Template:Infobox religious biography
ʾAḥmad ibn Yaḥyā ibn Jābir al-Balādhurī (Template:Lang-ar) was a 9th-century Muslim historian. One of the eminent Middle Eastern historians of his age, he spent most of his life in Baghdad and enjoyed great influence at the court of the caliph al-Mutawakkil. He travelled in Syria and Iraq, compiling information for his major works.
His full name was Ahmad Bin Yahya Bin Jabir Al-Baladhuri (Template:Lang-ar), Balazry Ahmad Bin Yahya Bin Jabir Abul Hasan[1] or Abi al-Hassan Baladhuri.[2]
Biography
Al-Baladhuri's ethnicity has been described as Arab[3][4] and Persian,[5][6][3] although his sympathies seem to have been strongly with the Arabs, for Masudi refers to one of his works in which he rejects Baladhuri's condemnation of non-Arab nationalism Shu'ubiyya.[7]
He lived at the court of the caliphs al-Mutawakkil and Al-Musta'in and was tutor to the son of al-Mutazz. He died in 892 as the result of a drug called baladhur (hence his name).[7] (Baladhur is Semecarpus anacardium, known as the "marking nut"; medieval Arabic and Jewish writers describe it as a memory-enhancer).[8]
Works
Template:Wikisource author His chief extant work, a condensation of a longer history, Kitab Futuh al-Buldan (فتوح البلدان), "Book of the Conquests of Lands", translated by Phillip Hitti (1916) and Francis Clark Murgotten (1924) in The Origins of the Islamic State, tells of the wars and conquests of the Arabs from the 7th century, and the terms made with the residents of the conquered territories. It covers the conquests of lands from Arabia west to Egypt, North Africa, and Spain and east to Iraq, Iran, and Sind.
His history, in turn, was much used by later writers. Ansab al-Ashraf (أنساب الأشراف, “Lineage of the Nobles”), also extant, is a biographical work in genealogical order devoted to the Arab aristocracy, from Muhammad and his contemporaries to the Umayyad and Abbāsid caliphs. It contains histories of the reigns of rulers.[9]
His discussions of the rise and fall of powerful dynasties provide a political moral. His commentaries on methodology are sparse, other than assertions of accuracy.[10]
See also
References
- ↑ Salaam Knowledge
- ↑ Answering-Ansar.org :: Fadak; The property of Fatima al-Zahra [as] Template:Webarchive
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Historians of the Islamic World: Selected Entries from Encyclopaedia of the World of Islam{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}. EWI Press(31 January 2013). ISBN 978-1-908433-12-1
- ↑ BALĀḎORĪ. ENCYCLOPÆDIA IRANICA. Retrieved 22 November 2016.
- ↑ A history of Medieval Islam{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}. Routledge(2006). ISBN 0-415-05914-3
- ↑ Non-Muslim Provinces under Early Islam: Islamic Rule and Iranian Legitimacy in Armenia and Caucasian Albania{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}. Cambridge University Press(2017). ISBN 978-1107188518
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs namedBritannica - ↑ Bos, Gerrit: " 'Baladhur' (Marking-Nut): A Popular Medieval Drug for Strengthening Memory", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 59, No. 2 (1996), pp. 229-236 (full-text via JSTOR; article's first page available for all)
- ↑ "Balādhurī, al-." Encyclopædia Britannica 2006.
- ↑ Baladhuri, Ahmad ibn Yahya al- - Oxford Islamic Studies Online. www.oxfordislamicstudies.com. Retrieved 2020-05-10.
Further reading
External links
- Template:Commons category-inline
- Template:Wikiquote-inline
- Al-Balādhurī, britannica.com
- Futūḥ al-Buldān{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}. Dār al-Nashr li-al-Jāmi‘īyīn(1957)
- The Origins of the Islamic State: Translation with Annotations Geographic and Historic Notes of the Kitāb Futūḥ al-Buldān of al-Imâm abu-l'Abbâs Aḥmad ibn-Jâbir al-Balâdhuri{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}. Columbia University Press(1916)
- The Origins Of The Islamic State{{#if:|, {{{last}}}}. Columbia University Press(1924)