Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 30 (2022): 183-234

Abstract
This article is an attempt to settle the debate about the floruit of the largely obscure Ibn Aʿtham al-Kūfī and 
the date of the composition of his history. The standard death date given for him, 314/926–27, was recently 
revealed to be scholarly guesswork, and more than one scholar has argued in recent decades that the history 
may have been partially composed as early as 204/819–20. But the revision is mistaken, and this article presents 
three arguments to show why. First, manuscript evidence undermines the basis for the early dating. Second, 
the comparative examination of a cluster of isnāds in the history that have often been discarded as unusable 
reveals Ibn Aʿtham’s connections to authorities active at the end of the third/ninth century. And third, building 
on the work of Ilkka Lindstedt, I affirm and further specify Ibn Aʿtham’s likely floruit on the basis of a network 
of biographical connections to Ibn Aʿtham. The conclusion offers a pair of suggestions for locating Ibn 
Aʿtham’s history within the broader scheme of Islamicate historiography.

The study of Arabic historiography has often proceeded by guesswork. So few early works (that is, those written during the second/eighth century) survive in their original form that educated speculation based on minimal evidence is the norm.1 It is 
for precisely this reason, however, that the two histories of the obscure Aḥmad b. Aʿtham 
al-Kūfī are noteworthy.2 On the one hand, the surviving portions of his Kitāb al-Fu tūḥ and 

 * An earlier version of this article benefitted from the feedback of Michael Cook, Najam Haider, Rachel Fell 
McDermott, and Max Shmookler. It was further improved by the comments of the anonymous reviewers and 
the editors of the journal. For this help, I am grateful; for any remaining faults, I am responsible. 

1. As Chase Robinson put it: “Islamicists are used to this kind of hedging, but it should be striking to everyone 
else”; Islamic Historiography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 19.

2.  It has been noted that inattention to Ibn Aʿtham’s history probably stems from its reputation as both a 
romantic and a Shiʿi history. As Qays al-ʿAṭṭār recently pointed out, however, Twelver Shiʿi authorities across a 

Dating Ibn Aʿtham’s History:  
Of Persian Manuscripts, Obscure Biographies,  

and Incomplete Isnāds*

Andrew G. McLAren
Centro de Estudios de Asia y África, El Colegio de México

(amclaren@colmex.mx)

© 2022 Andrew G. McLaren.  This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 
License, which allows users to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and 
only so long as attribution is given to the original authors and source.



184  •  Andrew G. McLAren

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 30 (2022)

his Kitāb al-Taʾrīkh together represent one of the largest surviving works of Arabic history 
composed during the “formative” period of Islamicate history writing, spilling across more 
than 2,700 pages and eight volumes in the best edition.3 On the other hand, we know exceed-
ingly little about the author, and scholars have disagreed on the dating of his history for 
more than five decades now.4 The debate has sharpened of late: Lawrence Conrad recently 
pointed out that the death date typically cited for Ibn Aʿtham, 314/926–27, was based on 
nothing more than speculation in the first place.5 Already in the 1970s, scholars began to 
suggest that Ibn Aʿtham actually wrote at the beginning of the third/ninth century (circa 
204/819–20). Indeed, following vociferous arguments in favor of the revised dating, some 
scholars have accepted the newer hypothesis, and more than one reference work now 
includes the early date.6 

In theory, the stakes of the debate are quite high. If some significant part of Ibn Aʿtham’s 
history was written in 204/819–20, it would be not only one of the earliest surviving 
relatively intact works of Arabic historiography but also one of the largest surviving pieces 
of Arabic prose tout court.7 Closer scrutiny of the relevant evidence both inside and outside 

millennium have almost always identified Ibn Aʿtham as a non-Shiʿi writer, and as I argued in the third chapter 
of my dissertation, Ibn Aʿtham’s history bears all the hallmarks of being epistemologically grounded in the 
same problematic that guided, e.g., the approaches of Ibn Wāḍiḥ al-Yaʿqūbī and Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭabarī. What has 
been less appreciated is that his approach to history writing has been obscured by the rough transmission 
history of the text. For al-ʿAṭṭār’s comments, see his introduction to Ibn Aʿtham, Qiṭʿa min Kitāb al-Futūḥ, ed. 
Q. al-ʿAṭṭār (Karbala: Dār al-Kafīl, 1438/2017), 13–19. For the epistemological problem, see my “Ibn Aʿtham’s 
History: Transmission and Translation in Islamicate Written Culture, 290–873/902–1468” (PhD diss., Columbia 
University, 2021), 128–86.

3.  The best edition of the text remains Ibn Aʿtham, Kitāb al-Futūḥ, ed. M. ʿ A. M. Khān et al., 8 vols. (Hyderabad: 
Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif al-ʿUthmāniyya, 1388–95/1968–75). For useful notes on existing editions, see M. Schönléber’s 
review of al-ʿAṭṭār’s Qiṭʿa in Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 28 (2020): 421–29. On the separation of the history into Futūḥ and 
Taʾrīkh, stemming ultimately from a description made by Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī, see below.

4.  For ease of exposition, I tend to refer to both the Futūḥ and the Taʾrīkh, which by all accounts continue 
one after the other, as “Ibn Aʿtham’s history.” Needless to say, it is highly likely that the works were written 
at different times, possibly over many years. Given both this likelihood and the general dearth of concrete 
evidence, “dating Ibn Aʿtham’s history” must be a relative claim, not an absolute one.

5.  See L. Conrad, “Ibn Aʿtham and His History,” Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 23 (2015): 87–125, at 92–93.
6. For the full argument in favor of revision, see Conrad, “Ibn Aʿtham and His History,” 90–96. For 

invocations of the early dating, see Robinson, Islamic Historiography, 34, n. 12; A. Borrut, Entre mémoire et 
pouvoir: L’espace syrien sous les derniers Omeyyades et les premiers Abbassides (v. 72–193/692–809) (Leiden: 
Brill, 2011), 91–93; J. Scheiner, “Writing the History of the Futūḥ: The Futūḥ-Works by al-Azdī, Ibn Aʿtham, and 
al-Wāqidī,” in The Lineaments of Islam: Studies in Honor of Fred McGraw Donner, ed. P. M. Cobb, 151–76 (Leiden: 
Brill, 2012), 162 and 172; R. J. Lynch, Arab Conquests and Early Islamic Historiography: The Futuh al-Buldan of 
al-Baladhuri (London: I. B. Tauris, 2020), 157. For citations in reference works, see E. L. Daniel, “Ketāb al-Fotuḥ,” 
in Encyclopaedia Iranica, online ed., ed. E. Yarshater et al. (New York: Encyclopaedia Iranica Foundation, 1996–) 
[hereafter EIr]; and S. C. Judd, “Ibn Aʿtham al-Kūfī,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd ed., ed. K. Fleet et al. (Leiden: 
Brill, 2007–) [hereafter EI3]. I owe the point about reference works to I. Lindstedt, “Al-Madāʾinī’s Kitāb al-Dawla 
and the Death of Ibrāhim al-Imām,” in Case Studies in Transmission, ed. I. Lindstedt et al., 103–30 (Münster: 
Ugarit-Verlag, 2014), 123.

7.  Among histories, it would be bested only by the relatively lengthy fragments of Sayf b. ʿUmar’s (fl. late 
second/eighth century?) Kitāb al-Futūḥ and Kitāb al-Jamal, as edited by Q. al-Samarrai, and it might surpass the 



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Dating Ibn Aʿtham’s History  •  185

the text, however, reveals that the Futūḥ and the Taʾrīkh are all but certainly the product 
of the late third/ninth and early fourth/tenth centuries, as originally guessed more than a 
century and a half ago. Thus, Ilkka Lindstedt demonstrated with reference to two key pieces 
of biographical information Ibn Aʿtham’s connections to two scholars through the first 
decades of the fourth/tenth century.8 Indeed, Lindstedt must be credited with turning up an 
absolutely crucial and otherwise unnoted report in Ḥamza al-Sahmī’s (d. 427/1038) Taʾrīkh 
Jurjān, the isnād for which offers a relative but clear date linking Ibn Aʿtham to the turn of 
the fourth/tenth century. 

But there is more to be said on the question in terms of critiquing the arguments of 
Conrad et al. in favor of the early dating and strengthening the link to the fourth/tenth 
century with evidence internal to the text, neither of which were attempted by Lindstedt. 
In this article, I aim to offer a conclusive examination of the debate around the dating of Ibn 
Aʿtham’s history. My overarching contention is that Ibn Aʿtham was writing near the end 
of the reign of the eighteenth Abbasid caliph, al-Muqtadir bi-llāh (r. 295–320/908–32), and 
likely died around the same time.9 I make my argument in three parts. First, I reexamine the 
argument in favor of the early dating, especially as advanced by Conrad. His key piece of 
evidence came from an early fourteenth/late nineteenth-century lithograph of the sixth/
twelfth-century Persian translation of Ibn Aʿtham’s Futūḥ. The lithograph claims that Ibn 
Aʿtham’s Futūḥ was composed in 204/819–20. I show, however, that earlier manuscripts of 
the Persian translation do not include this claim; indeed, I found attestation of that date in 
no version of the translation other than the Bombay lithographs. The late provenance of 
that information casts serious doubt on its reliability for dating Ibn Aʿtham’s history.

Second, by sorting out Ibn Aʿtham’s relationship to a number of the sources he cited in 
the history, I show that Ibn Aʿtham was actively gathering historical information at the end 
of the third/ninth century. There are evident difficulties in reading Ibn Aʿtham’s isnāds.10 
As a result, most of Ibn Aʿtham’s readers have ignored the question of how he related to his 
sources. I demonstrate, however, that the isnāds in the text do not support the early dating 
and may, in fact, be interpreted as supporting the later dating. A little bit of spadework 
and some educated guesses show that everyone Ibn Aʿtham cited as a direct source lived 
through the end of the third/ninth century, indicating that Ibn Aʿtham himself must have 
lived beyond then. 

Finally, I reexamine the biographical evidence turned up by Lindstedt, revising and 
specifying his readings. Lindstedt already ascertained the basic point: two different men 

Taʾrīkh of Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ (d. 240/854), which comes down to 232/847 (meaning it was probably still being 
composed at the time).

8. Lindstedt, “Al-Madāʾinī’s Kitāb al-Dawla,” 118–23. Lindstedt subsequently expanded the argument and 
published a more definitive statement in his “Sources for the Biography of Ibn Aʿtham al-Kūfī,” in Contacts and 
Interaction: Proceedings of the 27th Congress of the Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants, Helsinki 
2014, ed. J. Hämeen-Anttila et al., 299–309 (Leuven: Peeters, 2017).

9.  The commonsensical conclusion that Ibn Aʿtham died around the time his history concluded, as reported 
by Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī (d. 626/1229) in his Kitāb al-Irshād, was drawn already by several scholars writing in Arabic, 
but none of them added additional evidence. See below.

10.  For a discussion of these difficulties, see Conrad, “Ibn Aʿtham and His History,” 114–20, esp. 114–15.



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(ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAdī, a famous scholar of hadith, and al-Sallāmī, a famous historian of 
Khorasan) who lived through the fourth/tenth century reported meeting Ibn Aʿtham in 
person. However, Lindstedt did not consider the problems surrounding the death date 
of al-Sallāmī, which is evidently incorrect as reported in the biographical dictionaries. 
A rereading of the biographical evidence reveals connections between Ibn Aʿtham and a 
handful of other figures of the fourth/tenth century. These reports all but confirm that 
Ibn Aʿtham was active after the turn of the fourth/tenth century, and they help us narrow 
down the possible date of his death to sometime around the year 320/932.

Textual corruptions and references to unknown figures in Ibn Aʿtham’s isnāds present 
significant challenges to dating these chains of transmission, and so my efforts are necessarily 
tentative. (As already noted, a little hedging is unavoidable.) The overall picture, however, 
is clear and consistent. Combining the three types of evidence we have—manuscripts of the 
Persian translation, isnāds in the history, and biobibliographical information—allows me 
both to affirm and to specify the initial estimate offered by Lindstedt. 

1. Debating the Date: Problems with the Early Third/Ninth-Century Dating

A handful of important studies on both Ibn Aʿtham and his history have been published in 
recent years.11 As a group, these publications have significantly advanced our understanding 
of the text’s history and methodology.12 One study, in particular, calls for a response—
namely, Conrad’s long-circulated, but only lately published, “Ibn Aʿtham and His History,” 
the most extensive of the recent studies. It was in this article that Conrad made the strongest 
statement in favor of revising the dating of Ibn Aʿtham’s history to 204/819–20.

First, Conrad pointed out that the commonly accepted date for Ibn Aʿtham’s death, 
314/926–27, is based on nothing but a conjecture made by the Germano-Russian orientalist 
C. M. Frähn (d. 1267–68/1851) in the nineteenth century.13 In a bibliographical survey 
addressed to Russian imperial agents in Central Asia, Frähn asked the agents to search 
for copies of the Arabic version of Ibn Aʿtham’s Futūḥ, which at the time was known only 
through a partial Persian translation begun at the very end of the sixth/twelfth century. 
In his note on the Futūḥ, Frähn suggested that Ibn Aʿtham may have died in 314/926–

11.  The following summary is indebted to Antoine Borrut’s introductory note to Conrad’s article (Conrad, 
“Ibn Aʿtham and His History,” 87), which is based on Borrut, Entre mémoire et pouvoir, 91–93. See also Lindstedt, 
“Sources for the Biography,” 299–300, and Daniel, “Ketāb al-Fotūḥ.”

12.  Especially significant are Lindstedt’s “Al-Madāʾinī’s Kitāb al-Dawla” and “Sources for the Biography.” 
Conrad’s notes on the manuscript tradition are amply supplemented by M. Schönléber, “Notes on the Textual 
Tradition of Ibn Aʿtham’s Kitāb al-Futūḥ,” in Contacts and Interaction: Proceedings of the 27th Congress of the 
Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants, Helsinki 2014, ed. J. Hämeen-Anttila et al. (Leuven: Peeters, 
2017), 427–38.

13.  For a short biography of Frähn, who for a time directed the Asiatic Museum of the Russian Academy of 
Sciences, see The Encyclopaedia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature, and General Information, 
11th ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910–14), s.v. “Frähn, Christian Martin.” For a preliminary 
version of the critique, see Conrad’s lemma “Ibn Aʿtham al-Kūfī (fl. Early Third/Ninth Century),” in Routledge 
Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature, ed. J. S. Meisami and P. Starkey, 1:314a–b (London: Routledge, 1998), 1:314a.



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Dating Ibn Aʿtham’s History  •  187

27, appending parenthetically the ever-useful question mark of scholarly uncertainty.14 
In the absence of other information—we still know of no source offering any dates for 
Ibn Aʿtham—Carl Brockelmann incorporated Frähn’s guess into his biobibliography of 
premodern Arabic literature.15 As Conrad noted, however, Frähn gave neither sources 
nor rationale for his suggestion; its subsequent inclusion in an authoritative reference 
work conferred on it the impression of a certainty it did not have.16 Even descriptions of 
the history made independently of Brockelmann, such as that in Charles Rieu’s catalog of 
Persian manuscripts in the British Library, ultimately relied on Frähn’s conjecture.17 Conrad 
must be correct on this point: however reasonable the guess, it was just a guess.18

The second of Conrad’s points is more troublesome. Drawing on shorter, earlier 
statements by ʿAbd Allāh Mukhliṣ,19 Charles Storey,20 and M. A. Shaban,21 he argued that a 
significant part of the Futūḥ was written near the beginning of the third/ninth century. 
He emphasized a single piece of evidence. As mentioned, a significant portion of  
Ibn Aʿtham’s Futūḥ was translated into Persian in southern Khorasan beginning around the 
year 596/1199.22 In the early fourteenth/late nineteenth century, this Persian translation 

14.  Frähn, Indications bibliographiques relatives pour la plupart a la littérature historico-géographique des 
arabes, des persans et des turcs (St. Petersburg: L’Imprimerie de l’académie impériale des sciences, 1845), 16 
(no. 53). The title page of the bilingual Russian-French work reads: “Addressed especially to our employees and 
voyagers in Asia.”

15.  C. Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1943–49) [hereafter GAL], 
supplement 1:220.

16.  Conrad, “Ibn Aʿtham and His History,” 92–93.
17.  Rieu, Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1879–83), 

1:151a. 
18.  As we will see, Frähn’s guess was closer to the likely truth, but it remains unclear how he came up with 

314/926–27. For one possible explanation of Frähn’s oddly specific conjecture, see Lindstedt, “Madāʾinī’s Kitāb 
al-Dawla,” 121.

19.   “Taʾrīkh Ibn Aʿtham al-Kūfī,” Majallat al-Majmaʿ al-ʿIlmī al-ʿArabī 6 (1926): 142–43.
20.  Storey’s note about the 204/819–20 date was in the supplementary volume. For the full entry on Ibn Aʿtham, 

see his Persian Literature: A Bio-Bibliographical Survey (1927–1958, repr. London: Luzac, 1970), 1.1:207–9; for the 
dating suggestion, see 1.2:1260. Devin DeWeese was generous enough to provide detailed notes on the Persian 
Ibn Aʿtham from Yuri Bregel’s Russian revision of Storey’s work (Persidskaia literatura: Bio-bibliograficheskii 
obzor [Moscow: GRVL, 1972], 1:612–16, with supplementary notes at 3:1425) and A. T. Tagirdzhanov’s catalog of 
manuscripts at Leningrad State University (Opisanie tadzhikskikh i persidskikh rukopisei Vostochnogo otdela 
Biblioteki LGU, vol. 1, Istoriia, biografii, geografiia [Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Leningradskogo Universiteta, 1962], 
90–96, nos. 50–54, MSS 127, 137, 279, 280, and 581), which were otherwise unavailable to me. They do not add any 
information relevant to this question, but I am very grateful for Professor DeWeese’s help.

21.  M. A. Shaban, “Ibn Aʿtham al-Kūfī,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., ed. P. Bearman et al. (Leiden: Brill, 
1954–2005) [hereafter EI2]; Shaban, The ʿAbbāsid Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 
xvii–xix.

22.  For the Persian translation, see Daniel, “Ketāb al-Fotuḥ,” and E. L. Daniel, “The Rise and Development of 
Persian Historiography,” in Persian Historiography, ed. C. Melville, 101–54 (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2012), 118–20. 
For the discovery of the Arabic manuscripts, see A. N. Kurat, “Abū Muḥammad Aḥmad b. Aʿtham al-Kufī’s Kitāb 
al-Futūḥ and Its Importance Concerning the Conquests of Central Asia and the Khazars,” Ankara Üniversitesi 
Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi Dergisi 7 (1949): 274–82, at 274–76, and Schönléber, “Notes on the Textual 
Tradition,” 427–28.



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was published in multiple lithograph editions in Bombay, whence the key piece of evidence. 
In the first pages of the lithograph, it is claimed that Ibn Aʿtham’s Futūḥ was composed 
in the year 204/819–20.23 This was the basis of Conrad’s theory: given that the Persian 
translation of the Futūḥ runs from the election of Abū Bakr in 11/632 to the massacre of 
al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī and his supporters at Karbalāʾ in 62/680,24 Conrad suggested that the 
204/819–20 date in the lithographs must refer to a first version of the Futūḥ. Ibn Aʿtham, 
he reasoned, might have lived a couple of decades after its composition, but anything in the 
text beyond the mid-third/ninth century must have been added later by someone else.25 

Conrad argued for the plausibility of the date on the grounds that there would have been 
no point for the Persian translator(s) to fabricate the date at the end of the sixth/twelfth 
century. Without such a motive, the given date must have some sort of evidential basis. He 
suggested it might have come from the colophon of the Arabic manuscript from which the 
Persian translator worked.26 Further, Conrad downplayed the possibility that the date might 
be a copyist error or a misinterpretation on the part of the translator, as did Elton Daniel, 
who thought corruption “unlikely since dates in manuscripts are usually spelled out instead 
of written using numerals.”27 

There is, however, a specific reason to suspect the accuracy of that date: it seems to find 
attestation only in the modern Bombay lithographs. Mukhliṣ, Shaban, and Conrad cited 
the lithographs only and no manuscripts. Even Ghulām-Riḍā Ṭabāṭabāʾī Majd, the editor 

23.  Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. ʿAlī Aʿtham-i Kūfī, Tarjama-yi Kitāb al-Futūḥ, trans. Muḥammad Mustawfī 
(wr. 596/1199–1200) (Bombay: Mīrzā Muḥammad Shīrāzī Malik al-Kuttāb, 1300/1883), 3.4 = Tarjama-yi Kitāb 
al-Futūḥ, trans. al-Mustawfī (Bombay: Mīrzā Muḥammad Shīrāzī Malik al-Kuttāb, 1305/1888), 3.3: dar sana-yi 
diwīst u-chahār 204 taʾlīf karda ast. (Hereafter, these lithographs are cited as “Bombay 1300” and “Bombay 
1305,” respectively.)

24.  Ibn Aʿtham, Futūḥ, 1:1–5:251.
25.  Conrad, “Ibn Aʿtham and His History,” 93–94, 109. Conrad’s argument is more complex than this brief 

summary, for reasons of space, lets on. He also sought to explain the text’s composition history in terms 
of the socioreligious context of the time, arguing that Ibn Aʿtham (whom he identified, on the basis of the 
text’s contents, as a Shiʿi storyteller-preacher, a qāṣṣ) must have set out to rewrite Islamic history from a Shiʿi 
perspective after al-Maʾmūn named the eighth of the Twelver Imāms, ʿAlī b. Mūsā al-Riḍā, as heir apparent to 
the caliphate in 201/816. When al-Riḍā died a couple of years later, Conrad imagined, the polemical wind fell 
from Ibn Aʿtham’s theological sails, and the Futūḥ was left incomplete, to be continued later to the fourth/tenth 
century. For this hypothesis, see the next section.

26.  Conrad, “Ibn Aʿtham and His History,” 94. Conrad claimed that there are “several” Bombay lithographs 
independently repeating the date, implying widespread attestation. Aside from the two Bombay lithographs 
cited in an earlier note, which were issued by the same publisher (and were perhaps based on the same 
manuscript), Brockelmann (GAL, S1:220) noted an earlier version dated 1270/1853–54, but I have been unable to 
locate it. I know of no other versions.

27.  Daniel, “Ketāb al-Fotuḥ.” Numerals would be more easily conflated than the Persian diwīst (200, دويســت) 
and, e.g., sīṣad (300, ســيصد), which have rather different consonantal skeletons. The date in the lithographs, 
however, is given in two ways—once in a logograph with the numerals over the word sana and once written out, 
with both styles being relatively common. In other words, it is possible that the spelled-out date derives from 
numerals (e.g., in the colophon of the Arabic version consulted by the translator, as hypothesized by Conrad), 
which are much easier to confuse. For logographs, see A. Gacek, Arabic Manuscripts: A Vademecum for Readers 
(Leiden: Brill, 2009), 86.



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Dating Ibn Aʿtham’s History  •  189

of the most critical edition of the Persian translation, which relies on seven manuscripts, 
including the earliest surviving copy, had to cite the lithograph for the 204/819–20 date, 
indicating that none of the earlier manuscripts included it.28 It was Storey alone who cited 
another source, Muḥammad Wafādār Murādī’s catalog of manuscript holdings in the state 
library in Mashhad, which include a copy of the Persian translation. Storey noted that 
Murādī indicated that Ibn Aʿtham’s history might have been written in 204/819–20. The 
implication, then, is that the Mashhad manuscript may have reproduced the date, offering 
some corroboration for the lithographs. 

But there are several reasons to doubt that the Mashhad manuscript in question is a good 
source for the date. The catalog entry is ambiguous: Murādī stated only that the Arabic 
Futūḥ was “composed in 204” (dar sana-yi 204 taʾlīf namūda).29 That is, he did not specify 
that the manuscript in question includes the 204/819–20 dating. What is more, Murādī 
mentioned having compared the manuscript with the Bombay lithograph, leaving open 
the possibility that he, too, had the date from the lithograph, not the manuscript. Indeed, 
his language is decidedly reminiscent of the phrasing in both lithographs (dar sana-yi 204 
taʾlīf karda ast), differing only by a verb.30 Most importantly, however, the manuscript 
Murādī described was copied in 1296/1879—not very long before the Bombay lithographs 
themselves were done.31 In short, then, Murādī did not cite an independent source for the 
date.32 And fourteenth/eighteenth-century copies of a sixth/twelfth-century translation 
can hardly be called an ideal evidentiary basis for dating a third/ninth-century original.

Further, neither the manuscripts of the Persian translation I have been able to examine 
nor the catalog descriptions of other copies mention the 204/819–20 date.33 Admittedly, 

28.  Ibn Aʿtham, al-Futūḥ, trans. al-Mustawfī, ed. G.-R. Ṭabāṭabāʾī Majd (1372sh/1993, repr. Tehran: Shirkat-i 
Intishārāt-i ʿ Ilmī wa-Farhangī, 1392sh/2013–14), p. panjāh u-chahār, n. 11, citing Bombay 1305 (cf. ibid., sī wa-du 
for the sigla, in this case cha, for chāp, “print”). To prevent confusion with the Arabic edition, Majd’s edition 
of the Persian translation will hereafter be cited as Mustawfī, Futūḥ. Lindstedt (“Madāʾinī’s Kitāb al-Dawla,” 
120 and 123) also denied the validity of the Persian manuscript dating, but he did so more by assertion than by 
argumentation. In particular, he claimed that the date was written out in the Edinburgh manuscript used as the 
base text of Majd’s edition and suggested that it probably represents a scribal error. But this point is incorrect 
on the grounds I have given in this note and the last one, namely that the date appears neither in the Edinburgh 
manuscript nor only in a written-out form.

29.  Murādī, Fihrist-i kutub-i khaṭṭī-yi Kitābkhāna-yi Markazī-yi Āstān-i Quds-i Riḍawī (Mashhad: Sāzmān-i 
Kitābkhāna-yi Mūza-hā wa-Markazī-yi Āstān-i Quds-i Riḍawī, 1389–90/1970), 3:76 (chapter 14, no. 11). Cf. the 
slightly updated catalog by M. Ā. Fikrat, Fihrist-i alifbāʾī-yi kutub-i khaṭṭī-yi Kitābkhāna-yi Markazī-yi Āstān-i 
Quds-i Riḍawī (Mashhad: Kitābkhāna-yi Markazī-yi Āstān-i Quds-i Riḍawī, 1369/1990), 99b, which includes the 
204/819–20 date in connection with the same manuscript but does not resolve the confusion.

30.  Bombay 1300, 3.4 = Bombay 1305, 3.3.
31.  Or perhaps even after; recall that Brockelmann cited a lithograph done in 1270/1853–54.
32.  Additionally, there is at least one suggestion that the Bombay lithographs stem from an Indian family, not 

an Iranian one. Tagirdzhanov claimed (Opisanie, 95–96, describing MS 127) that they represent an abbreviated 
and late redaction of the Persian translation, copied in India in 1124/1712. It is unclear to me how he would have 
known this, as the lithographs themselves (unsurprisingly) do not name their exemplar text.

33.  Manuscripts: Khuda Bakhsh 493 2a.15–16. (I thank M. Kaur for sending me photos of the relevant portions 
of the text.) See also the plates of the manuscripts used in Mustawfī, Futūḥ, pp. sī u-sih–chihil u-shish, none of 
which include the dates. Catalogs: E. G. Browne, A Supplementary Hand-List of the Muḥammadan Manuscripts, 



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Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 30 (2022)

my survey has been limited: more than fifty copies of the Persian Futūḥ survive, scattered 
throughout Eurasia.34 Given that the date in the lithographs appears immediately after 
the title of the work, however, it is exceedingly unlikely that the catalogers—who all 
successfully located the title—would have ignored the date if it appeared in the manuscripts 
they examined.35 As neither Majd nor the catalogers mention the date as appearing in any 
manuscript, it is most likely absent from the majority of witnesses. 

Conrad’s theory is complex, and he sought to interpret other parts of the text as 
supporting the earlier dating. Certain of his points will be returned to below. In light of all 
these hints, however, it is most likely that the 204/819–20 date emerged late in the life of 
the text and cannot be read as credible evidence for the dating of Ibn Aʿtham’s history. 

2. Yāqūt’s Description of Ibn Aʿtham’s History

Given that the 204/819–20 date has no particularly reliable basis, we must begin 
again with the evidence for the likely date of the work’s composition. There is only one 
independent description of the text, namely, the report of Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī (d. 626/1229) 
in his Irshād al-arīb, which has been dismissed as unreliable on a number of grounds. Let us 
reconsider the report in full:

By [Ibn Aʿtham] are the Kitāb al-Maʾlūf and the Kitāb al-Futūḥ, which is well known36 and 
in which he recounts [events] down to the days of al-Rashīd [r. 170–93/786–809]. Also by 
him is the Kitāb al-Taʾrīkh, [which runs down] to the end of the days of al-Muqtadir and 
which begins with the days of al-Maʾmūn and verges on being a continuation (yūshik 
an yakūn dhaylan) to the first book. I have seen both books.37

Including All Those Written in the Arabic Character, Preserved in the Libraries of the University and Colleges 
of Cambridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922), 147 (no. 890 = King’s 105); E. Sachau and H. Ethé, 
Catalogi codicum manuscriptorum bibliothecae Bodleiana, vol. 13, Catalogue of the Persian, Turkish, Hindûstânî 
and Pushtû Manuscripts, part 1, The Persian Manuscripts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1889), 69–72 (nos. 124–26); W. 
H. Morley, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Historical Manuscripts in the Arabic and Persian Languages Preserved 
in the Library of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (London: J. W. Parker, 1854), 16–17 (no. 
VIII); W. Ouseley, Catalogue of Several Hundred Manuscript Works in Various Oriental Languages (London: A. J. 
Valpy, 1831), 10 (nos. 349–51); Rieu, Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts, 1:151–52; A. Sprenger, A Catalogue of 
the Bibliotheca Orientalis Sprengeriana (Giessen: W. Keller, 1857), 3 (nos. 32–33).

34.  For a listing, see my “Ibn Aʿtham’s History,” appendix 2.
35.  Thus, Rieu (Catalogue of the Persian Mansucripts, 1:151b) paraphrased the very passage in which the 

date occurred and did not mention it. 
36.  I am disinclined to think that the Kitāb al-Maʾlūf actually refers to a second work (pace Lindstedt, 

“Madāʾinī’s Kitāb al-Dawla,” 119, and Judd, “Ibn Aʿtham al-Kūfī”). Rather, it seems more likely to me to be some 
sort of comment by Yāqūt about the Futūḥ. For instance, the rhyme in Yāqūt’s phrase is concealed in translation: 
kitāb al-maʾlūf wa-kitāb al-futūḥ maʿrūf. Moreover, Yāqūt said explicitly that he saw two books (al-kitābayn). 
See further the discussion of this passage in my dissertation: “Ibn Aʿtham’s History,” 191–94.

37.  Yāqūt, Kitāb Irshād al-arīb ilā maʿrifat al-adīb, ed. D. S. Margoliouth (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1923–31), 1:379.2–4 
= ed. I. ʿAbbās (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1993), 1:202.2–5.



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Dating Ibn Aʿtham’s History  •  191

Thus, at face value, Yāqūt’s report indicates that Ibn Aʿtham wrote two works of history, 
the latter of which continued to the end of the reign of al-Muqtadir (r. 295–320/908–32). 
Some scholars have accepted this information as indicating that Ibn Aʿtham must have died 
sometime around 320/932, although none adduced any additional evidence in favor of this 
conclusion.38 Other scholars have rejected Yāqūt’s description, albeit for different reasons. 
Conrad made two arguments. First, he pointed out that it is unlikely that an author writing 
in 204/819–20 could have lived long enough to write a history that covered the reign of 
al-Muqtadir.39 Given what we now know about that date, however, this argument may be 
discarded. Second, following on from the first argument, Conrad suggested that there were 
certain shifts in both the content and the style of the history that indicated a transition 
from one author to another, namely from a fervent partisan of the Shīʿa writing in an early, 
monographic style (i.e., Ibn Aʿtham) to a more neutral (or Sunnī) continuator writing in a 
later, annalistic style (i.e., an anonym).40 Conrad’s specific argument about this transition 
does not bear directly on dating the history, thus exceeding the limits of this study, but I 
have sought to refute it elsewhere, arguing that the transition in style is far from clear-cut.41 

As discussed by Conrad, Lindstedt, and others, several problems are evident. Yāqūt’s 
description omits mention of al-Amīn, passing directly from al-Rashīd to al-Maʾmūn, but 
al-Amīn’s caliphate is treated in the work that survives.42 What is more, the break in the text 
that survives is different from the one described by Yāqūt: instead of the scribal conclusion 
coming at the end of the reign of al-Rashīd, the surviving text continues with accounts of 
al-Rashīd for another forty pages and ends well before the reign of al-Muqtadir, concluding 
with the briefest mention of al-Mustaʿīn (r. 248–52/862–66).43 And although Yāqūt referred 
to two works, the copyist of the only manuscript that attests to the later portions of the text 
(namely, MS Ahmet III 2956 in the Topkapı Sarayı library) referred to the whole work as the 
Kitāb al-Futūḥ.44

What is important to address here is a third argument, adduced by Lindstedt, namely, 
that the continuator of the history is named in the text itself. Lindstedt argued that Yāqūt’s 
description was flawed, that only the Kitāb al-Futūḥ survives, and that the work was 
continued by ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad al-Balawī (fl. fourth/tenth century), better known 
as the author of the Sīrat Ibn Ṭūlūn, an account of the semi-independent military ruler 
 

38.  Āghā Buzurg al-Ṭihrānī, al-Dharīʿa ilā taṣānīf al-Shīʿa (Najaf: Maṭbaʿat al-Gharrī, 1356–90/1936–70), 
3:221–22; M. J. Abū Saʿda, Ibn Aʿtham al-Kūfī wa-manhajuhu al-taʾrīkhī fī Kitāb al-Futūḥ (Cairo: self-published, 
1987), 47–48; and al-ʿAṭṭār in Ibn Aʿtham, Qiṭʿa, 23. 

39.  Conrad, “Ibn Aʿtham and His History,” 121–22.
40.  Conrad, “Ibn Aʿtham and His History,” 96–104.
41.  McLaren, “Ibn Aʿtham’s History,” chapter 2, esp. 79–125.
42.  Ibn Aʿtham, Futūḥ, 8:286–311.
43.  Ibn Aʿtham, Futūḥ, 8:245–86 (al-Rashīd) and 354.5–7 (al-Mustaʿīn).
44.  See, e.g., the colophon of the second volume: MS Ahmet III 2956, 2:278a.6–17, reproduced in Ibn Aʿtham, 

Futūḥ, 8:354, n. 7.



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of Egypt Aḥmad b. Ṭūlūn (r. 254–70/868–84).45 The strength of this argument depends on 
how one interprets the apparent scribal conclusion (tamām) located two-thirds of the way 
through the eighth volume of the Hyderabad edition, where it is announced: “The Book of 
Conquests has finished” (tamma Kitāb al-Futūḥ).46 The tamām is followed by an isnād that 
seems to begin with an ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad al-Balawī, and the work then continues for 
another 110 pages.

We cannot solve all of these problems decisively here.47 But we can clear up one of 
them—namely, the question of whether al-Balawī actually continued Ibn Aʿtham’s history. 
Indeed, the answer to this question is decisive for determining when the coverage of the 
work ended, which, in turn, suggests something about when it was composed and when 
Ibn Aʿtham lived and died. To resolve it, we must compare isnāds across Ibn Aʿtham’s 
history, beginning with the closest thing we have to Ibn Aʿtham’s own statements about 
where he landed in time. Once we have sorted out this puzzle, we can return to considering 
the biobibliographical evidence, which the isnād data will help disambiguate in certain 
problematic places.

3. Ibn Aʿtham’s Isnāds: Evidence for the Fourth/Tenth-Century Dating

The isnāds in Ibn Aʿtham’s history are difficult to interpret. They vary in form, 
occasionally mention unidentifiable figures, and often include misspellings, omissions, 
and other infelicities. In general, two sorts of conclusions have been drawn in previous 
scholarship examining Ibn Aʿtham’s isnāds. First, it has been remarked that the isnāds, 
being, on the whole, assembled unsystematically, represent problematic grounds for dating 
the text.48 Despite the problems, however, scholars have still ventured various guesses 
about Ibn Aʿtham’s or the history’s dates on the basis of links between Ibn Aʿtham and a 

45.  Lindstedt, “Madāʾinī’s Kitāb al-Dawla,” 119, n. 107; 120; and 122, n. 128. For the sketchy details of 
al-Balawī’s life, see G. E. Shayyal, “Al-Balawī,” in EI2.

46.  Ibn Aʿtham, Futūḥ, 8:244–45.
47.  I have argued elsewhere (“Ibn Aʿtham’s History,” 237–41 and 332–55) that we confront a very tricky 

manuscript problem. To wit, there are several pieces of evidence to indicate that MS Ahmet III 2956, although 
not apparently damaged itself, was based on an exemplar that had both missing and rearranged pages. For this 
reason, it seems more likely to me that Yāqūt, who directly reported seeing a copy of both “parts” of the history 
more than two centuries before Ahmet III 2956 was copied, had better knowledge of the work than that which 
can be gained from a single problematic manuscript. This does not resolve every problem; we are left with 
Yāqūt’s omission of al-Amīn, for instance. Still, it seems more likely that Yāqūt simply neglected to mention 
al-Amīn, even though the latter was included in Ibn Aʿtham’s history, than that the original history omitted 
him.

48.  See, e.g., Conrad, “Ibn Aʿtham and His History,” 114–20, esp. 116: “It is true, of course, that matters 
of isnād criticism were far more important in the field of hadith . . . than they were in akhbār. But this is not 
the point at issue here. The features discussed above demonstrate that Ibn Aʿtham did not handle isnāds with 
critical considerations in mind, and consequently, that one cannot assess them in terms of the formal critical 
principles which we know prevailed in his day. When we add to this problem his frequent citation (as in isnāds 
for individual reports) of unknown informants, his references to names which could refer to numerous persons, 
and the highly defective editorial state of many of the chains, it becomes amply clear that at present it is difficult 
to do much with these isnāds.”



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Dating Ibn Aʿtham’s History  •  193

source mentioned in the text with a known death date. Thus the second conclusion: what 
readings of the isnāds are possible support the earlier dating.49 But we have seen that the 
manuscript evidence indicates the 204/819–20 dating is very likely incorrect.50 Therefore, 
the argument that Ibn Aʿtham must have lived into the fourth/tenth century contradicts 
most interpretations of the isnāds.51 One conclusion or the other needs revision, and given 
the weakness of the case for the 204/819–20 composition, it seems clear that it is the isnād 
findings that need reconsidering. 

In the following sections, I demonstrate that the isnāds, with a few emendations, reveal a 
generally coherent picture (albeit one with a few idiosyncrasies). Ultimately, the point I seek 
to make here is that none of the isnāds that seem to indicate that Ibn Aʿtham heard reports 
from second/eighth-century figures actually place Ibn Aʿtham in that period. Instead, where 
it is possible to identify the dates of Ibn Aʿtham’s affiliates, they are figures belonging to 
the end of the third/ninth century, not its beginning. Among these figures is the al-Balawī 
Lindstedt identified as the continuator, who I will argue must be someone other than the 
author of the Sīrat Ibn Ṭūlūn. Once we have a basic sense of how Ibn Aʿtham figures into the 
relative chronologies of the history’s isnāds, we can examine how Ibn Aʿtham is related to 
dateable figures appearing in other texts. 

3a. Reading Ibn Aʿtham’s Isnāds: Problems and Possibilities

Before we can turn to examining the isnād information in Ibn Aʿtham’s history, however, 
a few points about the nature of reading isnāds must be made, particularly because the 
reliability of Ibn Aʿtham’s handling of such material has been so widely doubted. Let us 
begin with the root assumption: citing a report (hadith, khabar, or otherwise) with an isnād 
tends to entail a claim that all the discourse reproduced is a quotation. This claim, in turn, 
contains the assumption that the quotation is verbatim and direct, and that each narrator 
heard (or otherwise received) the report from a previous authority and transmitted it 
without altering it. These relationships are founded, at least in theory, on the ideal of aural 
transmission. Although it was possible to gain authorization to transmit in other ways, the 
vocabulary of transmission tends to reflect this ideal. The strongest claim one could make 
is that someone “narrated to me” (ḥaddathanī), which suggests one heard it directly from 

49.  Kurat, “Ibn Aʿtham’s Kitāb al-Futūḥ,” 277 (Wāqidī, d. 207/822); Shaban, ʿAbbāsid Revolution, xviii 
(Madāʾinī, d. 228/843?); Conrad, “Ibn Aʿtham and His History,” 95 (Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, d. 148/765), 116 (ʿAlī b. ʿĀṣim, 
d. 201/816, and al-Madāʾinī), and 120 (courtiers of al-Manṣūr [r. 136–58/754–75] and al-Mahdī [r. 158–69/775–
85]). There is one exception: Lindstedt (“Madāʾinī’s Ki  tāb al-Dawla,” 122) identified at least two figures who‏
connect Ibn Aʿtham to the beginning of the fourth/tenth century.

50.  Thus Lindstedt, “Madāʾinī’s Kitāb al-Dawla,” 118 (citing Shaban, ʿAbbāsid Revolution, xviii): “Shaban 
says that further proof [for the earlier dating] can be found [in the fact] that Ibn Aʿtham uses isnads such as 
‘ḥaddathanī al-Madāʾinī,’ which means, according to [Shaban], that Ibn Aʿtham was al-Madāʾinī’s contemporary. 
This does not, of course, prove anything: Ibn Aʿtham and his fellow historians were not utilizing the isnad 
in such a systematic way as Shaban says they were.” (Lindstedt does not, however, substantiate his claim of 
non-systematic use.)

51.  Excepting Lindstedt’s identification (“Madāʾinī’s Kitāb al-Dawla,” 121–22) of two figures whose 
appearance in isnāds he thought supported the later dating. They will be discussed below.



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the source.52 Indeed, the assumption of such face-to-face transmission is foundational to 
traditional isnād criticism, which tests the plausibility of links between two figures. Could 
they have met? Did they live at the same time? Did they pass through the same places?

Modern scholars have disagreed over the extent to which an isnād can be trusted as an 
accurate record of a report’s transmission history. Some have found isnāds to be largely 
reliable; others regard them as susceptible to potentially insoluble problems.53 The rest 
land somewhere in the middle, arguing that comparing variations of the same report and 
their various isnāds can help show who was responsible for circulating the tradition in a 
given form.54 But this debate, which has focused on the possibility of distinguishing genuine 
information from the first/seventh century, has mostly to do with the origins of particular 
reports—that is, the extent to which the earliest links in isnāds actually connect their 
reporters to original eyewitnesses. Here, however—and this is an important distinction—
we are concerned primarily with later links in the chains, for Ibn Aʿtham usually stands 
at or near the end of the chains of transmission in question. Later links, the scholarly 
logic holds, tend not to be subject to the same ideological pressures (i.e., the desire to 
connect information to a source both early and authoritative) assumed to have motivated 
the fabrication of the opening sequences of isnāds. In short, if we can correctly identify Ibn 
Aʿtham’s relationship to the authorities at the top of his isnāds, there is reason to think that 
we can ascertain useful, if relative, chronological information.

One further distinction is necessary. Although there is a significant amount of isnād-like 
data in the text, not all of it is isnād data for the text. Because Islamic history writing in this 
period often relied on quoting or reproducing parts of other, earlier texts, a later work may 
sometimes absorb the narrational structure of its sources. Such absorption may include 
the direct-but-abridged quotation of an eyewitness to events that the author of the history 
in question could not possibly have heard. For example, there are several instances in Ibn 
Aʿtham’s history in which the early Kufan jurist ʿĀmir b. Sharāḥīl al-Shaʿbī (d. circa 110/ 
728–29) appears to be quoted directly: all that is reported is “Al-Shaʿbī said . . .”55  

52.  Especially as opposed to, e.g., claims that something “was said” (qīla) anonymously. There are, of course, 
certain exceptions: sometimes one might transmit just the gist of a statement rather than the verbatim wording 
(riwāya bi-l-maʿnā).

53.  For example, contrast H. Motzki, “The Muṣannaf of ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī as a Source of Authentic 
aḥādīth of the First Islamic Century,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 50 (1991), 1–21 (carefully credulous of 
ʿAbd al-Razzāq’s isnāds) with M. Cook, Early Muslim Dogma: A Source-Critical Study (Cambridge: Cambridge 
University Press, 1981), chapter 11 (structurally skeptical of isnāds).

54.  There is a great deal of literature on this question. Useful surveys include F. M. Donner, Narratives 
of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1998), 5–25 
(which is broader than hadith, but not unrelated to it); H. Berg, The Development of Exegesis in Early Islam: 
The Authenticity of Muslim Literature from the Formative Period (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2000), chapter 2; 
and N. Haider, The Origins of the Shīʿa: Identity, Ritual, and Sacred Space in Eighth-Century Kūfa (Cambridge: 
Cambridge University Press, 2011), chapter 2. One of the central ideas has been Joseph Schacht’s theory about 
“common links” (The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953], 172–75 and 
ff.), particularly as elaborated in G. H. A. Juynboll, Muslim Tradition: Studies in Chronology, Provenance, and 
Authorship of Early Ḥadīth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 206–17.

55.  Ibn Aʿtham, Futūḥ, 7:109.3, 109.9, 109.11, 110.5, 111.3.



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Dating Ibn Aʿtham’s History  •  195

But even using the early third/ninth-century dating, it would be a stretch to think that Ibn 
Aʿtham himself heard what al-Shaʿbī reported about any situation. Rather, Ibn Aʿtham must 
have borrowed those reports, and thus the quotation of al-Shaʿbī, from earlier sources. In 
other words, some of the passages that resemble isnāds in the history (that is, appear to 
indicate relative chronology) are almost certainly quoted from other texts and thus cannot 
refer to Ibn Aʿtham.56 To date the history relatively on the basis of its isnāds, therefore, 
requires separating the parts of the text that reveal its narrational structure (i.e., that 
attributable to Ibn Aʿtham) from parts of the text that reveal borrowed narrational structure 
(i.e., that carried forward from earlier sources).

This point brings us back to the initial two attempts to date the text. Conrad and others 
are correct that the isnād-like data in Ibn Aʿtham’s history, taken in the aggregate, paint 
an inconsistent picture. This inconsistency, however, does not mean the history itself 
is entirely inconsistent; rather, it stems from the juxtaposition of multiple narrational 
structures, caused by the quotational nature of Islamic historiographical discourse.57 
Similarly, although Shaban and others were right to suggest that quoted sources with known 
dates might in theory be used to date Ibn Aʿtham relatively, they have often misinterpreted 
the relationships in question because they considered only one instance and thus did not 
distinguish “native” from “borrowed” narrational structures. Let us turn now to considering 
those isnāds that demonstrably go back to Ibn Aʿtham.58

3b. Relative Isnād Chronology: Ibn Aʿtham and al-Madāʾinī

In this and the following sections, I demonstrate how a series of isnāds revolving around 
the early third/ninth-century historian Abū al-Ḥasan al-Madāʾinī (d. 228/843?), when 
aligned, provide a clear suggestion for Ibn Aʿtham’s floruit. My approach here is to lay 
out isnāds with certain repeated sources next to each other in order to build a relative 
 

56.  This rule applies for the quotation, cited by Conrad (“Ibn Aʿtham and His History,” 95, 118) and Lindstedt 
(“Madāʾinī’s Kitāb al-Dawla,” 121), of Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, which is credited to “my father.” See Ibn Aʿtham, Futūḥ, 
2:92.18.

57.  For a typology and index of isnāds in the text, see my “Ibn Aʿtham’s History,” appendix 3.
58.  It has already been noted that some cited figures who died near the turn of the fourth/tenth century 

appear to be direct sources for Ibn Aʿtham, but the isnāds illustrate precisely some of the challenges involved. 
The figures in question are Muḥammad b. Yazīd al-Yamānī, i.e., al-Mubarrad (d. 285/898), cited in Ibn Aʿtham, 
Futūḥ, 8:252.8–9, and Ibn al-Ḥubāb al-Muqriʾ (d. 301/914), cited at 8:211.ult. See Conrad, “Ibn Aʿtham and His 
History,” 105–8 (ascribing the citations to continuators), and Lindstedt, “Madāʾinī’s Kitāb al-Dawla,” 122, citing 
only Ibn al-Ḥubāb. Both isnāds seem to suggest that Ibn Aʿtham was active in the last decades of the third/ninth 
century, but they are not without difficulties. For instance, between Ibn Aʿtham and al-Mubarrad stands an 
unnamed figure called only “one of the people of knowledge” (baʿḍ ahl al-ʿilm)—a rather unhelpful chronological 
indicator. Similarly, the anecdote transmitted on the authority of Ibn al-Ḥubāb does not begin with any reference 
to Ibn Aʿtham, implicit or otherwise. It simply reads: “Al-Ḥasan b. al-Ḥubāb al-Muqriʾ al-Baghdādī said . . .” At 
the least, this leaves open the possibility that the attached report is perhaps an interpolation. Lindstedt also 
identified a certain “Aḥmad b. Yaḥyā” (“Madāʾinī’s ‘Kitāb al-Dawla,’” 122, citing Ibn Aʿtham, ‘Futūḥ’, 8:212.5) 
as perhaps referring to al-Balādhurī—but this isnād (of only two links) is also somewhat dubious for the same 
reason, namely, because it does not begin with any reference to Ibn Aʿtham. 



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chronology for all the isnāds together and thereby determine where Ibn Aʿtham ought to 
stand in relation not just to any given isnād, but to his sources more generally.

It was M. A. Shaban who argued most strongly in favor of the possibility that Ibn Aʿtham 
transmitted directly from al-Madāʾinī.59 To substantiate this claim, Shaban cited one of Ibn 
Aʿtham’s collective isnāds (hereafter “CIs”).60 There are four such CIs in Ibn Aʿtham’s Futūḥ, 
each supporting lengthy accounts of major events.61 The CI in question (the second one in 
the history, hereafter “CI2”) introduces Ibn Aʿtham’s account of the murder of ʿUthmān b. 
ʿAffān, the third caliph (r. 23–35/644–55). Al-Madāʾinī is one of several authorities cited.62 
Shaban found corroboration for the link between Ibn Aʿtham and al-Madāʾinī in the fact 
that “in the course of the narrative, [al-Madāʾinī’s] name always occurs in its proper form 
as one of the most frequently mentioned authorities for significant traditions.”63 But this 
is a problematic claim: There are no citations of al-Madāʾinī in the narrative following CI2, 
which belongs to the Futūḥ; instead, al-Madāʾinī is cited directly (several times) only in 
the Taʾrīkh, as a source for the Abbasid period.64 With one exception, these other citations 
of al-Madāʾinī are not usable for dating the text because they do not appear in the form of 
isnāds. Rather, Ibn Aʿtham simply remarked, as he did with al-Shaʿbī, “Al-Madāʾinī said . . .” 
and then provided the report.65 In other words, these citations offer none of the narrational 

59.  Shaban, ʿAbbāsid Revolution, xviii (and cf. the earlier, less detailed statement in Shaban, “Ibn Aʿtham 
al-Kūfī”). Although Shaban’s claims are in need of revision, his explorations are nevertheless to be appreciated, 
particularly because he worked on the text without the aid of the Hyderabad edition, which was not fully 
published until later.

60.  For collective isnāds, see M. Lecker, “Wāqidī’s Account of the Status of the Jews of Medina: A Study of 
a Combined Report,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 54 (1994), 15–32; T. Khalidi, Arabic Historical Thought in 
the Classical Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 31–33, 38–39, 48–49; Donner, Narratives of 
Islamic Origins, 264–66; Robinson, Islamic Historiography, 97 (citing Lecker and Donner).

61.  Al-Wāqidī (attrib.), Kitāb al-Ridda wa-nubdha min futūḥ al-ʿIrāq: Kilāhumā riwāyat Ibn Aʿtham al-Kūfī, 
ed. M. Ḥamīd Allāh (Paris: Tougui and Beirut: al-Sharīka al-Muttaḥida li-l-Tawzīʿ, 1989), 19 (for the account of 
the dispute over succession at the Prophet Muḥammad’s death, “CI1”); Ibn Aʿtham, Futūḥ, 2:207–9 (the murder 
of ʿ Uthmān, “CI2”); 2:344–45 (the battle of Ṣiffīn, “CI3”); and 4:209–11 (the murder of al-Ḥusayn b. ʿ Alī, “CI4”). For 
the (mis)attribution of the Kitāb al-Ridda, see M. Muranyi, “Ein neuer Bericht über die Wahl des ersten Kalifen 
Abū Bakr,” Arabica 75 (1978), 233–60. For its relationship to Ibn Aʿtham’s Futūḥ, see Schönléber, “Notes on the 
Textual Tradition,” esp. 432–38.

62.  Ibn Aʿtham, Futūḥ, 2:147–49 = MS Ahmet III 2596 1b.2–13.
63.  Shaban, ʿAbbāsid Revolution, xviii.
64.  Most citations of al-Madāʾinī are for the Abbasid revolution, which is covered in the seventh and eighth 

volumes. These are the materials discussed in Lindstedt, “Madāʾinī’s Kitāb al-Dawla,” esp. 106–8. Lindstedt 
claimed (at 107) that “It should be noted that Ibn Aʿtham does not include much al-Madāʾinī material before 
the ʿAbbāsid revolution anonymously, either.” I demonstrated in a paper presented to the School of Abbasid 
Studies, however, that Ibn Aʿtham’s, al-Balādhurī’s, and Ibn Abī al-Ḥadīd’s accounts of the caliphate of al-Ḥasan 
b. ʿAlī are all adaptations of one (or perhaps two) accounts written by al-Madāʾinī; al-Balādhurī and Ibn Abī 
al-Ḥadīd cited him, but Ibn Aʿtham did not. This is not to suggest that Lindstedt is wholly incorrect but rather to 
point out that it is always difficult to draw such a wide-sweeping conclusion about a large work so laconic about 
its sources. McLaren, “Ibn Aʿtham’s Archive.”

65.  Ibn Aʿtham, Futūḥ, 6:253–54 (the exception, a single-report isnād); 7:278.11; 8:159.9–10, 160.9–10, 190.4, 
190.17, 192.4, 192.14, 195.7–8, 196.7, 202.3, 205.6, 206.12, 207.16, 218.1. Cf. Conrad, “Ibn Aʿtham and His History,” 
99 and 118, and Lindstedt, “Madāʾinī’s Kitāb al-Dawla,” 107.



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structure that might help us to discern where Ibn Aʿtham stood relative to his predecessor.66 
Thus, the only direct link between Ibn Aʿtham and al-Madāʾinī is that found in CI2, and it 
does seem as though Shaban drew the obvious conclusion from the relevant strand of the 
isnād: “Abū Muḥammad Aḥmad b. Aʿtham al-Kūfī said, ‘Abū al-Ḥusayn ʿAlī b. Muḥammad 
al-Qurashī reported to me, saying . . .’”67 

Shaban is certainly right that the latter figure is al-Madāʾinī, although he noted that 
the latter’s teknonym (kunya) was actually Abū al-Ḥasan, as it appears later in the text.68 
But there are good reasons to think that the isnāds describing how Ibn Aʿtham got his 
reports from al-Madāʾinī suffer from textual corruption. Indeed, a consistent picture of 
Ibn Aʿtham’s place relative to al-Madāʾinī appears only when comparing all the isnāds in 
which the latter appears. Such a comparison reveals that an intervening figure between Ibn 
Aʿtham and al-Madāʾinī is likely missing from the isnāds as we know them. Let us now turn 
to this missing link. 

3c. CI2: A Baseline Reconstruction

Ibn Aʿtham’s first citation of al-Madāʾinī is only one strand of a broader collective isnād, 
the aforementioned CI2. We may begin by establishing the internal chronology of this 
particular strand, which reads as follows:

Abū Muḥammad Aḥmad b. Aʿtham al-Kūfī said: [1] Abū al-Ḥusayn ʿAlī b. Muḥammad 
al-Qurashī related to me, saying: [2] ʿUthmān b. Salīm reported to me from [3] Mujāhid 
from al-Shaʿbī and [2] Abū Miḥṣan from Abū Wāʾil and [4] ʿAlī b. Mujāhid from Abū 
Isḥāq . . .69

Let us work through the problem of identifying the various figures in the isnād. (1) Shaban 
already pointed out the small error in al-Madāʾinī’s kunya, given here as Abū al-Ḥusayn 
rather than Abū al-Ḥasan. But the personal names and nisba reveal this individual to be 
certainly the historian al-Madāʾinī.70 (2) Certain of the figures—namely, ʿUthmān b. Salīm 
and Abū Miḥṣan—I was unable to identify.71 But we have enough biographical information  
on the others that we can reconstruct the isnād’s internal chronology. (3) Biographical 
sources record no Mujāhid as transmitting from al-Shaʿbī, but they do mention Mujālid 

66.  Perhaps Ibn Aʿtham was here quoting a written copy of al-Madāʾinī’s text, as suggested by Conrad (“Ibn 
Aʿtham and His History,” 99, n. 77, and 116, n. 153) and Lindstedt (“Madāʾinī’s Kitāb al-Dawla,” 107–8).

67.  Ibn Aʿtham, Futūḥ, 2:147.3–4.
68.  Ibn Aʿtham, Futūḥ, 6:253.14. Also noted by Lindstedt, “Madāʾinī’s Kitāb al-Dawla,” 107, n. 25. 
69.  Ibn Aʿtham, Futūḥ, 2:147.3–5.
70.  See now I. Lindstedt, “Al-Madāʾinī,” in EI3.
71.  The only person with the teknonym “Abū Miḥṣan” I have found in the biographical dictionaries is 

ʿUkkāsha b. Miḥṣan, a companion of the Prophet who was killed in the Ridda during the caliphate of Abū Bakr 
(r. 11–13/632–34). Thus, this Abū Miḥṣan cannot have witnessed the murder of ʿUthmān, which took place in 
35/655. See, e.g., Ibn Saʿd, Kitāb al-Ṭabaqāt al-kabīr, ed. ʿA. M. ʿUmar (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khānjī, 1421/2001), 
3:86–87.



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b. Saʿīd (d. 144/762).72 That the person meant here is in fact Mujālid finds confirmation 
in another isnād in the text in which it is indeed Mujālid, not Mujāhid, who transmitted 
from al-Shaʿbī.73 (4) Abū Wāʾil must refer to Shaqīq b. Salama al-Asadī, who was born some 
years before the start of the Prophet Muḥammad’s career (traditionally dated to 610), 
who is remembered as transmitting to al-Shaʿbī, and who reportedly died in 82/701–2.74 
(5) Although the biographical sources do not record precise dates for ʿAlī b. Mujāhid, 
we can estimate them on the basis of the dates of the figures to whom he is connected.  
For instance, he reportedly transmitted from Abū Isḥāq ʿAmr b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Sabīʿī (d. 128/ 
745–46), the next figure named in the isnād , and to, e.g., Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanbal  
(164–241/780–855).75 We might presume, then, that ʿAlī b. Mujāhid lived around 120–90/738–
806. In other words, he must have been a direct source for al-Madāʾinī, a second vector of 
transmission in the isnād. Combining all these biographical points provides a clearer picture 
of the relative chronology of this strand of CI2, which may be illustrated as in figure 1. 

Figure 1. The Madāʾinī-Shaʿbī Strand

72.  Al-Bukhārī, Kitāb al-Taʾrīkh al-kabīr (Hyderabad: Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif al-ʿUthmāniyya, 1360–84/1941–64), 
4.2:9 (al-Shaʿbī, no. 1950); al-Mizzī, Tahdhīb al-Kamāl fī asmāʾ al-rijāl, ed. B. ʿA. Maʿrūf (Beirut: Muʾassasat 
al-Risāla, 2002), 14:33 (al-Shaʿbī) and 27:220 (Mujālid); al-Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām al-nubalāʾ, ed. S. al-Arnāʾūṭ et al. 
(Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1417/1996), 4:297 (al-Shaʿbī) and 6:285 (Mujālid).

73.  Ibn Aʿtham, Futūḥ, 6:254.1 (this isnād will be discussed below). It is not difficult to imagine how this error 
occurred: the consonantal skeletons of both names are nearly the same, and the switch might have been caused 
by a scribal error—there is an ʿAlī b. Mujāhid mentioned in the same isnād.

74.  Al-Mizzī, Tahdhīb, 12:548–54 (no. 2767, mentioning that al-Shaʿbī transmitted from him). Al-Mizzī also 
noted (at 12:552) that al-Sabīʿī heard traditions from Abū Wāʾil, but apparently not in this case. At any rate, this 
is another chronological note that confirms that there are two parallel lines of transmission here—one through 
al-Sabīʿī and one through Mujālid.

75.  Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Taʾrīkh Madīnat al-Salām wa-akhbār muḥaddithiyyahā wa-dhikr quṭṭānihā 
al-ʿulamāʾ min ghayr ahlihā wa-wāridiyyahā, ed. B. ʿA. Maʿrūf (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1422/2002), 
13:592–93; al-Mizzī, Tahdhīb, 21:117–120.



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Dating Ibn Aʿtham’s History  •  199

We can see that al-Madāʾinī represents a single meeting point for a cluster of lines of 
transmission stretching across approximately a century and a half. It is not difficult to see 
why Shaban concluded that Ibn Aʿtham and al-Madāʾinī were linked: there is nothing here 
to suggest otherwise. But it is only by comparing this initial presentation with other isnāds 
in the text that the fuller picture begins to emerge—namely, that there are intervening 
links missing, casting doubt on the chronological value of CI2 as we have it.

3d. The Madāʾinī-Shaʿbī Strand: A Missing Link

There are two other isnāds in the text that include part of the same bundle of 
transmissions—what I will call the “Madāʾinī-Shaʿbī strand” (Madāʾinī < ʿUthmān < Mujālid 
< Shaʿbī). One of these two is another collective isnād (“CI3”), which essentially reproduces 
CI2 for a later event (the battle at Ṣiffīn and the death of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib in 40/661).76  
But it presents an interesting problem: it is evidently corrupted, for in that isnād, Ibn 
Aʿtham transmits directly from a “Salīm.” As the Hyderabad editors noted, the isnād is 
clearly meant to refer to ʿUthmān b. Salīm, al-Madāʾinī’s source in CI2. This suggests that a 
line of text is missing from CI3 and that al-Madāʾinī ought to appear in it as well (see figure 
2, with my emendations in dashed boxes).

Figure 2. CI2 versus CI3
 

A third isnād (“the Muṣʿab isnād”), given for a report in which al-Shaʿbī praises Muṣʿab 
b. al-Zubayr (d. 72/692), who governed Iraq during the (anti)caliphate of his brother, 
ʿAbd Allāh (r. 64–73/683–92), reproduces once again the Madāʾinī-Shaʿbī strand. Crucially, 
however, another authority now intervenes between Ibn Aʿtham and al-Madāʾinī:

He said: Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad al-Balawī related to me [that] Abū 
al-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Qurashī said: ʿUthmān b. Salīm related to me from 
Mujālid from al-Shaʿbī, who said . . .77

76.  Ibn Aʿtham, Futūḥ, 2:344.10–345.9.
77.  Ibn Aʿtham, Futūḥ, 6:253.14–254.1.



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Here the picture begins to change. The first named figure in the Muṣʿab isnād is Abū 
Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad al-Balawī. This is the first suggestion that there may 
be a problem with the Madāʾinī-Shaʿbī strand as it appears in the two collective isnāds  
(CI2 and CI3). If there was an intervening figure between Ibn Aʿtham and al-Madāʾinī in 
all three of these isnāds, Ibn Aʿtham would no longer be linked to the first decades of 
the third/ninth century by his connection to al-Madāʾinī (see figure 3, again with dashed 
emendations).

Figure 3. Al-Balawī: The Missing Link?

This possibility is confirmed by the fact that seemingly the same al-Balawī appears in 
two other isnāds in Ibn Aʿtham’s history, but not in connection with the Madāʾinī-Shaʿbī 
strand. One of these isnāds (the “Raids isnād”) is given in a section describing the raids 
(ghārāt) undertaken by Muʿāwiya and his allies in the aftermath of the arbitration at Ṣiffīn.78  
The isnād reads:

ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad al-Balawī related to us, saying, Ibrāhīm b. ʿ Abd Allāh b. al-ʿAlāʾ 
al-Qurashī al-Madanī related to me, saying, Naṣr b. Khālid al-Naḥwī and Muḥammad 
b. Khālid al-Hāshimī related to me from his father from Abū Mikhnaf b. Yaḥyā b. Saʿīd 
al-Azdī, who said . . .79

By comparing the Muṣʿab and Raids isnāds (see figure 4), crucial pieces begin to fall into 
place. The first link in the Raids isnād seems to be Ibn Aʿtham, who is not named but 
implied—“al-Balawī related to us.” It seems most likely that this al-Balawī is the same as the 
al-Balawī in the Muṣʿab isnād, since both his name and his father’s name remain in place. 
Al-Balawī’s source, Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbd Allāh b. al-ʿAlāʾ al-Qurashī al-Madanī, is easily identified: 

78.  For a summary of these events (and a collection of references to other histories in Arabic), see J. 
Wellhausen, The Arab Kingdom and Its Fall, trans. M. G. Weir (New York: Routledge, 2017), 99–104. 

79.  Ibn Aʿtham, Futūḥ, 4:36.11–37.2.



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Dating Ibn Aʿtham’s History  •  201

Ibn Abī Ḥātim al-Rāzī (d. 327/938) reported that his father (Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī, who lived 
195–277/810–90) heard reports from Ibrāhīm.80 To this we can add al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī’s 
(d. 463/1072) quotation of two authorities who report that Ibrāhīm said his own father  
(i.e., ʿAbd Allāh b. al-ʿAlāʾ) died in either 164 or 165 (780–82).81 Thus, Ibrāhīm must have 
died after 164/780. And if he lived long enough to transmit reports to Abū Ḥātim, the 
transmission must have taken place in the third/ninth century—Abū Ḥātim would have 
been five years old in 200/815, so it was probably no earlier than that. 

If al-Balawī also transmitted reports from Ibrāhīm, we can estimate that al-Balawī was 
roughly contemporary to (or at least overlapped with) Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī, meaning that 
he, too, would have lived between the turn of the third/ninth century and its last decades, 
perhaps circa 200–280/815–94.82 We do not get much help from the lower links: Abū Mikhnaf 
(d. 157/773) is a well-known historian from the first part of the second/eighth century, but I 
have not been able to identify the other three figures mentioned in the Raids isnād.83 We do 
learn one important thing, however: the Muṣʿab isnād also seems to be slightly corrupted. 
The teknonym “Abū Muḥammad,” missing from the Raids isnād but assigned to al-Balawī 
in the Muṣʿab isnād, must refer instead to Ibn Aʿtham, quoting from al-Balawī, and an 
intervening verb of transmission (e.g., ḥaddathanā, “he reported to us”) must be missing. 
The text ought to read “Abū Muḥammad [i.e., Ibn Aʿtham] said, ‘ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad 
al-Balawī [related to us] . . .’”

It is because of this citation that Lindstedt identified this al-Balawī as the Abū Muḥammad 
al-Balawī who lived in Egypt and wrote about Ibn Ṭūlūn.84 I see little reason, however, to 
think they are the same. For instance, al-Balawī’s name, given three times in the history, 
contains “Abū Muḥammad” only once; if we interpret the name in this instance as referring 
to Ibn Aʿtham, the coincidence of teknonyms between this al-Balawī and the Sīrat Ibn 
Ṭūlūn’s al-Balawī disappears. Moreover, the tentative dates established by his link to 
Ibrāhīm Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ make it decidedly unlikely that the Futūḥ’s al-Balawī could have lived 
late in the fourth/tenth century.

80.  Al-Bukhārī, Taʾrīkh, 1.1:304 (no. 962, Ibrāhīm) and 3.1:162 (no. 509, his father); Ibn Abī Ḥātim, Kitāb 
al-Jarḥ wa-l-taʿdīl (Hyderabad: Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif al-ʿUthmaniyya, 1360–72/1941–53), 2:109 (no. 319, Ibrāhīm) 
and 5:128–29 (no. 592, his father).

81.  Al-Khaṭīb, Taʾrīkh, 11:188–89 (no. 5086). The two reports disagree—one says 164, the other 165.
82.  If this is true, Muranyi’s suggestion that Ibn Aʿtham heard reports from Ibrāhīm (“Ein neuer Bericht,” 

236) cannot be correct (especially because Muranyi does not question the 314/926–127 date). Cf. al-Masʿūdī, 
Murūj al-dhahab wa-maʿādin al-jawhar, ed. C. Barbier de Meynard and A. Pavet de Courteille, rev. C. Pellat 
(Beirut: al-Jāmiʿa al-Lubnāniyya, 1965–79), 1:13.15–16 (§8), mentioning among previous historians “ʿAbd Allāh b. 
Muḥammad b. Maḥfūẓ al-Balawī al-Anṣārī, companion of Abū Yazīd ʿUmāra b. Yazīd al-Madīnī.” I have not been 
able to identify the latter, but he appears to be mentioned in other isnāds. See below.

83.  H. A. R. Gibb, “Abū Mikhnaf,” in EI2, and U. Sezgin, Abū Miḫnaf: Ein Beitrag zur Historiographie des 
umaiyadischen Zeit (Leiden: Brill, 1971).

84.  Lindstedt, “Madāʾinī’s Kitāb al-Dawla,” 122 and n. 128. For the author of the Sīrat Ibn Ṭūlūn, see Shayyal, 
“Al-Balawī.”



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Figure 4. The Muṣʿab and Raids Isnāds Compared

This supposition is strengthened by a final corroborating isnād (the “Shāfiʿī isnād”), 
which appears in a report about Muḥammad b. Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820) that is included 
in Ibn Aʿtham’s account of Hārūn al-Rashīd’s reign (r. 170–93/786–809) in the Taʾrīkh.  
It reads:

Abū Muḥammad related to us, saying that ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad al-Balawī reported 
to us that ʿAmmār b. Yazīd al-Madanī said: Aḥmad b. ʿUbayd al-Ḥayrī, who was among 
the greatest of the people of knowledge, said …85

Here, there is a verb of transmission that separates Ibn Aʿtham (i.e., Abū Muḥammad) and 
al-Balawī. Moreover, the correctness of the basic structure of this isnād (specifically, the 
link between al-Balawī and ʿAmmār) is further attested because it is repeated in nearly 
the same form in a different text, Abū Bakr al-Bayhaqī’s (d. 458/1066) Manāqib al-Shāfiʿī.86 
Although I have been unable to identify this isnād’s figures precisely in the biographical 
sources, it fits well with the broader picture being worked out here: Ibn Aʿtham clearly 
stands at two removes from an event that transpired in the late second/early ninth century 
at the court of al-Rashīd.87

85.  Ibn Aʿtham, Futūḥ, 8:245.2–4.
86.  Al-Bayhaqī, Manāqib al-Shāfiʿī, ed. A. Ṣaqr (Cairo: Maktabat Dār al-Turāth, 1390/1970), 1:130.6–12, 

especially the last two lines. The names are slightly different: Al-Bayhaqī cites ʿUmāra b. Zayd (perhaps the 
same companion of al-Balawī mentioned by al-Masʿūdī?) but does not mention Ibn Aʿtham’s ultimate source, 
Aḥmad b. ʿUbayd. For the figure to whom al-Balawī related in al-Bayhaqī’s isnād (Muḥammad b. Abī Yaʿqūb 
al-Dīnawarī), see al-Khatīb, Taʾrīkh, 4:616–17. Al-Khaṭīb notes no death date for Ibn Abī Yaʿqūb, but he connects 
him to other figures whose dates are known. For instance, Ibn Abī Yaʿqūb related reports to Muḥammad b. 
Yaḥyā b. Ṣāʿid (al-Khatīb, Taʾrīkh, 16:341–45), who reportedly died in Dhū al-Qaʿda 318/December 930. This 
might make Ibn Abī Yaʿqūb a contemporary of Ibn Aʿtham.

87.  It is usually reported that al-Shāfiʿī went to Egypt circa 200/815–16; at any rate, he died in 204/820.



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To recap: Shaban asserted, following the text of CI2 in the Futūḥ, that Ibn Aʿtham was 
linked directly with al-Madāʾinī. This connection to al-Madāʾinī appears in one of the CIs 
in the work; a second, nearly identical CI, however, is missing two links. In fact, there must 
be an intermediary missing from both CIs because in a third isnād (the Muṣʿab isnād), 
Ibn Aʿtham is connected to al-Madāʾinī through a certain al-Balawī. In a fourth isnād (the 
Raids isnād), this same al-Balawī is cited as transmitting a report from a figure, Ibrāhīm 
Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ, who must have lived into the beginning of the third/ninth century. Thus, 
al-Balawī, who, I estimate, lived circa 200–280/815–94, or roughly at the same time as Abū 
Ḥātim al-Rāzī (195–277/810–90), may very well have overlapped with al-Madāʾinī, who lived 
roughly 135–228/752–843.88 By this estimate, al-Balawī’s lifetime could easily have bridged 
the distance between al-Madāʾinī in the first decades of the third/ninth century and Ibn 
Aʿtham at its end. Moreover, he certainly cannot be identified with the al-Balawī who wrote 
the Sīrat Ibn Ṭūlūn.

Figure 5. The Overall Picture

The overall picture, with emendations, is illustrated in figure 5. Alas, this argument must 
remain tentative, as it depends on inserting names that are missing, and the biographies of 
certain relevant figures are lost. But even if none of these isnāds alone solves the problem, 
comparing all five reveals a consistent picture—to wit, Ibn Aʿtham must stand at one remove 
from al-Madāʾinī, joined to him by the intervening al-Balawī.

There is one further point to make here. I mentioned previously that Ibn Aʿtham treated 
citations of al-Madāʾinī in two different ways. In some cases, Ibn Aʿtham cited him via an 
intermediary; in others, he cited al-Madāʾinī directly. The difference might be explained 
as reflecting Ibn Aʿtham’s place in the transmission history of al-Madāʾinī’s knowledge. 
When he had a direct link to authorize his transmission (i.e., when he could say that he 
got the knowledge from somebody who got it from al-Madāʾinī), he mentioned his source. 
When he did not name the source, as Conrad and Lindstedt have suggested, he must have 

88.  For al-Madāʾinī’s dates, which are somewhat troublesome, see U. Sezgin, “Al-Madāʾinī,” in EI2.



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drawn on a copy of one of al-Madāʾinī’s texts.89 This basic distinction fits well with how Ibn 
Aʿtham treats other prominent historians who were roughly contemporary to al-Madāʾinī, 
including Hishām b. al-Kalbī (d. 204/819), al-Wāqidī (d. 207/822), and al-Haytham b. ʿAdī  
(d. 207/822?). Ibn al-Kalbī, who appears in two of the CIs and in one other isnād, is always 
cited through an intermediary, a certain Abū Yaʿqūb Isḥāq b. Yūsuf al-Fazārī.90 Al-Wāqidī 
is also cited in the CIs—in one place with two intermediaries (Abū Jaʿfar ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz  
b. al-Mubārak < Nuʿaym b. Muzāhim al-Minqarī), in two other places with just the latter 
intermediary, and in a fourth place with two intermediaries again (this time Abū Ḥātim Sahl 
b. Muḥammad al-Ṣāniʿ < Nuʿaym al-Minqarī).91 Al-Haytham b. ʿAdī appears in the fourth 
CI, ensconced among transmitters, but when he is mentioned five times in the seventh 
volume, no intermediary is cited.92 Unfortunately, these links are harder to assess—Ibn 
Aʿtham appears to have heard their reports via otherwise unknown intermediaries.93 We 
see, however, that in the broader picture, the claim in the isnād that Ibn Aʿtham transmitted 
directly from al-Madāʾinī is exceptional, providing a further reason to think that the work 
of emending his isnāds is worthwhile.

4. Ibn Aʿtham’s Biographical Connections

With these conclusions in mind, we can now return to examining the biobibliographical 
data on Ibn Aʿtham. Unfortunately for our purposes, there is essentially no decisive 
biographical information about Ibn Aʿtham. The few biographies we have for him are rather 
vague.94 We can, however, build something of a circumstantial case for Ibn Aʿtham’s floruit 
and thus the time of composition of his history from a range of evidence both internal and 
external to the text. Lindstedt has already started to do so, drawing primarily on a few bits 

89.  There may have been a written text involved in both cases. In the first case, however, Ibn Aʿtham’s 
transmission would have been “authorized” if he had read part or all of al-Madāʾinī’s text with someone who 
had studied it with al-Madāʾinī himself. In the second case, Ibn Aʿtham may simply have purchased the text 
without having studied it with an acknowledged Madāʾinī tradent. On this distinction, see J. Pedersen, The Arabic 
Book, trans. G. French, ed. R. Hillenbrand (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 24–36 (Pedersen’s 
interpretations are probably too typicalizing), and G. Schoeler, The Genesis of Literature in Islam: From the 
Aural to the Read, rev. with and trans. S. M. Toorawa (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), chapter 8 
(“Listening to Books, or Reading Them?”), which discusses works in a variety of genres.

90.  Ibn Aʿtham, Futūḥ, 2:148.2–3 (CI2), 342.4–5, 344.14–345.1 (CI3).
91.  Al-Wāqidī, Ridda, 19.5–6 (both intermediaries); Ibn Aʿtham, Futūḥ, 2:147.6 (only Nuʿaym), 344.12–13 (only 

Nuʿaym), and 4:209.7–8 (both intermediaries). Perhaps this should be taken as evidence that an intermediary 
between Ibn Aʿtham and Nuʿaym is missing in the second and third instances.

92.  Ibn Aʿtham, Futūḥ, 4:210.9–10 (CI3) and 7:52.8, 124.2 (mentioning al-Haytham’s sources), 131.13, 138.13–
15, 145.10–11. The manuscript (Ahmet III 2956, 1:171b) contains obviously erroneous readings—e.g., in line 4, 
“Muḥammad b. ʿAwāna b. al-Ḥakam b. al-Haytham b. ʿAdī,” which must refer to separate people, Ibn al-Ḥakam 
and al-Haytham.

93.  There is, of course, Naṣr b. Muzāhim al-Minqarī (d. 212/827), known for his account of the Battle of Ṣiffīn. 
Muranyi (“Eine neuer Bericht,” 237) thought that the Nuʿaym mentioned in the Futūḥ was simply a mistake for 
Naṣr, but Conrad (“Ibn Aʿtham and His History,” 115 and n. 146) argued they must be different people since Naṣr 
is cited elsewhere in the text (at Ibn Aʿtham, Futūḥ, 2:344.12 and 345.6).

94.  For a survey of the biographical references, see Lindstedt, “Sources for the Biography.”



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of biobibliographical information and a cursory treatment of isnāds in Ibn Aʿtham’s history, 
and he has concluded that Ibn Aʿtham must have died sometime “in the first half of the 
fourth/tenth century.”95 A more thorough examination of the evidence allows us to narrow 
the likely range of Ibn Aʿtham’s floruit and his writing.

4a. Once in Jurjān: When Did Ibn ʿAdī Meet Ibn Aʿtham?

Let us begin with Ḥamza al-Sahmī’s Taʾrīkh Jurjān, a biographical work on hadith 
transmitters who lived in or visited Jurjān.96 The work includes a notice on Ibn Aʿtham that is 
based on a report the latter transmitted to al-Sahmī’s teacher, the famous Jurjānī scholar of 
hadith, Abū Aḥmad ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAdī (d. 365/976), best known as the author of a collection 
on weak hadith transmitters, al-Kāmil fī ḍuʿafāʾ al-rijāl. According to the report’s isnād, 
Ibn Aʿtham transmitted the report from Abū ʿUmar ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd b. Muḥammad al-Imām 
al-Ḥarrānī (d. 266/880) to Ibn ʿAdī. Thus, as Lindstedt concluded, “because Ibn ʿAdī … died 
ca. 365/976 and ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd b. Muḥammad in 266/880, this information preserved in the 
isnād places, with high probability, Ibn Aʿtham’s death date to the first half of the fourth/
tenth century.”97 Lindstedt assumed that Ibn Aʿtham’s death must have fallen roughly 
halfway between the death dates of the two other figures. But this broad range leaves many 
questions unanswered, and reconsideration of both this evidence and other reports in the 
Taʾrīkh Jurjān can add further detail and precision.

The report does not state when Ibn Aʿtham met al-Ḥarrānī or how old Ibn Aʿtham was at 
the time, but the isnād implies that Ibn Aʿtham was born before al-Ḥarrānī died in 266/880. 
In addition, Ibn ʿAdī specified in the isnād that he met Ibn Aʿtham in Jurjān.98 The first 
possible approach to estimating how old al-Imām al-Ḥarrānī, Ibn Aʿtham, and Ibn ʿAdī were 
when they met one another is to examine this particular isnād against the broader backdrop 
of aural transmission in this period. The second approach is to comb through the biography 
of Ibn ʿAdī and the texts attributed to him in search of chronological clues about his career 
that might suggest when he met Ibn Aʿtham. 

95.  See Lindstedt, “Madāʾinī’s Kitāb al-Dawla,” 118–23.
96.  By Jurjān, al-Sahmī meant the whole region around the old city of Jurjān, including nearby towns. See 

his Taʾrīkh Jurjān, 594.1–5, where he contrasted his catchment area with that applied in Abū Saʿd al-Idrīsī’s 
(seemingly lost) Taʾrīkh Istrābādh, which apparently focused only on that city. The old city of Jurjān (or Gurgān) 
seems not to have recovered after the Mongol conquests in the seventh/thirteenth century. The modern city 
of Gurgān is a post-Mongol city founded at the site of old Istrābādh (or Astarābād); old Jurjān is now called 
Gunbad-i Qāwūs (“The Tower of Qāwūs”), a reference to the tomb of the Ziyārid Qābūs b. Washmgīr, who ruled 
Jurjān in the late fourth and early fifth/late tenth and early eleventh centuries. See C. E. Bosworth, “Gorgān, vi. 
History from the Rise of Islam to the Beginning of the Safavid Period,” in EIr, and C. E. Bosworth, “Ziyarids,” in 
EIr.

97.  Lindstedt, “Madāʾinī’s Kitāb al-Dawla,” 120.
98.  What is more, Ibn ʿAdī (cited by al-Sahmī) recorded Ibn Aʿtham’s genealogy through several generations 

(i.e., his nasab). This information is notable because it is not attested in any witness to Ibn Aʿtham’s own text, 
in which Ibn Aʿtham is usually called simply Abū Muḥammad Aḥmad b. Aʿtham al-Kūfī (if he is named at all). 
The inclusion of this information in al-Sahmī’s work seems to suggest that Ibn Aʿtham himself gave his nasab to 
Ibn ʿAdī, from whom al-Sahmī received it later, rather than either of the latter finding it, e.g., in a copy of the 
history.



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Let us begin with the first approach. Richard Bulliet has suggested, on the basis of a 
quantitative study of the information recorded in Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAbd al-Ghāfir al-Fārisī’s 
(d. 529/1135) biographical dictionary of hadith scholars in Nishapur in 317–514/929–
1120, that most scholars began learning hadith between the ages of five and twenty and 
then left educational contexts, eventually returning in their fifties to teach hadith and 
continuing to do so until they died, sometimes as long as twenty years.99 The results of 
Bulliet’s quantitative investigation reflect a period of transition in the ideals of hadith 
transmission. After the “canonization” of major hadith texts in the fourth/tenth century, 
the standard of transmitting shifted from strict dependence on sound aural transmission 
to an emphasis on the performance of aural transmission undergirded by written texts.100 
That is, the transmitter’s memory of the audited material mattered less than did the simple 
presence of a teacher to oversee the audition of a text previously verified as accurate.  
This development led to a shift in the age structure of transmission. Whereas earlier 
authorities, taking aurality as their standard, had argued that sound transmission depended 
on the recipient’s having reached maturity (at least fifteen years of age, according to 
certain madhhabs), later authorities argued that children, supported by texts, could serve 
as authoritative transmitters later in life.101 The corresponding benefit was a shortening of 
isnāds, a closing down of the temporal distances between transmitters. Instead of waiting for 
each generation of transmitters to reach maturity, transmissions could “skip” generations 
as elderly authorities taught young children. Of course, this shift in the age structure 
was supported, at least in part, by reference to exceptional precedents: later authorities 
combed the archive of hadith for cases such as those of people who were credited with 

99.  See R. Bulliet, “The Age Structure of Medieval Islamic Education,” Studia Islamica 57 (1983): 105–17, esp. 
107–12 (cited in Conrad, “Ibn Aʿtham and His History,” 113). The work in question is ʿAbd al-Ghāfir al-Fārisī’s 
Muntakhab Siyāq Taʾrīkh Naysābūr. On al-Fārisī and his family, see R. Bulliet, The Patricians of Nishapur: A 
Study in Medieval Islamic Social History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), 165–68. There are, 
of course, reasons to doubt the applicability of Bulliet’s model to our case. Ibn Aʿtham is not, strictly speaking, 
remembered as a transmitter of hadith of the caliber of Ibn ʿAdī, so it is possible that his investment in a typical 
hadith education was limited. Yāqūt (in Irshād, ed. Margoliouth, 1:379.2 = ed. ʿAbbās, 1:202.2–3) claimed Ibn 
Aʿtham was regarded as a “weak” transmitter by scholars of hadith. But he gave no source for this judgment, 
and, notably, Ibn ʿAdī did not mention Ibn Aʿtham in his own work on weak hadith transmitters. One wonders 
whether Yāqūt made the judgment himself, perhaps on the basis of his examination of Ibn Aʿtham’s use of 
isnāds in the history, particularly the use of collective isnāds. Still, there are certain structural parallels between 
his model and our case: Jurjān and Nishapur are both in the Islamic East, and Ibn ʿAdī was certainly alive in the 
period covered by al-Fārisī’s dictionary.

100.  On these and related developments, see J. Brown, The Canonization of al-Bukhārī and Muslim: 
The Formation and Function of the Sunnī Ḥadīth Canon (Leiden: Brill, 2007), esp. chapter 5; P. Heck, “The 
Epistemological Problem of Writing in Islamic Civilization: Al-Ḫaṭīb al-Baghdādī’s (d. 463/1071) Taqyīd al-ʿIlm,” 
Studia Islamica 94 (2002), 85–114; and G. A. Davidson, Carrying on the Tradition: A Social and Intellectual 
History of Hadith Transmission across a Thousand Years (Leiden: Brill, 2020), esp. chapter 1 (locating oral/
aural transmission in the period after “canonization,” especially its persistence next to a certain acceptance of 
written transmissions of, e.g., the Ṣaḥīḥayn).

101.  Davidson, Carrying on the Tradition, 67 and 70 (citing al-Rāmhurmūzī, whose views are transitional, 
and al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, who takes text-as-guarantor for granted).



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reporting about the Prophet even though they were only children at the time of his death.102  
But Bulliet’s quantitative analysis and the biographical examples cited by Asma Sayeed and 
Garrett Davidson show that the shift was not merely one of ideals.103 Given this ongoing 
transition, we might expect, then, that Ibn ʿAdī collected hadith primarily in the early part 
of his life, when he met an older Ibn Aʿtham, before turning to teach later on in his life.

We may now turn to the second approach: what evidence is there of Ibn ʿAdī’s activities? 
In the Taʾrīkh Jurjān, al-Sahmī provided a summary biography of Ibn ʿAdī, including an 
autobiographical statement. Al-Sahmī wrote:

I heard Ibn ʿAdī say, “My father, ʿAdī b. ʿAbd Allāh, said that I was born on Saturday, 
the first day of Dhū al-Qaʿda in the year 277 [14 February 891], the year in which Abū 
Ḥātim al-Rāzī died.” Ibn ʿAdī himself died on … the first day of Jumādā al-Ākhira in the 
year 365 [5 February 976] and was buried beside the mosque of Kurz b. Wabara,104 to 
the right of the direction of prayer (al-qibla) in a spot adjoining the courtyard of the 
mosque. Ibn ʿAdī was copying hadith in Jurjān in the year 290 [902–3] and then traveled 
to Iraq, Syria, and Egypt in the year 297 [909–10].105

According to this passage, then, Ibn Aʿtham must have been in Jurjān no earlier than 
290/902–3. We do not, however, have to take al-Sahmī’s word for it. Because his work is 
focused on muḥaddithūn, al-Sahmī structured his prosopography around citing particular 
hadith transmitted by the subjects of his work.106 One of his primary sources was hadith 
gathered by Ibn ʿAdī, probably, as Lindstedt noted, drawn from Ibn ʿAdī’s Muʿjam asāmī 
al-mashāyikh, which al-Sahmī cited three times.107 Indeed, al-Sahmī included in his 
Taʾrīkh ninety-seven isnāds in which Ibn ʿAdī mentioned hearing a report from a certain 
authority in a certain place; of these instances of transmission, seventy-three took place in 

102.  Davidson, Carrying on the Tradition, 70–71.
103.  A. Sayeed, Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge 

University Press, 2013), 168–69, 175–77 (citing specific examples of the ages of female transmitters of hadith), 
and Davidson, Carrying on the Tradition, 66–75 (esp. n. 91).

104.  Kurz was a part of the army of Yazīd b. al-Muhallab, who conquered the area and founded the city of 
Jurjān in the year 98/716–17. According to al-Sahmī, Kurz settled in Jurjān and built there a mosque that still 
existed in al-Sahmī’s own day. See Taʾrīkh Jurjān, 375.12–14.

105.  Al-Sahmī, Taʾrīkh Jurjān, 287.11–288.4. Cf. al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 16:154, paraphrasing al-Sahmī; al-Samʿānī, 
Ansāb, 3:238; and al-Subkī, Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya al-kubrā, ed. M. M. al-Ṭanāḥī and ʿA. F. M. al-Ḥilw (Cairo: ʿĪsā 
al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1383/1964), 3:315.

106.  Thus, the entries in the Taʾrīkh, which is organized alphabetically, begin with the name of the entry’s 
subject, followed by typically sparse (if any) biographical details, followed (usually but not always) by one or 
more hadith transmitted on the authority of the subject. 

107.  Al-Sahmī, Taʾrīkh Jurjān, 633.10–11, 635.4–5, 636.4–5. Although al-Sahmī did not say explicitly how 
much information he obtained from Ibn ʿAdī’s mashāyikh, there are implicit indications that he drew on the 
work. Works described as muʿjam tended to be organized alphabetically, as was al-Sahmī’s Taʾrīkh. Thus, the 
Taʾrīkh often contains partial alphabetical sequences citing Ibn ʿAdī for a certain hadith, interspersed with 
biographies citing other authorities from whom Ibn ʿAdī could not have transmitted. See Taʾrīkh Jurjān, nos. 
26–28, 134–36, 434–37 (except no. 435), 544–48 (except no. 546), 688–92 (except no. 690).



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Jurjān (including his encounter with Ibn Aʿtham) and twenty-four occurred elsewhere.108  
Paying attention to Ibn ʿAdī’s isnāds is useful for two reasons. First, in a few cases, they offer 
additional information, such as the year in which Ibn ʿAdī heard the report in question. 
They thus give us further biographical information on Ibn ʿAdī’s activities as a muḥaddith. 
Second, examining Ibn ʿAdī’s sources provides us indirect prosopographical evidence on 
Ibn Aʿtham’s life. Although the relations between generations of muḥaddithūn are not 
governed by strict demographic laws, so to speak, if we assume that Ibn Aʿtham was similar 
in age to Ibn ʿAdī’s other mashāyikh (a generic term that implies a certain age relationship 
between “old” authorities and younger students), any biographical data we can turn up on 
those other sources should provide us a clearer idea of when Ibn Aʿtham lived.

What information do Ibn ʿ Adī’s isnāds add to al-Sahmī’s brief biography? We may first note 
an important deviation from al-Sahmī’s information: Ibn ʿAdī mentioned in one isnād that 
he heard a report in Jurjān in 288/901, two years before al-Sahmī said he began collecting 
hadith.109 Thus, Ibn Aʿtham cannot have been in Jurjān earlier than that year. Other isnāds 
included by al-Sahmī (and also found in Ibn ʿAdī’s Kāmil) indicate that Ibn ʿAdī was active in 
hadith transmission in the region of Jurjān through the 290s/900s and that he heard reports 
in both Jurjān and Astarābād in 295/907–8.110 Still other isnāds in the Taʾrīkh Jurjān attest to 
Ibn ʿAdī’s travels, including mentions of (from east to west) Bukhārā, Astarābād, Dāmghān, 
Āmul, Baghdad, Aleppo, Tyre, and Mecca.111 Although al-Sahmī included no dated reports 
on Ibn ʿAdī’s activities elsewhere, additional chronological information can be found in Ibn 
ʿAdī’s Kāmil. There he mentioned being in Iraq in 297–98/909–11, seeing a certain Baghdadi 
authority in 297/909–10, and hearing a report in Kufa in 298/910–11.112 In another place, 
 
  

108.  For isnāds mentioning Jurjān, see al-Sahmī, Taʾrīkh Jurjān, 42.9–10, 46.12, 47.9–11, 50.8, 53.ult, 57.6–7, 
61.5–6, 63.3–4, 67.12, 68.5–6, 85.10–11, 112.2–3, 112.10–11, 113.5–6, 115.9–10, 117.6–7, 149.5–6, 150.7–8, 154.12–
13, 155.14–15, 159.2–3, 162.11–12, 169.10–11, 206.14–15, 209.3–4, 219.8–9, 293.ult, 259.10–11, 273.ult, 435.11–12, 
276.ult, 284.11–12, 285.ult, 286.9–10, 325.1–3, 334.4–5, 340.9–10, 345.3–5, 345.11–12, 346.8–9, 346.12–13, 347.5–6, 
347.13, 348.3–4, 362.10–11, 367.11–12, 368.ult, 445.15–16, 446.4, 449.6–7, 451.1–2, 453.9–10, 454.10–11, 455.7–9, 
457.9–10, 458.14–15, 460.ult, 461.11–12, 461.16–17, 462.11–12, 463.1–2, 470.ult, 473.5–6, 480.6–7, 534.ult, 540.3–4, 
540.11–12, 543.7–9, 544.1–2, 548.ult, 565.4–5, 567.12–13, 578.ult. For isnāds mentioning other cities, see the 
following notes and Z. ʿU. ʿA. Nūr, Ibn ʿAdī wa-manhajuhu fī Kitāb al-Kāmil fī ḍuʿafāʾ al-rijāl (Riyadh: Maktabat 
al-Rushd, 1418/1997), 1:95–103, giving an alphabetical list of eighty-five places Ibn ʿ Adī reportedly visited (based 
largely on isnāds in the Kāmil), but without any chronological information.

109.  Al-Sahmī, Taʾrīkh Jurjān, 458.14–15. Cf. Ibn ʿAdī, al-Kāmil fī ḍuʿafāʾ al-rijāl, ed. ʿA. A. ʿAbd al-Mawjūd et 
al. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1418/1997), 8:140, 9:145.

110.  Ibn ʿAdī, Kāmil, 7:549 (292/904–5), 7:558 (295/907–8), 8:112 (291/903–4), 8:131 (ditto), 8:140 (288/900–
901), 9:145 (ditto); al-Sahmī, Taʾrīkh Jurjān, 38.12 (291/903–4), 62.3–4 (295/907–8, in Astarābād), 264.13-14 
(291/903–4), 320.4 (292/904–5), 406.8–9 (291/903–4).

111.  Aleppo: al-Sahmī, Taʾrīkh Jurjān, 330.8–9; Āmul: 56.11–12, 547.10–11; Astarābād: 52.9–10, 62.3–4, 133.7–8, 
185.12–13, 213.6–8, 633.10–11, 635.4–5, 636.4–5; Baghdad: 191.5–6, 252.6–7, 255.1–2, 301.10–11, 444.5–6; Bukhārā: 
400.6–7, 400.ult–401.1; Dāmghān: 321.3–4; Mecca: 30.1–2, 144.7–8, 263.7–8; Tyre: 56.3–4. Absent from this list is 
Egypt, which al-Sahmī mentioned in his biography of Ibn ʿAdī; he must have known of the isnāds in the Kāmil 
that attest to this trip (or he may have heard about them from Ibn ʿAdī himself).

112.  Ibn ʿAdī, Kāmil, 5:437 (Iraq); 1:327 (Baghdad); 6:442 (Kufa).



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Ibn ʿAdī reported copying down hadith from a certain authority in Egypt and mentioned 
two trips there, one in 299/311–12 and the other in 304–5/916–18.113

To these details, we may add one other line of consideration. There are a number of 
isnāds in which Ibn ʿAdī reported hearing hadith in towns to the east of Jurjān, including 
Nishapur, Sarakhs, Marw, and Bukhārā.114 Given that he would have passed by none of these 
towns on his two trips to the west, it may be that Ibn ʿAdī made a third trip, this time to 
the east, to gather hadith in the cities of Khorasan and Transoxiana.115 Further, there is a 
hint that such a trip may have taken place after his second trip to the west. Thus, in one 
isnād in the Kāmil, Ibn ʿAdī mentioned hearing a certain report twice, once in Jurjān in 
291/903–4 and then again in “Banūjird” in 316/928–29. I have found no city by that name 
in any of the geographical texts, and I think it is a corruption of the phrase bi-Yanūjird, 
i.e., “in Yanūjird” (also called Janūjird), a noted stop for caravans five farsakhs (roughly 30 
kilometers) south of Marw on the road to Sarakhs.116 Given that the isnād in question has 
Ibn ʿAdī relating a report from a certain Sinān b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sarakhsī, the correction 
makes geographical sense.117 Of course, the relative distances are much shorter: Ibn ʿAdī 
would likely not have spent two or more years on the road, as he had in the west. Still, if 
we suppose that Ibn ʿAdī was absent from Jurjān for some months in 316/928–29, this is 
another time when he could not have met Ibn Aʿtham.

Therefore, if Ibn Aʿtham related a report to Ibn ʿAdī in Jurjān, he must have done so in 
one of the following periods: (a) after Ibn ʿAdī started recording hadith but before he left 
Jurjān on his broader travels, i.e., 288–297/901–909; (b) between Ibn ʿAdī’s two major trips, 
when he might have returned to Jurjān, i.e., 299–304/911–916; or (c) after Ibn ʿAdī returned 
to Jurjān from his second trip west and before his death, circa 304–365/916–976, excluding 
some amount of time in/around the year 316/928–929, when he may have traveled east.118 
Do we have any reason to think that Ibn Aʿtham was in Jurjān in any one of these periods?

113.  Ibn ʿAdī, Kāmil, 2:400. Cf. 3:114 (mentioning being in Damietta in 299/911–12); 4:63 (mentioning being 
in Egypt in Rajab 299/February–March 912); and 7:123 (mentioning hearing a report in Egypt first in 299/911–12 
and again in 305/917–18).

114.  Nishapur: Ibn ʿAdī, Kāmil, 5:420, 7:169; Sarakhs: 1:371; Marw: 1:339, 7:559, 8:401; Bukhārā: 1:124, 1:190, 
1:227, 1:253, 1:367, 1:423, 1:492, 1:511, 2:9, 2:141, 3:294, 3:449, 4:223, 5:109, 5:273, 5:238, 5:355, 6:48, 6:134, 6:214, 
7:284, 7:341, 7:356–58, 8:87, 8:130, 8:174, 8:281, 8:358, 8:408.

115.  It is, of course, also possible that Ibn ʿAdī made multiple trips—but given that these cities were all more 
less linked by a single route, it would have been most efficient to visit them all at once.

116.  Ibn Khurdādhbih, Kitāb al-Masālik wa-l-mamālik, ed. M. J. de Goeje (Leiden: Brill, 1889), 24.10 (describing 
the route from Sarakhs to Marw), 202.6 (describing the route from Nishapur to Marw); al-Maqdisī, Aḥsan 
al-taqāsīm fī maʿrifat al-aqālīm, ed. M. J. de Goeje (Leiden: Brill, 1877), 348.2 (referring incorrectly to “Jarūjird”); 
Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-buldān (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1397/1977), 2:172 (s.v. “Janūjird”). For a general description of the 
road, see G. Le Strange, Lands of the Eastern Caliphate: Mesopotamia, Persia, and Central Asia from the Moslem 
Conquest to the Time of Timur (Cambridge: University Press, 1905), 430–32.

117.  Ibn ʿAdī, Kāmil, 8:112.13.
118.  Elsewhere (Kāmil, 3:535), Ibn ʿAdī reported recording a hadith (albeit from a text) as late as Muḥarram 

360/November–December 970. Somewhat relatedly, al-Sahmī mentioned (Taʾrīkh Jurjān, 102.11–14) that a 
certain scholar came to read the Kāmil and other works with Ibn ʿAdī in Jurjān in 364/974–75.



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It is worth recalling at this point that the emended Madāʾinī cluster of isnāds showed 
that Ibn Aʿtham’s immediate sources were reaching the ends of their lives in the 260s 
and 270s/880s and 890s—corresponding well with his audition from al-Imām al-Ḥarrānī  
(d. 266/880). But knowing when someone was active does not necessarily tell us how old 
that person was at the time, nor does it allow us to pinpoint the time of the person’s death. 
However, there are a few suggestive hints about Ibn ʿAdī’s teachers, who must have been 
more or less Ibn Aʿtham’s contemporaries. First, although the earlier one looks in the 
biographical literature, the rarer birth dates are, we can nonetheless find two suggestions 
of age relations. One of the scholars Ibn ʿAdī met in Jurjān, a certain Abū Ḥāmid Aḥmad 
b. Ḥamdūn al-Naysābūrī, was reportedly about ninety years old when he died in Rabīʿ 
al-Awwal 321/March 933.119 This implies he was born around 231/845–46 and would have 
been in his late fifties when Ibn ʿAdī began collecting hadith in 288/901–2. Further, one 
of the scholars Ibn ʿAdī met in Baghdad, Aḥmad b. Nasṛ al-Baghdādī, was reportedly in 
his seventies when he died in Ramaḍān or Shawwāl 320/September–November 932.120  
This suggests he was born before 250/864–65 and would also have been in his late forties or 
early fifties when Ibn ʿAdī met him in Baghdad. Although it would be reckless to generalize 
about all these scholars on the basis of two examples, there is at least a suggestion here that 
Ibn ʿAdī’s teachers were, as Bulliet’s model of the age structure might lead us to expect, men 
in their fifties or older—and thus that Ibn Aʿtham himself may have been born sometime 
between 230 and 250/844 and 865, corresponding reasonably well to his hearing hadith 
from al-Imām al-Ḥarrānī before 266/880.

Next, we may look to the handful of isnāds—some in his own Kāmil, some in al-Sahmī’s 
Taʾrīkh—in which Ibn ʿAdī mentioned the year in which he heard a given report in Jurjān.121 
Between the Kāmil and the Taʾrīkh Jurjān, I found eight isnāds in which Ibn ʿAdī specified 
the time, seven pertaining to Jurjān (the old city) and one to Astarābād. Each of the isnāds 
is connected to a different report, but they feature only five different authorities and four 
different years (288/900–901, 291/903–4, 292/904–5, 295/907–8). Three of the isnāds refer to 
the same authority and the same year (288) and thus probably stem from a single meeting. 
Ibn ʿAdī met two other authorities in 291, one of these again in the next year (292), and two 
others in 295. Still, the overall range of dates provided is decidedly narrow: all belong to the 
period 288–95/900–908. Tentatively, then, we might see these isnāds as suggesting that Ibn 
ʿAdī was most active in gathering hadith in the region of Jurjān in the first period mentioned 
above, 288–97/901–9, before he traveled elsewhere to collect further hadith. Certainly, this 
pattern would conform to the ideal propounded by some authorities—namely, that young 
scholars should master local hadith first before traveling to other regions.122 If Ibn Aʿtham 

119.  Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 14:553–54.
120.  Al-Khaṭīb, Taʾrīkh, 6:409 (Ramaḍān or Shawwāl); Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh madīnat Dimashq, 6:51–53 (ditto); 

al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 15:68 (Ramaḍān).
121.  For a list of these isnāds (with citations), see Appendix 1. 
122.  See, for instance, the comment ascribed to Ṣāliḥ b. Aḥmad al-Hamadhānī by al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī: 

“It behooves the seeker of hadith and he who concerns himself with [such seeking] that he begin by recording 
the hadith of his country and the knowledge of its people, comprehending it and mastering it until he knows 
its healthful from its ailing (ṣaḥīḥahu wa-saqīmahu) and knows its transmitters and their affairs in a complete 



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Dating Ibn Aʿtham’s History  •  211

was born in 230–50/844–65, he would have been at least in his late thirties and perhaps 
even in his sixties at the height of Ibn ʿAdī’s activity in Jurjān, which would make him the 
right age to be Ibn ʿAdī’s teacher.

Still, the evidence is limited: Ibn ʿAdī specified the date on which he heard a report 
in Jurjān in only eight instances within a much larger list. But the evidence is not yet 
exhausted. More chronological information may be gleaned from examining the death 
dates of Ibn ʿAdī’s authorities, which constitute the latest possible times at which Ibn ʿAdī 
could have heard the relevant reports. Among all the isnāds cited in the Taʾrīkh Jurjān 
that mention Ibn ʿAdī hearing hadith from an authority in a specific place, I found death 
dates for twenty-nine of the cited authorities, some in the Taʾrīkh Jurjān and some in other 
prosopographical sources.123 These authorities all died between 292 and 337/904 and 949.124

Of course, these death dates are not necessarily proximate to the meetings in question, 
as the authorities might have died years after meeting Ibn ʿAdī, as was the case for at least 
three authorities. Three of the isnāds (from Aleppo, Baghdad, and Damghān, respectively) 
seem to refer to authorities he met on his travels west, so no later than 305/917–18.  
All three, however died after 310/922–23, one of them as late as 331/945. In other words, Ibn 
ʿAdī must have met these authorities five to twenty-five (or -six) years before their deaths. 
Consequently, although twenty of Ibn ʿAdī’s authorities—more than two-thirds of them—
reportedly died after he returned from his second trip (i.e., in or after 307/920), it is possible 
that Ibn ʿAdī heard them much earlier. At any rate, at least some of these isnāds can be 
located definitively in time. To the eight isnāds dating from the first period (288–97/901–9)  
we may add six more meetings in Jurjān, for six of Ibn ʿAdī’s authorities died before 
296/908–9. This means that fourteen isnāds in total attest to his collecting activities before 
he ever left Jurjān. Three other authorities died within the next decade, which included four 
or more years that Ibn ʿAdī spent outside of Jurjān; he may thus have met those authorities, 
too, before traveling.

Let us now draw the various threads together. We know that Ibn Aʿtham was alive before 
the death of al-Imām al-Ḥarrānī in 266/880, although it is unclear for how long. If we assume 
that Ibn Aʿtham was roughly contemporary to Ibn ʿAdī’s teachers (at the least the ones on 
whom we have any information), we might estimate that he was born between 230 and 
250/844 and 865 and died sometime in 292–337/904–49. Given the general age structure in 
hadith transmission, it seems more likely to me that Ibn Aʿtham was born and died toward 
the end of these ranges, meeting al-Imām al-Ḥarrānī when he was in his teens or twenties. 
If we assume, for instance, that Ibn Aʿtham was born in 245/859–60, he would have been 

fashion (yaʿraf … maʿrifatan tāmmatan), whatever there has been in his country of knowledge and scholars, 
ancient and recent. Then he may occupy himself with the hadith of [other] countries and traveling to them.” 
See al-Khaṭīb, Taʾrīkh, 2:6.7–12. Quoted and translated (with slight differences) in F. Rosenthal, A History of 
Muslim Historiography, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1968), 166.

123.  Given how many places are mentioned in the Kāmil, I have not tried to find death dates for all the 
authorities listed there; it seems to me the isnāds included in the Taʾrīkh Jurjān (some of which are also found 
in the Kāmil) are roughly representative. A more detailed study of Ibn ʿAdī’s career, however, would certainly 
require such analysis.

124.  For a list of these authorities and the sources for their death dates, see Appendix 2. 



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over fifty by the time Ibn ʿAdī was setting out on his first journey to the west in 297/909–10. 
And if we posit that Ibn ʿAdī was most active in gathering hadith in Jurjān in the first decade 
of his career, we might posit that he met Ibn Aʿtham there when the latter was in his forties 
or early fifties. Of course, Ibn ʿAdī was something of an exceptional scholar of hadith:  
as the Yanūjird isnād attests, he continued to gather reports as late as 316/928–29, when 
he was already in his late thirties, slightly extending the range in which he might have 
met Ibn Aʿtham. What is perhaps more important, however, is that this estimate seems to 
correspond relatively well to the claim made by Yāqūt—namely, that Ibn Aʿtham’s history 
concluded around the year 320/932. If Ibn Aʿtham was born in 245/859–60 and survived to 
an advanced age, he certainly could have lived long enough to write such a work. 

4b. Apologies: When Did al-Sallāmī Meet Ibn Aʿtham?

Let us now reconsider Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī’s mention in his Irshād al-arīb that a certain Abū 
ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn b. Aḥmad al-Sallāmī reported meeting Ibn Aʿtham at some point.125 According 
to this al-Sallāmī, Ibn Aʿtham recited the following lines of poetry to him: 

If a friend one day to you apologizes, / as would a true brother for some one of his sins, 
forgo your harshness and be satisfied, / for the noble man ignores offense.126

Conrad deemed the identity of al-Sallāmī ambiguous, noting that several men were known 
by this or a similar name, but Lindstedt assumed al-Sallāmī to be the author of a famous, 
lost Arabic history of the rulers of Khorasan.127 We now know that Lindstedt was correct. 
In a more recent edition of the Irshād, Iḥsān ʿAbbās added several biographies that are 
missing from older editions of the Irshād but appear in a later abridgment of the text. These 
added biographies include one for “al-Ḥusayn b. Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Sallāmī Abū 
ʿAlī al-Bayhaqī [al-Khwārī128], the learned man, the chronographer (al-adīb al-muʾarrikh). 
He died in the year 300 [912–13]. He was among the students of Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad 
al-Bayhaqī, and Abū Bakr al-Khwārazmī was among his students.”129 If al-Sallāmī lived until 

125.  Yāqūt, Irshād, ed. ʿAbbās, 1:202.4–7. 
126.  Idhā iʿtadhara al-saḍīqu ilayka yawman / min al-taqṣīri ʿ udhrata akhin muqirrin // fa-ṣunhu ʿ an jafāʾika 

wa-rḍa ʿanhu / fa-inna l-ṣafḥa shaymatu kulli ḥurrin. Al-Sallāmī is quoted as saying that Ibn Aʿtham “recited to 
me” (anshadanī), which seems to suggest immediate contact rather than, for instance, having read Ibn Aʿtham’s 
lines in a book.

127.  Conrad, “Ibn Aʿtham and His History,” 94; Lindstedt, “Sources for the Biography,” 304. On the historian 
al-Sallāmī, see W. Barthold, “Zur Geschichte der Ṣaffāriden,” in Orientalische Studien: Theodor Nöldeke zum 
siebzigsten Geburtstag (2. März 1906), ed. C. Bezold, 1:171–96 (Giessen: Alfred Töpelmann, 1906), 173–75; cf. W. 
Barthold, Turkestan down to the Mongol Invasion, trans. T. Minorsky, ed. C. E. Bosworth, 3rd ed. (1968; repr. 
New Delhi: Munshiram Mahorlal, 1992), 10–11 and 20–21.

128.  In Irshād, ed. ʿAbbās, 3:1029.4, Yāqūt gives his nisba as “al-Ḥawārī,” but Ibn Funduq, in Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, 
ed. A. Bahmanyār, 2nd ed. (Tehran: Kitābfurūshī-yi Furūghī dar Chāpkhāna-yi Islāmiyya, 1965), 154.15–17, has 
“al-Khwārī,” which is more likely correct. The latter refers to a village near Bayhaq—thus ibid., 34.4, and more 
generally, ʿA-Ak. Dihkhudā, Lughatnāma, ed. M. Muʿīn et al. (Tehran: Intishārāt wa-Chāp-i Dānishgāh-i Tihrān, 
1998), 7:10,020b (s.v. “Khwār”).

129.  Yāqūt, Irshād, ed. ʿAbbās, 3:1029–30. ʿAbbās added this biography on the basis of a manuscript of 
al-Takrītī’s abridgment of the Irshād, entitled Bughyat al-alibbāʾ min Muʿjam al-udabāʾ; see ʿ Abbās’s introduction 



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Dating Ibn Aʿtham’s History  •  213

300/912–13 and met Ibn Aʿtham, Ibn Aʿtham would be linked again (albeit indirectly) to the 
turn of the fourth/tenth century. 

There remains, however, a significant problem, one not broached by Lindstedt.  
Yāqūt claimed (as did Ibn Funduq al-Bayhaqī) that al-Sallāmī died in 300/912–13, but Vasily 
Bartol’d argued that this date must be judged incorrect.130 Ibn Funduq and Yāqūt both 
claimed that al-Sallāmī was taught by Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad al-Bayhaqī, a companion  
(and thus contemporary) of the Abbasid poet-prince Ibn al-Muʿtazz (247–96/861–908) and 
that he taught Abū Bakr al-Khwārazmī (323–83/934–93).131 Had al-Sallāmī died in 300/912–
13, he would have been roughly contemporary with his own teacher and deceased before 
one of his students was even born. Bartol’d proposed that the apparent problem could be 
explained as a transmissional mishap: perhaps Yāqūt and Ibn Funduq both drew on a source 
that originally gave al-Sallāmī’s death date as “three hundred and something,” but the 
decade and year were lost in transmission.

Speculating on the missing part of the date, Bartol’d suggested that the accounts of 
certain events in al-Gardīzī’s (d. after 423/1032?) Persian history, the Zayn al-akhbār, and 
Ibn al-Athīr’s (d. 630/1233) Arabic chronicle, the Kāmil fī al-taʾrīkh, so closely resemble one 
another that they must rely on the same source, which he surmised to be al-Sallāmī’s history 
of Khorasan, which is quoted by both authors. The accounts in question include detailed 
information about the fate and death (in 344/955) of Abū ʿAlī al-Chaghānī, a powerful 
governor of Khorasan under the Samanids with whom al-Sallāmī was reportedly affiliated.132 
Bartol’d reasoned that because this bit of information is the last shared by Gardīzī and Ibn 
al-Athīr, al-Sallāmī must have lived long enough to include his patron’s death in his history—
that is, he must have been writing until sometime after the mid-fourth/tenth century, and 
certainly beyond 300/912–13.133 Of course, there are other possibilities—al-Sallāmī’s work 
might have been finished by somebody else in the orbit of the Chaghāniyyān, for example—
but in light of the former point about the lifetimes of al-Sallāmī’s teacher and student, it is 
certainly plausible he himself continued writing.

Conrad also argued that the al-Sallāmī in question must have died in the mid-fourth/
tenth century. As he noted, the Khurāsānī anthologist Abū Manṣūr ʿAbd al-Malik al-Thaʿālibī 

(Irshād, from p. jīm).
130.  Ibn Funduq, Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, 154.9–17. Cf. Barthold, “Zur Geschichte der Ṣaffāriden,” 175, n. 2, which 

gives the passage from a manuscript. It is possible that Yāqūt took this date from Ibn Funduq, as he was rather 
familiar with the latter’s works, including the Tārīkh-i Bayhaq. See Yāqūt, Irshād, ed. ʿAbbās, 4:1762.9–1763.20.

131.  Ibn Funduq (Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, 154.15–17) described both relationships with the word shāgird, “pupil” or 
“disciple.” For the two men, see C. Brockelmann, “Al-Bayhaḳī,” in EI2, and C. Pellat, “Al-Khwārazmī,” in EI2. For 
Ibn al-Muʿtazz’s dates, see al-Khaṭīb, Taʾrīkh, 11:302.8–10 and 307–8.

132.  Al-Thaʿālibī, in Yatīmat al-dahr (Cairo: Ma  ṭbaʿat al-Ṣāwī, 1352/1934), 4:29, wrote that al-Sallāmī was‏
“an affiliate (munḥariṭ fī silk) of Abū Bakr Ibn Muḥtāj and his son, Abū ʿAlī.” For the latter two figures, see C. E. 
Bosworth, “The Rulers of Chaghāniyān in Early Islamic Times,” Iran 19 (1981): 1–20, at 4–9, and, more briefly, C. 
E. Bosworth, “Āl-e Moḥtāj,” in EIr.

133.  Barthold, “Zur Geschichte der Ṣaffāriden,” 174–75: “When Abū ʿAlī died in Rajab 344 (mid-November 
955), his body was taken back to Chagāniyān; this is the last event reported concordantly by Gardīzī and Ibn 
al-Athīr, so it was probably the conclusion of al-Sallāmī’s work” (cf. Barthold, Turkestan, 21). 



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(d. 429/1038), in reporting some lines of poetry attributed to al-Sallāmī, said, “I did not hear 
these two lines from him; rather, I found them in his work.”134 Conrad argued:

The implication of this statement is clearly that al-Thaʿālibī anticipated that his audience 
would suppose that he had heard the verses from the author himself; this in turn 
suggests that he could have done so—i.e. that al-Sallāmī was his older contemporary. As 
al-Thaʿālibī was born in 350/961 … it is unlikely that he would have been hearing poetry 
from al-Sallāmī before about 365/975. This year can thus be taken as approximating the 
earliest possible death date for this al-Sallāmī.135

Conrad’s reasoning about al-Sallāmī’s likely date of death is roughly in line with that 
of Bartol’d: if al-Sallāmī died in 365/975, he certainly could have reported on Abū ʿAlī 
Chāghānī’s death in 344/955.136 The guess is imprecise, for who can say when al-Thaʿālibī 
would notionally have found the lines and noted them down? At any rate, if he did in fact 
meet al-Sallāmī at some point, it must have been sometime after al-Thaʿālibī’s birth in 
350/961, meaning that al-Sallāmī cannot have died in 300/912–13.137 If al-Sallāmī lived that 
far into the fourth/tenth century, and he knew Ibn Aʿtham, he must have met Ibn Aʿtham in 
that century as well.

When it comes to al-Sallāmī’s hearing poetry from Ibn Aʿtham, however, it is more 
important for us to know when al-Sallāmī might have been born, which we can perhaps 
estimate on the basis of the death of his teacher, Ibrāhīm al-Bayhaqī. Two pieces of 
evidence point to the time of Ibrāhīm al-Bayhaqī’s death. One was already mentioned—he is 
described as having been a companion of Ibn al-Muʿtazz, who died in 296/908. The second 
comes from a surviving text ascribed to Ibrāhīm al-Bayhaqī called Kitāb al-Maḥāsin wa-l-
masāwī. Friedrich Schwally, who edited the text, argued that al-Bayhaqī must have lived 
into the reign of al-Muqtadir (r. 295–320/908–32) because a story in the Maḥāsin mentions 
that a signet ring taken from a “Chinese general” after a battle at Samarqand had been 
passed down in the Abbasid family “and is now with the caliph al-Muqtadir.”138 Because 
al-Bayhaqī referred to the present day and mentioned no figures later than al-Muqtadir, 
Schwally concluded that al-Bayhaqī died during or shortly after al-Muqtadir’s reign.139  
For our purposes, then, we can take the dates of al-Muqtadir’s reign as a rough estimate of 
the period of al-Bayhaqī’s death. If we assume that al-Sallāmī was a child or even a young 
man (say, no older than twenty-five) when his teacher, Ibrāhīm al-Bayhaqī, died, al-Sallāmī 

134.  Al-Thaʿālibī, Yatīmat al-dahr, 4:90.8: al-baytān lam asmaʿhumā minhu wa-innamā wajadtuhumā fī 
nuskhatihi. 

135.  Conrad, “Ibn Aʿtham and His History,” 94–95, n. 47.
136.  Of course, for Conrad this conclusion meant that al-Sallāmī the Khurāsānī historian could not have been 

the one who heard Ibn Aʿtham, given his acceptance of the 204/819–20 date for the Futūḥ.
137.  F. Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums (Leiden: Brill, 1967), 1:352, gave 350/961 as al-Sallāmī’s 

approximate death date, apparently using al-Thaʿālibī’s birth date. Cf. W. L. Treadwell, “The Political History of 
the Sāmānid State” (PhD thesis, University of Oxford, 1991), 7–9.

138.  Al-Bayhaqī, Kitāb al-Maḥāsin wa-l-masāwī, ed. F. Schwally (Giessen: J. Ricker, 1902), 504.8.
139.  Al-Bayhaqī, Kitāb al-Maḥāsin, viii.



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would have been born in the last decades of the third/ninth or the first decades of the 
fourth/tenth century (circa 270–315/883–928). 

Unfortunately, the age relationship between Ibn Aʿtham and al-Sallāmī is ambiguous: 
Were they peers? Or student and teacher? We can try both ideas on for size. If Ibn Aʿtham 
was born in the 230s or 240s/850s or 860s, as implied by his link to al-Imām al-Ḥarrānī, he 
would have been more than one hundred years old by the time al-Thaʿālibī was born. And 
if Ibn Aʿtham and al-Sallāmī were roughly contemporary to one another, we would expect 
al-Sallāmī to have been born not long after Ibn Aʿtham—meaning that he, too, would have 
been of an advanced age by the time al-Thaʿālibī was born. It thus seems more likely that 
Ibn Aʿtham was somewhat older than al-Sallāmī and that the latter was born closer to the 
end of the third/ninth century and thus died a few decades after Ibn Aʿtham, sometime 
after 350/961. 

4c. Summary: Biographical Connections

Ultimately, what we discover in the biographical literature is a broad network of 
connections to Ibn Aʿtham, both direct and indirect. Although we stand in the realm of 
speculation in several places, we can identify a handful of scholars who we have strong 
reason to think belong either to the generation preceding Ibn Aʿtham, to his own generation, 
or to the generation after. The following table brings these connections together.

Table 1. Ibn Aʿtham’s Biographical Connections

Figure Born Died Relative to Ibn Aʿtham

al-Imām al-Ḥarrānī ? 266/880 older

ʿAbd Allāh al-Balawī ca. 200/815? ca. 280/894? older

Abū Ḥāmid al-Naysābūrī ca. 231/845–46 321/933 contemporary

Ibn al-Muʿtazz 247/861 296/908 contemporary

Aḥmad b. Nasṛ al-Baghdādī before 250/864–65 320/932 contemporary

Ibrāhīm al-Bayhaqī ? before 320/932? contemporary

Ibn ʿAdī 277/891 365/976 younger

al-Sallāmī ? after 350/961? younger

Abū Bakr al-Khwārazmī 323/934 383/993 younger

al-Thaʿālibī 350/961 429/1038 younger



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To summarize the evidence for Ibn Aʿtham’s floruit, we can begin with a figure we know to 
be older than Ibn Aʿtham, al-Imām al-Ḥarrānī. If Ibn Aʿtham heard a report from al-Ḥarrānī, 
he must have been born before the latter died in 266/880; indeed, if the usual age structure 
of hadith transmission applies, he may well have been born perhaps five to twenty years 
earlier, around 246–261/860–875. This range fits with the admittedly scant information 
we have about Ibn ʿAdī’s teachers, who, we can assume, were roughly contemporary with 
Ibn Aʿtham. Of the two authorities cited by Ibn Aʿtham whose birth dates are known, an 
extremely old one (Abū Ḥāmid al-Naysābūrī) was born circa 231/845 and a younger one 
(Aḥmad b. Nasṛ al-Baghdādī) circa 250/865. A final hint lies in Ibn Aʿtham’s relationship 
with one of his sources for the history, ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad al-Balawī, an apparent 
contemporary of Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī (195–277/810–90). Al-Balawī, like Abū Ḥātim, would 
likely have been in his forties or fifties around the middle of the third/ninth century, when 
I suspect Ibn Aʿtham was born, and their relative ages once again conform to the common 
pattern in hadith transmission. For the sake of clarity, I will tentatively suggest that Ibn 
Aʿtham was born around 250/865.

Let us now work backward, from someone we suspect was younger than Ibn Aʿtham, 
namely al-Sallāmī. Bartol’d’s hypothesis about al-Sallāmī’s outliving Abū ʿAlī al-Chaghānī 
(d. 344/955) and Conrad’s hypothesis about his meeting al-Thaʿālibī (b. 350/961) together 
suggest that al-Sallāmī died some years after 350/961. According to Ibn Funduq, al-Sallāmī 
was a pupil (shāgird) of Ibrāhīm al-Bayhaqī and the teacher of Abū Bakr al-Khwārazmī 
(323–83/934–93). Al-Bayhaqī’s dates are not directly attested, but Schwally hypothesized 
on the basis of textual evidence that he died during the reign of al-Muqtadir (i.e., before 
320/932). Furthermore, al-Bayhaqī seems to have been a companion of Ibn al-Muʿtazz (247–
96/861–908). But there is reason to think he outlived Ibn al-Muʿtazz, who died an unnatural 
death, executed for his involvement in a plot to remove the newly inaugurated al-Muqtadir. 
At any rate, if al-Sallāmī learned from both al-Bayhaqī and Ibn Aʿtham, we may assume 
that the latter two were contemporaries—which implies that Ibn Aʿtham would have been 
contemporary to Ibn al-Muʿtazz as well. 

It would be most helpful if we knew the date of al-Sallāmī’s birth, which would give us 
a terminus post quem for his meeting with Ibn Aʿtham. Unfortunately, we can only guess. 
If his teacher al-Bayhaqī died as late as 320/932, al-Sallāmī must have been born some 
time before this. If we imagine that al-Bayhaqī tutored him as a small child (a relationship 
often depicted in chronicles), he might have been born around 310–15/922–27 at the latest. 
In that case, al-Sallāmī would have been in his late twenties or thirties in 344/955, when 
Bartol’d thought he was still in the service of the Chaghāniyyān. Further, it would certainly 
be reasonable to think that he lived beyond 350/961, as he would have been only in his 
forties at that time. But if so, he would have been no more than a decade older than Abū 
Bakr al-Khwārazmī, who was reportedly born in 323/934—a possibility that fits uneasily 
with Ibn Funduq’s calling al-Khwārazmī the shāgird of al-Sallāmī.

If al-Sallāmī and Ibn ʿAdī were roughly the same age, many of these points would be 
clearer. If al-Sallāmī was born circa 277/891 and lived until 365/976, as Ibn ʿAdī was and 
did, he easily could have studied with al-Bayhaqī circa 300/912, served as a senior counselor 
 



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Dating Ibn Aʿtham’s History  •  217

to the Chaghāniyyān in the 330s and 340s/940s and 950s, and met a young al-Thaʿālibī after 
350/961. But this timeline would require him to be nearly ninety years of age at his death, 
as Ibn ʿAdī was, which is even now an above-average lifespan. By contrast, had he been born 
in 290/902–3, he could have done all these things around the same times, but as a slightly 
younger man.

Let us return, finally, to Yāqūt’s report that Ibn Aʿtham’s Taʾrīkh concluded near the end 
of the reign of al-Muqtadir. In light of all the foregoing, it is decidedly reasonable to think 
that Ibn Aʿtham died circa 320/932, as has often been claimed (if never demonstrated).  
Even if we exclude the text-internal evidence, it is plausible that Ibn Aʿtham died in 320/932. 
If he was born in 250/865, for instance, he would have been nearly thirty years old when Ibn 
ʿAdī was born in 277/891, in his late forties by the time Ibn ʿAdī was preparing for his first 
study trip in 297/909, in his late fifties when Ibn ʿAdī returned to Jurjān after the second trip 
around 306/918–19, and only sixty-seven years old in 320/932. Similarly, if he was born in 
250/865 and died in 320/932, he would have been only a little younger than Ibn al-Muʿtazz 
and certainly could have been active during the reign of al-Muqtadir, as Ibrāhīm al-Bayhaqī 
seems to have been. Of course, it is also possible that Ibn Aʿtham finished (or gave up) writing 
his history around the end of al-Muqtadir’s reign but lived for a few years more.140 But at a 
minimum, we may say that Ibn Aʿtham almost certainly died circa 320/932. Going further, 
I might propose an approximate range: estimating generously from his various biographical 
connections, Ibn Aʿtham likely lived from about 250 to about 325/865–937.

5. Conclusion: Ibn Aʿtham, Islamicate Historiography, and Written Culture

Ultimately, evidence both internal and external to Ibn Aʿtham’s history indicates that 
he must have lived and written through the first decades of the fourth/tenth century, 
as suggested long ago by Frähn and recently affirmed by Lindstedt. In this article, I have 
attempted to settle the debate conclusively. Three points are particularly important.  
First, the alternate date of composition, 204/819–20, offered in the later Persian translation, 
the keystone of Conrad’s argument, is not attested in any source other than the modern 
Bombay lithographs of the Persian translation (or perhaps the late branch of the manuscript 
tradition they represent). Thus, there is little reason to take it as credible evidence for the 
composition of Ibn Aʿtham’s history. Second, although reading the isnāds in Ibn Aʿtham’s 
history is hampered by errors more or less commonly found in manuscript transmission, 
I showed that comparing a series of related isnāds in the text—and making certain 
corresponding emendations—reveals them to be largely consistent with the later dating,  
as they connect Ibn Aʿtham to figures working in the last decades of the third/ninth century 
 
 

140.  Thus, as mentioned above, Khalīfa b. Khayyāṭ’s Taʾrīkh concludes in 232/847, but he died several years 
later in 240/854. Similarly, Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭabarī died in 310/923, but the version of his Taʾrīkh we have only 
goes down to Dhū al-Ḥijja 302/July 915 (as noted in C. Gilliot, “Al-Ṭabarī,” in EI2). But cf. Ibn al-Qifṭī’s claim 
that al-Ṭabarī’s history continued to 309/921–22. See al-Zawzanī’s abridgement: al-Muntakhabāt al-mulṭaqaṭāt 
min Kitāb Ikhbār al-ʿulamāʾ bi-akhbār al-ḥukamāʾ li-Ibn al-Qifṭī, ed. J. Lippert with A. Müller (Leipzig: Dieterich, 
1320/1903), 110.8–9, cited in Rosenthal, Muslim Historiography, 81.



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and the first decades of the fourth/tenth century (especially al-Balawī). Third, and finally, 
further examination of the biographical evidence adduced by Lindstedt demonstrates that 
the relative dates established by Ibn Aʿtham’s various connections to at least seven other, 
better-known historical figures (al-Imām al-Ḥarrānī, Ibn ʿAdī, and al-Sallāmī, plus Ibrāhīm 
al-Bayhaqī, Abū Bakr al-Khwārazmī, Ibn al-Muʿtazz, and al-Thaʿālibī) place his activities 
securely in the closing decades of the third/ninth century and the first decades of the next 
one. All in all, I argued, the broader picture of Ibn Aʿtham’s biographical connections shows 
that Yāqūt’s report that Ibn Aʿtham’s Taʾrīkh concluded with the reign of al-Muqtadir is 
not only plausible but a fairly good indication of when Ibn Aʿtham died, sometime around 
320/932.

There are two conclusions we may draw from this examination of Ibn Aʿtham’s history, 
a conventional one and a slightly more unconventional one. The conventional conclusion 
has to do with locating Ibn Aʿtham in the development of Islamicate historiography.  
It is not difficult, of course, to imagine why Shaban, Conrad, and others were interested 
in the possibility that Ibn Aʿtham’s text was written early in the third/ninth century.  
If the Futūḥ had been written then, it would provide early attestation for particular ways 
of framing the history of Islamic politics and society.141 It must be admitted, however, that 
the later dating accords much better with the generally accepted model of the emergence 
of Arabic historiography. Like other historians of the fourth/tenth century, Ibn Aʿtham 
joined themes that in the previous century might have been treated separately in more 
narrowly focused “monographs.” Disparate accounts of caliphal politics, the conquest of 
particular places or regions, and rebellions (especially of the maqtal sort) were synthesized 
into a single chronological stream.142 Here, then, is an important methodological point for 
future studies in Aʿthamology: if we are to interpret the contents of Ibn Aʿtham’s history 
with an eye to the context in which it was produced, we must look to developments in the 
early fourth/tenth century. In particular, my study of the isnāds suggests that we must 
think of Ibn Aʿtham as a receptor of the earlier “monographic” narratives, perhaps even 
especially as a reader (rather than an auditor) of those narratives. This position will have 
important implications both for studying the particularities of Ibn Aʿtham’s narratives 
and for establishing how the methodological assumptions underpinning his history relate 
to the approaches of his contemporaries, such as al-Balādhurī (d. 279/892?), al-Yaʿqūbī 
  

141.  As Shaban contended—see his “Ibn Aʿtham al-Kūfī” and cf. Lindstedt, “Sources for the Biography,” 300.
142.  I regard as the standard account of that development Robinson’s treatment in Islamic Historiography, 

20–38, but it was preceded by a number of important studies. See H. A. R. Gibb, “Tarikh” in Studies on the 
Civilization of Islam, ed. S. J. Shaw and W. R. Polk (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962), 108–37 (a 
reprint of a lemma from the first Encyclopaedia of Islam); Rosenthal, Muslim Historiography (esp. part 1, chapter 
3); A. Noth, “Der Charakter der ersten großen Sammlungen von Nachrichten zur frühen Kalifenzeit,” Der Islam 
47 (1971): 168–99; A. Noth with L. Conrad, The Early Arabic Historical Tradition: A Source-Critical Study, trans. 
M. Bonner (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 1994); and Donner, Narratives of Islamic Origins. Khalidi (in his Arabic 
Historical Thought) took a contrasting perspective, proceeding by epistemology rather than source structure 
and pointing out a certain diversity in the use of shared textual forms.



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Dating Ibn Aʿtham’s History  •  219

(d. after 292/905), and al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/922).143 Future work focused on Ibn Aʿtham’s history 
will have to begin from the fourth/tenth-century dating, not the third/ninth-century one.

Still, it is decidedly ironic—if it is not purely coincidental—that the author of a lengthy 
and relatively early work of Islamicate historiography should be so obscure. Those who 
knew something specific about the historian (e.g., al-Sahmī) apparently knew nothing of 
the history; and those who knew of the history (e.g., Yāqūt) knew almost nothing about the 
historian.144 The surviving biographical traces are faint and indirect, fleeting impressions 
of personal encounters in the realms of poetry and hadith, not in that of historiography.  
And yet Ibn Aʿtham’s history was copied on and off for some time: the dates of the witnesses 
we have range from the seventh to the thirteenth (thirteenth to nineteenth) centuries. 
Whatever later readers found interesting about the history, however, they seem not to have 
connected it to the person of Ibn Aʿtham. 

This irony points to the more unconventional conclusion to be drawn from the history 
of Ibn Aʿtham’s history. The difficulty of dating Ibn Aʿtham points toward a need to 
reconceptualize our developmental model of the history of Islamicate history writing, or at 
least to question some of the assumptions underlying it. In particular, the case of locating 
Ibn Aʿtham and his history in time provides a direct challenge to what we might think of as 
“the library assumption.” Once a physical text, almost always in the form of a modern print 
edition, is caught in the bibliographical net of a library catalog, we assume a correspondence 
between the work and its author.145 This assumed correspondence parallels (or perhaps even 
generates) a hermeneutical assumption that the contents of the work—for which the author 
serves as a chronological marker—function to document a moment in intellectual history.146 

143.  For al-Balādhurī’s use of sources, see especially K. Athamina, “The Sources of al-Balādhurī’s Ansāb 
al-Ashrāf,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 5 (1984): 237–62, in which Athamina argued that al-Balādhurī 
distinguished between sources he had heard and those he had read in his style of citation. Much as Ibn Aʿtham 
seems to have done, in the former case al-Balādhurī cited full isnāds, whereas in the latter case he opted for brief 
references. Athamina’s conclusions have recently been extended by R. Lynch in the third chapter of his Arab 
Conquests and Early Islamic Historiography: The “Futuh al-Buldan” of al-Baladhuri (London: I. B. Tauris, 2020), 
in which he argued that similar citational patterns are present in al-Balādhurī’s Kitāb Futūḥ al-buldān. As noted 
above, I made an attempt at outlining (and distinguishing) certain methodological presumptions in the works 
of Ibn Aʿtham, al-Yaʿqūbī, and al-Ṭabarī in the third chapter of my dissertation—“Ibn Aʿtham’s History,” 128–86.

144.  The one exception, perhaps, is the hadith scholar Ibn Mākūlā (d. 475/1082), who, in his text on commonly 
mistaken names, both recorded Ibn Aʿtham’s nasab (from al-Sahmī?) and mentioned his history. See Lindstedt, 
“Sources for the Biography,” 303.

145.  For a discussion of similar assumptions in European book history, see D. F. McKenzie, Bibliography 
and the Sociology of Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), esp. 1–21. Cf. R. Chartier, The Order 
of Books: Readers, Authors, and Libraries in Europe between the Fourteenth and Eighteenth Centuries, trans. 
L. G. Cochrane (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), 25–60, tracing the conceptual emergence of 
authorship and literary property in Europe as a function of the production and sale of printed books.

146.  See, e.g., H. Motzki, “The Author and His Work in the Islamic Literature of the First Centuries: The Case 
of ʿAbd al-Razzāq’s Muṣannaf,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 28 (2003): 171–201, at 171: “The author … 
plays a crucial role in dating a work. The author’s birth or death dates often supply the only indication of the 
work’s place in time and space. This information can be used to reconstruct the development of thinking and 
writing in different branches of knowledge and literature. Without being able to identify the authors it would 
be very difficult, if not impossible, to compose a history of literature.” Having said that, however, Motzki went 



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The library’s shelves offer us a series of data points, which, when arranged chronologically, 
offer a picture of linear development. In other words, if we can locate Ibn Aʿtham’s history 
in time, we can get on to the project of interpreting the work and translating its particular 
form and contents into one instantiation (among many) of the broader, singular intellectual 
phenomenon we think of as Islamic historiography. 

The problem with this assumption, however, is apparent even in the history: whatever 
Ibn Aʿtham thought about historiography in his own time is nearly entirely implicit in his 
text. As far as we know, Ibn Aʿtham never mentioned anything like an ʿilm al-taʾrīkh, let 
alone anything about how his own work or understanding of the past related to it. It was 
only a few centuries later that such an idea would emerge among Islamicate historians. 
Therefore, figuring out the most likely date on which Ibn Aʿtham’s history was composed 
on the way to figuring out its significance in documenting the rise of Islamic historiography 
represents a chronological operation that has more to do with the pursuit of a modern 
academic goal—namely, the attempt to develop an encompassing historical model of the 
development of an intellectual tradition with, it is assumed, some underlying unity—than it 
does with tracking the discourse of any given historian of Ibn Aʿtham’s time.147

But it is precisely the nature of the evidence for dating, the difficulty of the operation, 
that shows that Ibn Aʿtham’s history cannot be reduced to an instantiation of a particular 
intellectual project at a particular time. Rather, Ibn Aʿtham’s history as we know it, as a 
material object existing in a diversity of unique copies, reflects textual practices in a variety 
of social contexts. It serves to document not a single point in the development of an Islamic 
historiography but rather a web of transmissive and intertextual relationships across time 
and space—and across language boundaries, for that matter. 

Furthermore, these later appearances have already had important implications for the 
interpretation of the history. Conrad’s reading of the text and his ideas about not only 
the date of its composition but also the sociohistorical motivations behind its composition 
were based in large part on information gleaned from a thoroughly modern version of the 
text, the Bombay lithographs. In this case, the modern reception of Ibn Aʿtham’s history 
has been (so far) more decisive for our interpretations than the original—so much so that 
a modern datum overpowered an apparent conclusion: as already noted, Ibn Aʿtham’s 

on to argue in the rest of this article that certain of our assumptions about authors and books are incongruous 
with Islamicate texts.

147.  On the slow development of the concept of history as a separate “discipline” of knowledge, see 
Rosenthal, Muslim Historiography, 30–42. Notably, the idea seems to have emerged earliest in Persian histories; 
to Rosenthal’s citations of Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī’s (d. 606/1209) Ḥadāʾiq al-anwār we may add the slightly earlier 
invocations of the Persian phrase ʿilm-i tārīkh (in a few forms) in the introduction to Ibn Funduq’s (d. 565/1169–
70) Tārīkh-i Bayhaq, 4.16 (ʿilm-i tārīkh), 7.16 (ʿilm-i tawārīkh), 8.19 (ʿilm-i tawārīkh), 10.6 (ḥifẓ-i īn ʿilm āsān-tar 
ast), 11.15 (ʿulūm-i tawārīkh), 15.14 (hīch kas badīn ʿilm ḥājatmandtar). Rosenthal (Muslim Historiography, 35, 
n. 2) read an early occurrence of a similar phrase (ʿilm al-taʾrīkhāt) in Ibn Fārighūn’s (fl. mid-fourth/tenth 
century) Jawāmiʿ al-ʿulūm as referring to the division of history into eras, rather than to a discipline. Khalidi 
(Arabic Historical Thought, 132) and Robinson (Islamic Historiography, 36) both noted that al-Masʿūdī (d. 
345/956?) stated in Murūj al-dhahab, 1:12, §7 that he “wished to leave for the world a blessed reminder and a 
prepared and organized knowledge” (ʿilman manẓūman ʿatīdan) in the form of his history, but the phrase does 
not seem to reflect a broader “disciplinary” awareness.



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history is clearly more related to the later synthetic chronographies than it is to the earlier 
monographs. But the modern version of the text, in turn, depended for its existence on a 
decision taken in yet another nonoriginal context—namely, that of translating the text into 
Persian, a reflection of the reading practices of an aʿyān-amīr circle centered in southern 
Khorasan.148

I do not mean to suggest here that dating is a pointless endeavor or that modern academic 
articulations necessarily misconstrue historical phenomena by not merely reproducing 
them in their original terms.149 After all, my purpose in this article has been precisely to 
perform this internal chronological operation on the basis of as much as evidence as possible.  
Even if Ibn Aʿtham’s history ought to be imagined as standing in a web of chronological 
relations rather than in a straightforward chronology of development, we cannot dispense 
entirely with locating him and his work in time. Nor do I mean to suggest that Ibn Aʿtham’s 
history lacks any continuity with its original composition, that it was so thoroughly 
subjected to progressive revision that each generation of reader-historians remade the 
text entirely in the image of their own presuppositions about the past. Indeed, where the 
manuscripts of Ibn Aʿtham’s history overlap, they differ primarily in terms of the traces of 
the inevitable mouvance of manuscript reproduction.150 It is certainly possible to attempt to 
place our image of the original history into something like a chronological developmental 
sequence. 

Further, reconsidering Ibn Aʿtham’s history in light of its material and reception 
histories will certainly not solve some of the informational problems we face.  

148.  In his introduction to the translation, Muḥammad al-Mustawfī (Futūḥ, pp. panjāh u-yak–panjāh u-panj) 
recounts that the suggestion to translate Ibn Aʿtham in 596/1199 was made by an unnamed grandee apparently 
in the orbit of the Khwārazmshāhs based in Tāybād and Zawzan. For a discussion and further references, see my 
“Ibn Aʿtham’s History,” 250–58 and 363–65.

149.  As Marshall Hodgson aptly put it in a slightly different context, “though each particular step in the 
formation of the Sharîʿah had its immediate rationale, there were inevitably many potential alternatives. That 
the major choices prevailed as they did was surely due to their enabling Muslims to come closer to fulfilling the 
overall ideals of the Sharîʿah-minded. These ideals they did not present in the abstract manner required by the 
historian, who measures them against the corresponding ideals of other eras. We must state in our own modern 
terms, and against the background of the ages that had preceded, what it was that those early Muslims were 
taking for granted; what it was that they were acting upon without articulating. But we may hope to come to a 
formulation which, while they would not have made it, they would not have repudiated once they understood 
it”; M. G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, vol. 1, The Classical 
Age of Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 318.

150.  With some notable exceptions: for instance, the Arabic and Persian texts differ sharply in their accounts 
of the circumstances of the death of al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī. Compare Ibn Aʿtham, Futūḥ, 4:205–6 (in which al-Ḥasan 
dies naturally) with Mustawfī, Futūḥ, 789–91 (in which al-Ḥasan is poisoned in a conspiracy led by his erstwhile 
opponent, Muʿāwiya b. Abī Sufyān). See also M. Schönléber’s instructive examination of the divergences between 
two very different witnesses to Ibn Aʿtham’s account of the Ridda in “Notes on the Textual Tradition,” 432–38, 
noting for instance, two starkly different approaches to the inclusion of poetry. The concept of mouvance is 
from P. Zumthor, Essai de poétique médiévale (Paris: Editions de Seuil, 1972), 65–75, esp. 71–74, arguing that 
modern understandings of texts and authorship tend to exclude the variation inherent in both the performance 
and the reproduction of premodern texts (in his case, especially vernacular poetry). For a brief discussion of the 
idea’s application to Islamicate poetry, see O. M. Davidson, “The Text of Ferdowsi’s Shâhnâma and the Burden 
of the Past,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 118 (1998): 63–68.



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Copyists tend to be even more obscure than historians like Ibn Aʿtham, and manuscripts 
do not always reveal the exact circumstances of their own production. But the point is 
precisely that no one set of circumstances, neither those of its author nor those of any 
given witness to the text, will ever explain what Ibn Aʿtham’s history has been or is.  
Indeed, the whole infrastructure of our knowledge in the case of Ibn Aʿtham’s history—and I 
see no reason to regard him as particularly atypical—is built on the interventions of people 
living in different places, working on different, if related, projects of knowledge production. 
Even if the loss or reconfiguration of works may sometimes be due to pure vagaries in 
transmission (mishandling, munching worms, fire, forgetting), such losses may also result 
structurally from the workings of a written culture that produced not only Ibn Aʿtham’s 
histories but many other works in all manner of genres.151 

In short, Ibn Aʿtham’s history (and, I venture, other works like it) cannot be seen 
only as a singular document of intellectual history, bearing one set of articulations of 
the Islamicate past made in a particular time and place. Rather, it is an artifact of the 
longue durée, reflecting overlapping practices in a culture of writing the past that 
unfolded across time and in varying sets of circumstances. Even if we need not despair of 
successfully understanding the history of Islamicate historiography, some rethinking is 
certainly in order. What must be avoided is projecting historical development into a telos 
in which all later interpretive engagements reflect the trajectory of an original, context-
delimited essence moving forward in time. Indeed, to my mind, the problem is suggested 
by the very phrase “Islamic” (or “Arabic” or “Persian” or “Abbasid”) historiography,  
which serves to locate the broader phenomenon in relation to a particular ideological origin. 
What is needed instead, I think, are fine-grained accounts of how received knowledge, 
contemporary interpretation, biobibliographical reception, sociopolitical circumstances, 
and material textual practice congealed in the particular versions of works that we have. 
A truly historical understanding of the practice of historiography in Islamicate society will 
depend not on assembling developmental sequences of ideal types but on interpreting how 
textual materiality reveals the interaction of intercontextual dynamics that is part and 
parcel of the transmission of works in Islamicate written culture.

151.  It might even be argued that the vulnerability of Islamicate manuscripts to such vagaries is a function 
of this particular written culture, dependent as it was on the fragile medium of paper in frequently inhospitable 
environments.



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Appendix 1. Ibn ʿAdī’s Isnāds with Dates  
(from Ibn ʿAdī’s Kāmil and al-Sahmī’s Taʾrīkh Jurjān)

Date Number in al-Sahmī/Name Location Source

288/ 
900–901

682. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Maṣīṣī Jurjān Kāmil, 8:140

288/ 
900–901

682. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Maṣīṣī Jurjān Kāmil, 9:145 

288/ 
900–901

682. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Maṣīṣī Jurjān al-Sahmī, 458.14–15

291/ 
903–4

549. ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Khālidī Jurjān Kāmil, 8:112

291/ 
903–4

684(?). Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Ḥakīm Jurjān Kāmil, 8:131

292/ 
904–5

549. ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Khālidī Jurjān Kāmil, 7:549

295/ 
907–8

Muḥammad b. ʿAlī al-Anṣārī al-Marwazī Jurjān Kāmil, 7:558

295/ 
907–8

48. Aḥmad b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Harawī Astarābād al-Sahmī, 62.3–4

Total: 8



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Appendix 2. Death Dates of Authorities  
in Ibn ʿAdī’s Location-Specifying Isnāds in al-Sahmī’s Taʾrīkh Jurjān

Note: In all but two cases, the isnād-with-location given by Ibn ʿAdī appears in al-Sahmī’s 
biography for the figure in question. Where this is not the case, I have noted the number 
of the biography in which it appears in brackets. For the sake of concision, I have given 
only limited onomastic information, but al-Sahmī and the other prospographers frequently 
include more.

Death Date Number in al-Sahmī/Name Location Source

292/ 
904–5

984. Yaʿqūb b. Yūsuf  
al-Jūbārī

Jurjān TI, 6:1067–68

Rabīʿ I 293/ 
Jan 906

600. al-Faḍl b. ʿAbd Allāh  
al-Tamīmī

Jurjān SAN, 13:573–74

Jumādā II 293/
Mar–Apr 906

27. Aḥmad b. Mūsā  
al-Jannābī

Jurjān TJ

Dhū al-Qaʿda 294/
Aug–Sep 907

655. Muḥammad b. Yaḥyā  
al-Marwazī

Jurjān TJ

Rabīʿ I 295/ 
Jan 908

673. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh  
al-Rāzī

Jurjān TJ

296/ 
908–9

666. Muḥammad b. ʿAlī  
al-Anṣārī

Jurjān TJ; SAN, 13:516 
(293)

291–300/  
903–13

368. Shurayḥ b. ʿAqīl  
al-Isfarāʾinī

Jurjān TI, 6:952

301/ 
913–14

139. Ibrāhīm b. Hāniʾ  
al-Shāfiʿī

Jurjān SAN, 14:194

305/ 
917–18

29. Aḥmad b. al-ʿAbbās  
al-Istrābādhī

Astarābād TI, 7:86

Ramaḍān 307/ 
Jan–Feb 920

21. Aḥmad b. Muḥammad  
al-Wazzān

Jurjān TJ

309/ 
921–22

415. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAbd al-Muʾmin 
al-Muhallabī

Jurjān TJ; TI, 14:222–23

310/ 
922–23

508. ʿAlī b. Aḥmad  
al-Jurjānī

Aleppo TJ; TI, 7:241 
(311/923)

301–10/ 
913–23

397. ʿAbd al-Muʾmin b. Aḥmad  
al-ʿAṭṭār

Jurjān TI, 7:185



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Dating Ibn Aʿtham’s History  •  225

Death Date Number in al-Sahmī/Name Location Source

301–10/ 
913–23

1165. Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar  
al-Istrābādhī

Astarābād TI, 7:193

316/ 
928–29

418. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Muḥammad 
al-Qurashī 

Jurjān TI, 7:310

Dhū al-Qaʿda 317/ 
Dec 929–Jan 930

549. ʿAlī b. Muḥammad  
al-Khālidī

Jurjān A, 5:24

Ramaḍān 320/  
Sep–Oct 932 

Aḥmad b. Nasr  
al-Baghdādī [in no. 651]

Baghdad TB, 6:409  (or Shawwāl); 
TMD, 6:51–53 (ditto); SAN, 

15:68 (Ramaḍān)

320/ 
932

434. ʿAbd Allāh b. Jaʿfar  
al-Āmulī

Jurjān TJ

Rabīʿ I 321/ 
Mar 933

31. Aḥmad b. Ḥamdūn  
al-Naysābūrī

Jurjān A, 1:312–14;  
SAN, 14:553–54

323/ 
934–35

208. Bundār b. Ibrāhīm  
al-Istrābādhī

Jurjān TI, 7:474

Ṣafar 324/ 
Jan 936

938. Mūsā b. al-ʿAbbās  
al-Āzādhyārī

Jurjān TI, 7:502

Rabīʿ I 325/ 
Jan–Feb 937

437. ʿAbd Allāh b. al-Sarī  
al-Istrābādhī

Jurjān TI, 7:509

Muḥarram 325/
Nov–Dec 936

680. Muḥammad b. Saʿīd  
al-Naysābūrī

Jurjān SAN, 15:258

after 325/ 
936–37

589. Al-ʿAbbās b. ʿAbd Allāh  
al-Baghdādī

Jurjān TB, 14:47–48;  
TMD, 26:266–68

326/ 
937–38

169/1068. Ismāʿīl b. al-Ṃuhammad  
al-Ḥamakī

Astarābād TJ

Jumādā II 331/ 
Feb–Mar 943

885. Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm  
al-Dāmghānī [in no. 492]

Dāmghān TJ; TI, 7:649

Rabīʿ II 333/ 
Dec 944

742. Muḥammad b. Muḥammad  
al-Juhanī

Jurjān TJ

337/ 
948–49

191. Isḥāq b. Ibrāhīm  
al-Baḥrī

Jurjān SAN, 15:471–72

337 (end)/ 
949 (mid)

496. ʿĪsā b. Zayd  
al-Fārisī

Jurjān A, 9:340

Total: 29



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Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 30 (2022)

Death Date Number in al-Sahmī/Name Location Source

Abbreviations
TJ = al-Sahmī, Taʾrīkh Jurjān
TB = al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Taʾrīkh Madīnat al-Salām
A = al-Samʿānī, al-Ansāb
TMD = Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh madīnat Dimashq
SAN = al-Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām al-nubalāʾ
TI = al-Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh al-Islām



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Dating Ibn Aʿtham’s History  •  227

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