Dr. Khader Eid Al-Sarhan, Head of the Department of History at the College of Arts and Humanities at Al al-Bayt University, participated in the symposium "Sources of Arab and Islamic History," organized by the "Mujtama' for Cultural and Historical Studies" center in Amman. He presented a scientific intervention titled: "Non-Arab Sources of Arab and Islamic History."

In his intervention, Dr. Al-Sarhan addressed the problem of dealing with contemporary texts from the first three Hijri centuries, focusing on the disparity in evaluating their historical value, ranging from considering them absolute proof simply because they were contemporary with the events, to completely excluding them on the grounds of bias. He stressed that scientific evaluation should focus on the "individual text," rather than classifying the source within a pre-existing general framework. Al-Sarhan proposed an operational measure based on a set of criteria for examining and critiquing historical narratives, including: the temporal and spatial distance between the event and its documentation, the extent of the writer's connection to the event and their observation of it, their stance on authority and their purpose in documenting, the soundness of the chain of transmission and the independence of the testimony, in addition to tracing the stages of transmission and translation, and verifying that the texts do not rely on a common intermediary origin, alongside the quality of publication and verification, and reliance on verified and critical editions. Dr. Al-Sarhan concluded by emphasizing the necessity of expanding the scope of dealing with non-Arab sources in historical studies, and including ancient languages, especially Syriac and Greek, in graduate studies programs in history, which would enhance the researcher's tools in reading and critiquing sources, and contribute to building a more balanced and systematic historical approach.