of Prophet Muḥammad turned out to be quite decisive in Islamic history. The political unity forged by Muḥammad under the aegis of the new religion he proclaimed was seriously challenged by the undetermined order of succession and the struggle of the tribes on the Arab Peninsula to cut their bonds of political allegiance created during the Prophet's lifetime (ridda). It is thus hardly surprising that later generations remembered these events, and with the rise of Arabic history writing, a series of historiographical compositions were dedicated to this topic. Although none of the original texts are known to have survived, the information they contained was presumably integrated into later, more comprehensive depictions of Muslim history. The Kitāb al-futūḥ is a good example of this principle.

As I will try to demonstrate in the second part of the present chapter as well as in section 6.4, Ibn Aʿtham's ridda narrative was treated by its author as a fairly independent unit within his book. Unfortunately, but typical for him, he did not reveal his sources on the events of the ridda wars to his readers in a straightforward manner, so in Chapter 5 we set out to explore them more systematically. But before doing so, in Chapter 4 we establish the broader context by recapitulating what we know of the lost topical monographs (section 4.1), some of which might have been available to him as well, and the parallel accounts on the same events known to us in slightly earlier, contemporaneous, and later comprehensive histories (section 4.2).

Chapter 1 introduced the seven manuscripts of the Kitāb al-futūḥ currently known and available to us for analysis and demonstrated that the editors of the Kitāb alfutūḥ’ s standard edition had excluded three of them: MSs Ankara, Milan, and Patna. Other problems emerge from the lacunae in the Arabic text, which the Ḥaydarābād editors filled with Mustawfī's Persian text. In general, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that despite important previous studies of the Kitāb al-futūḥ and more than one attempt to publish its text in parts or in full, the understanding of the process of its textual transmission remains insufficient. To be sure, the present work alone cannot fill this major gap by itself, not least because its focus is restricted to a selected part of the book. Although the present analysis is written with an eye on the entire work and thus attempts to consider parallel phenomena scattered throughout the book while studying certain features, detailed scrutiny of them remains a desideratum for further research. In any case, my main aim is to contribute to a better understanding of the issues selected for study in the first place and, thusly, the lessons to be learned from the remaining five manuscripts (that is, MSs Milan, Istanbul, Dublin, Birmingham, and Ankara) will be explored primarily to strengthen my conclusions and avoid misinterpretation as far as possible.

Although the book's main focus is the study of the ridda narrative preserved in two Arabic manuscripts, examining the remaining five copies is inevitable for more than one reason. First, the place of MSs Patna and Gotha within the Kitāb al-futūḥ's textual tradition cannot be ascertained without seeing its other components. Critical issues, such as the handling of poems in MSs Patna and Gotha, cannot be resolved without knowing the practices of the scribes who produced the other manuscripts. As we shall see, in this case, relying solely on MSs Patna and Gotha could lead to misjudgment, for which the conclusions can only be valid if they are based on the entire known corpus. Secondly, the study of the manuscript material can also give further pieces of information on the reception history of the text, which can hardly be explored solely on the basis of other, in this case, secondary sources.

Despite the fragmentary and contradictory nature of the available evidence, the events of the ridda have been recurrently scrutinised in modern historiography due to the centrality of the topic for the earliest Islamic history. Already the earliest historical representations of early Islamic history written in a positivistic manner in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries paid due attention to the topic and tried to establish the course of events, thereby fulfilling the Rankeian maxim of reconstructing the past ‘wie es eigentlich gewesen [ist]’. Yet the first single study of this theme dealing with it in a monograph was authored by Elias S. Shoufani (1932–2013) in the late 1960s and published in 1972. Shoufani's book was also conceived in the positivist spirit and, therefore, attempted to reconstruct the events based on the then-known Arabic sources and choose between their data by establishing their respective source value. Another detailed analysis of the ridda was conducted by Fred M. Donner for his fundamental evaluation of the early Islamic conquest. Besides Shoufani and Donner's volumes, the topic was mainly covered in studies devoted to single tribes and persons involved in the ridda, including Dale F. Eickelman's paper on Musaylima, Meir Jacob Kister's (1914–2010) studies on Musaylima and select aspects of the poetry related to the ridda, Ella Landau- Tasseron's studies on the Ṭayyiʾ and Tamīm, and Michael Lecker's articles on the Kinda. A common approach of the latter investigations was to make attempts at understanding the single conflicts through the motivations of the given leader(s) and tribal group(s) instead of focusing on the reconstruction of the actual events.

Another major step taken towards moving the scope of the analyses from historical reconstructions to the study of the texts in question as literary products was made by Albrecht Noth's influential Quellenkritische Studien (published in 1973). Among the primary themes (ursprüngliche Themen) established in his book, a prominent place was given to the theme of the ridda, the traditions of which were among the earliest of Muslim historical memory. Perhaps more importantly, Noth also placed a great emphasis on the formal elements, topoi, and schemata abundantly present in the historiographical compositions of early and classical Muslim history writing, including the ones providing ridda narratives.

The Athenian experience may help us to sharpen several decisive questions of our time: In what form do the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion that run through a group build a true society that is more than the sum of its disparate networks? Conversely, by what processes does a society come to tear itself apart, or even disintegrate? How do heterogeneous social arenas and temporalities coexist within it? Under what conditions should the fervor of exceptional situations be maintained without sinking into totalitarian unity? All these questions unfold with clarity in one quite singular moment of the history of Athens: the civil war of 404/3 BC.

This chapter takes as a starting point one of the great figures of the Athenian civil war: Archinus, a resistance fighter against the Thirty from the outset and the main architect of the reconciliation in 403. By a strange turn of events, Archinus endeavored to recast Athenian law and to mark the permanence of the community beyond the vicissitudes of the civil war. Archinus, a tireless promoter of a reunified city, managed to gather two groups around his project, which each presented symmetrical evolutions: on the one hand, all the democrats who, having fought against the Thirty, did not want to open the civic body to new entrants, even deserving ones; and on the other hand, all ‘those from the town’ who were ready to cooperate with the restored democracy, such as Rhinon, a fascinating political ‘weather vane’ who appears, in many respects, to have been Archinus’ alter ego in the oligarch camp. After violently opposing each other during the civil war, these men agreed to merge into a single chorus, dancing in step within a seemingly pacified city. However, this irenic vision must be put into perspective in view of the violent upheavals experienced during the reconciliation process. Far from being a foregone conclusion, reconciliation actually went hand in hand with the maintenance of a strong political conflict, as illustrated by an astonishing profusion of trials between 403 and 399, attested to both by numerous law court speeches and by extraordinary epigraphic sources (i.e. curses [katadesmoi] engraved on lead tablets and buried in the ground). These clashes clearly worked to the advantage of the ‘moderates’ on both sides, who succeeded, at the time, in winning before the Assembly and in the courts and, subsequently, in imposing their version of history in the city.

A speech by Isaeus allows us to observe in detail a family chorus caught up in the turmoil of the Athenian civil war. It is at its heart that the heroine of this chapter, Hegeso, lived for most of her life. “Hegeso (daughter) of Proxenus”: her name is engraved on a beautiful funerary monument located in the Kerameikos Cemetery. A woman alone, whose portrait is on display in a public space, without any male presence: It’s a rare enough occurrence that we may be tempted to think this stele is an exceptional document testifying to a particular form of recognition not of womankind, but of an individualized woman. However, this would be wrong. For the very name of Hegeso can only be established through interaction with the other funerary monuments nearby, and this tends to erase the singularity of her presence by confining her to the role of the model wife. Above all, Hegeso finds herself at the crossroads of a family feud between two branches of the family of Proxenus, her father, caught up in the events of 404/3. Far from constituting a zone of withdrawal and intimacy, families were rife with political conflicts. The memorial of Hegeso nevertheless exhibits the harmony of the family sphere in the form of two half-choruses singing in tune: the regulated game of exchanges from which marriage proceeds, as well as the regulated gender divisions within it. Celebrating the fixity and the permanence of family lineage, this portrayal masks, or staves off, political turbulence by presenting the oikos as existing in an unchanging temporal space: that of its cyclic reproduction from one generation to the next.

Around Nicomachus, the alleged son of a public slave, who became the collector and transcriber of the city’s laws, a group of men in the service of Athenian institutions takes shape. Radically distinct from that of the magistrates, their activity was well and truly outside the political field, as described in Plato’s Statesman. It brought together slaves and free men, whether they played the role of assistant to the archons or of undersecretaries to certain magistrates. Reading the prytany inscriptions suggests that, within it, the distinction between free men and slaves prevented the formation of a collective identity based on a specific skill and professional dignity. The chorus of bureaucrats that surrounds Nicomachus, in short, is only a mirage. Trapped by the city’s self-representation, such a reading would, however, be erroneous. It undoubtedly underestimates the existence of an administrative culture of which these men, whether they were free or slaves, could be the guardians, and about which our sources are admittedly tenuous. Above all, it ignores the opportunities public slaves were given to accede, if not during their lifetime, then possibly via the intermediary of descent, to the society of free men. Nicomachus, after all, was perhaps the son of a dēmosios, and, if this was the case, it allows us to suggest, on the one hand, that service to the city could lead some of these slaves to see their descendants acquire citizenship and, on the other hand, that citizenship could be acquired through the transmission of professional skills from father to son, which were put to service for the common good. Therefore, it is perhaps through the transmission, over several generations, of a skill used in the service of Athens that the chorus of the bureaucrats of the city came into being, which transcended the distinction between free men and slaves.

The sources mention many Athenians who settled abroad during the troubles to quietly go about their business, or remained in the city, secluded in their oikos, without joining either camp. To take an interest in these ‘nonaligned’ individuals is to give their place in history back to the many protagonists who resisted the all-encompassing logic of the stasis and the contradictory injunctions that it gave rise to: Choose your side, comrade! But not everything is political in the same way and with the same intensity, either today or in the past: Even in the midst of turmoil, politics does not invest all spheres of existence and all the different layers of society in equal measure. Indeed, orators readily stigmatized the Athenians expelled by the Thirty who, instead of rallying to the democrats in Piraeus, had preferred the comfort of exile; symmetrically, many Athenians who remained in the city tried to demonstrate that they had not participated in any way in the exactions of the oligarchy. Socrates represents in this respect a case that is both common and exceptional: common, in that he was far from being the only one not to take sides during the civil war; exceptional, in that he declared this neutrality loud and clear, even if it meant arousing suspicion on both sides. A final question remains: Did all these ‘neutral individuals’ form a chorus in their own right? What links can be established between people who have remained outside the field of political confrontation – strangers to the ‘bond of division,’ to paraphrase Nicole Loraux? To put it another way: Is it possible to ‘make community’ out of abstention, even if it is an active choice?

Freeze frame: It’s Boedromion 12, 403. With his troops, Thrasybulus is marching up the Acropolis to make a sacrifice to Athena, after several month of exile. At first sight, we can only distinguish men: On one side stand the people of the town, frightened spectators of this intimidating procession; on the other, the victorious democrats – citizens, foreigners, slaves and freedmen – who are already preparing to forgive. As the Athenian civil war comes to an end, women appear absent, as if erased from the picture. But their presence can be sensed in the background, not only among the anonymous crowd who has come to watch, but also on the Acropolis itself. In a majestic role, the priestess of Athena Polias was necessarily present at Thrasybulus’ side, since she was to help him accomplish his sacrifice in the honor of the goddess. In all likelihood, the priestess of Athena played a central role in this ritual sequence, embodying the very specific participation of Athenian women in the resolution of the conflict. Her name – Lysimache – is known to us thanks to an extraordinary piece of evidence: After her death a few decades later, the priestess was commemorated with a bronze statue erected on the Acropolis, the work of a famous sculptor. But how did he manage to flesh out this fleeting and evanescent figure? Erased from history as written by men, she was nevertheless a central figure of the community; it is only necessary to take the trouble to read the ancient sources between the lines, being as attentive to what they express as to what they conceal. By means of some inscriptions and, especially, thanks to a play by Aristophanes performed in 411, it is possible to give back to Lysimache her full human dimension and to restore her singular mode of action within the city that went against the clichéd view of Athenian women as passive and legally in the minority. Better still, if we listen carefully, we can give voice to all those who surrounded her – not only the women directly involved in the cult of Athena, but more widely all Athenian women, including the foreigners to whom the priestess served as a mouthpiece in these ‘dark times.’

From the siege of Phyle, during the winter of 404, until the ascent of the Acropolis in the fall of the following year, several fighting communities had succeeded one another under Thrasybulus’ direction, reconstituting little by little, as if in ripples, the whole of the Athenian community. The city’s mantle – to refer to the Platonic image again – was, however, far from being unified and homogeneous at the end of the civil war. Torn and patched back together, its seams were visible, and the political life of the initial years of the fourth century made them periodically reappear. The memory of these events reflected these struggles: In the aftermath of the civil war, various accounts coexisted and contradicted each other, before being replaced, during the fourth century, by a univocal civic account. There is every reason to believe that Thrasybulus tried, in the aftermath of the democratic restoration in 403, to put the memory of his epic journey on public display. However, just as he did not succeed in imposing himself durably in public life after 403. Thrasybulus lost the battle of history and memory by failing to impose his own account of the events in Athens – and this is most certainly what ultimately explains why he got left out of ancient sources.