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Abū Muḥammad Aḥmad ibn Aʿtham al-Kūfī al-Kindī ( ar, أبو محمد أحمد بن أعثم الكوفي) was a 9th-century
Arab The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, ...
Muslim historian :''This is a subarticle of Islamic scholars, List of Muslim scholars and List of historians.'' The following is a list of Muslim historians writing in the Islamic historiographical tradition, which developed from hadith literature in the time ...
, poet and preacher (''
qāṣṣ In early Islam, a ''qāṣṣ'' (plural ''quṣṣāṣ'') was a preacher or "sermoniser" who told stories ostensibly to edify the faithful. The term comes from the Arabic verb ''qaṣṣa'', meaning "to recount". The ''qāṣṣ'' was essentiall ...
'') active in the late 8th and early 9th centuries. He was a Shīʿī of the '' akhbārī'' school, a son of a student (or tradent) of the sixth imam, Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, who died in 765. Although Ibn Aʿtham al-Kūfī's date of death is usually given as AH 314 ( AD 926/7), this is an error. His major work, ''Kitāb al-Futūḥ'' ("Book of Conquests"), was composed during the caliphate of
al-Maʾmūn Abu al-Abbas Abdallah ibn Harun al-Rashid ( ar, أبو العباس عبد الله بن هارون الرشيد, Abū al-ʿAbbās ʿAbd Allāh ibn Hārūn ar-Rashīd; 14 September 786 – 9 August 833), better known by his regnal name Al-Ma'mu ...
(813–833). It survives in a single two-volume manuscript, Ahmad III 2956, now in
Istanbul ) , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = 34000 to 34990 , area_code = +90 212 (European side) +90 216 (Asian side) , registration_plate = 34 , blank_name_sec2 = GeoTLD , blank_i ...
. The writing of the ''Kitāb al-Futūḥ'' was interrupted in AH 204 (AD 819) as a result of the Abbasid Civil War. At that time Ibn Aʿtham had brought his narrative down to the Battle of Karbalāʾ AH 61 (AD 680) using several existing monographs. A
Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
translation of this version was made by Ibn al-Mustawfī in AH 596 (AD 1199/1200). Ibn Aʿtham later returned to his work, however, and extended it down to the time of
Hārūn al-Rashīd Abu Ja'far Harun ibn Muhammad al-Mahdi ( ar , أبو جعفر هارون ابن محمد المهدي) or Harun ibn al-Mahdi (; or 766 – 24 March 809), famously known as Harun al-Rashid ( ar, هَارُون الرَشِيد, translit=Hārūn ...
(786–809). Thereafter two Sunnī writers continued the ''Kitāb'' down to the reign of al-Muqtadir (908–932). The whole compilation including the continuations was considered a work of Ibn Aʿtham by the 13th-century biographer Yāqūt, who called it ''Kitāb al-Taʾrīkh'' ("Book of History"). Yāqūt ascribes two other now lost works to Ibn Aʿtham as well. Ibn Aʿtham names as his sources
al-Madāʾinī Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn Abī Sayf al-Qurashī l-Madāʾinī () (752/3–843), better known by his ''nisba'' of al-Madāʾinī ("from al-Mada'in"), was a scholar of Iranian descent who wrote in Arabic and was active ...
, al-Wāḳidī, al-Zuhrī, Abū Mikhnaf and Ibn al-Kalbī, with al-Madaʾinī being the most cited. His narrative is fullest for the period from the reign of ʿUthmān down to that of Hārūn, particularly for events in Iraq. He is a major source for the conquest of Khorasan, the conquest of Armenia, the conquest of Azerbaijan, the
Arab–Khazar wars The Arab–Khazar wars were a series of conflicts fought between the armies of the Khazar Khaganate and the Rashidun, Umayyad, and Abbasid caliphates and their respective vassals. Historians usually distinguish two major periods of conflict, th ...
and the Arab–Byzantine wars. He provides less detail about the conquests themselves than does al-Balādhurī, but he is more detailed in his description of the internal situation in the conquered lands. Although he provides a useful narrative, his chief value is as a source of information about what texts were circulating in early 9th-century Iraq. He often acts as an early eyewitness to texts later used by more serious and formal historians (such as
al-Ṭabarī ( ar, أبو جعفر محمد بن جرير بن يزيد الطبري), more commonly known as al-Ṭabarī (), was a Muslim historian and scholar from Amol, Tabaristan. Among the most prominent figures of the Islamic Golden Age, al-Tabari ...
) from the 10th century on, thereby indirectly providing information about how later historians made use of those sources. He himself did not do original research, but compiled and collated from circulating histories.


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* * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Ahmad Ibn Azham Arab Muslim historians of Islam Year of birth unknown 9th-century Arabic writers 9th-century historians from the Abbasid Caliphate 9th-century Arabs 9th-century Shia Muslims