Abū ʿAmr Khalīfa ibn Khayyāṭ al-Laythī al-ʿUṣfurī () (born : 160/161 AH/777 AD– died 239/240 AH/854 AD) was an Arab historian. His family were natives of

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. His grandfather was a noted muhaddith or traditionalist, and Khalifa became renowned for this also. Among the great Islamic scholars who were his pupils were

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and Ahmad ibn Hanbal. He wrote at least four works, of which two have survived, these being the ''Tabaqat'' (biographies) and ''Tarikh'' (history). The latter is valuable as being one of three of the earliest Arabic histories, but the full text was not known until an 11th-century copy was found in 1966, in the Nassiriyya Zawiya in Tamegroute, where the local dry climate helped preserving it, and was published in 1967 after being scrutinized by Syrian historian Souhail Zakkar.

References

*J. Schacht (1969), "The ''Kitāb al-Tārīḫ'' of Khalifa bin Hayyat", ''Arabica'', 16, 79–81. Schacht found the manuscript, and in the article reviews its publication by one of his former students. Arab historians of Islam 9th-century historians from the Abbasid Caliphate 770s births Year of birth uncertain 850s deaths Year of death uncertain People from Basra 8th-century Arabs {{islamic-scholar-stub