Historical consciousness

In setting the limits of his critical method of historiography, Ibn Khaldun says that "the past resembles the present more than one drop of water resembles another." By this he is saying that a good starting point for criticism is to ask how many of the things we attribute to past times, and which could not happen today, could have happened yesterday. If today a mortal human being, however heroic, cannot take a sword in hand and fight fifty armed men, then he could not have done so yesterday either. It is that simple... Or if humans today have no ability to grow wings and fly, then neither did a human in the past.

Trying to understand the past by reasoning from the present is a very sound way of filtering out the mythological narratives, excessive glorifications or oversimplifications that appear in historical writing. But this path, too, can have other problems that we have come to notice today. When we read the past while remaining too dependent on the perspective of the present, which is what we call retrospective reading, we may end up attributing to the past certain things that could not have existed there, simply because of the difference in time.

Be that as it may, when we say that when we read history we read ourselves, and when we narrate history we narrate ourselves, we are speaking of a problem that persists even once all these methodological problems have been overcome. History is a field in which objective knowledge can never be secured. For the knowledge that has reached us by some route cannot be multiplied, confirmed or refuted. The knowledge that reaches us probably comes by closing off the paths by which some other reports might have come.

For precisely this reason, even if some philosophers of science say that history is not a science (Karl Popper), the more accurate view is that history is a field of knowledge of its own kind.

History has a special function in human life, and however questionable its accuracy may be, it is not a form of knowledge that can be dispensed with. In parallel with political or cultural disputes among people, historical disputes are also unavoidable, and in this matter no servant of God will ever be able to know and tell the truth of the matter. That is why in the Holy Qur'an knowledge of history is described almost as knowledge of the unseen, and it is stated that, apart from the information God gives on the matter, the truth of disputed historical questions cannot be known. Instead, it is advised to focus on the lesson that should be drawn from history.

We need to stop and think about an approach that keeps us from the disputes and arguments that continue today about figures who lived in the past. If enough attention were paid to the wisdom of the verse that İskender Pala took as the epigraph of his historical novel Şah ve Sultan, about the encounter between Yavuz Sultan Selim and Shah Ismail, "They were a community that has passed away; theirs is what they earned and yours is what you have earned; you will not be asked about what they did!" (Al-Baqarah: 134), history would undoubtedly become a far healthier field of knowledge for us.

In the light of this verse, perhaps we will have the chance to face these questions: By choosing a side for ourselves in quarrels of the past, how far can we continue that side's cause today? Do we suppose that by reopening a file left unsettled among them, we can settle their affairs today? It seems we do. But can we do this? Of course not"

The only thing we will accomplish through this is either to perpetuate a blood-feud absurdity that no longer has anything to do with us, or to tear one another to pieces over these historical figures.

Living in the past is only to imagine that one is living in the past.

What has passed is in fact past and cannot be brought back, but when we desire it with a powerful passion we roll ourselves into an obsession. The most typical example of that obsession is Zionism. Zionism is the name for carrying all the accounts assumed in the past into the present while disregarding all the difference created by thousands of years that have been lived. Yet today's people are not the people of thousands of years ago, nor are those who wish to carry out this expedition the same people. Getting stuck in history tears a person away from the realities of today and therefore from their responsibilities, and inevitably makes them racist.

Historical consciousness does not mean believing a story of history offered to us, or rushing off to certain ideological missions into which we have been egged on in the name of so-called "historical responsibility"; above all, it means being aware of the possible harmful uses of history and being vigilant against those uses.

Knowledge of history is knowledge of the human being himself. Awareness of the nature of this knowledge is also an expression of a person's awareness of himself.