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Abū Muḥammad Aḥmad ibn Aʿtham al-Kūfī al-Kindī () was a 9th-century
Arab Arabs (,  , ; , , ) are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in West Asia and North Africa. A significant Arab diaspora is present in various parts of the world. Arabs have been in the Fertile Crescent for thousands of years ...
Muslim historian, 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 essentially ...
'') 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 Imam (; , '; : , ') is an Islamic leadership position. For Sunni Islam, Sunni Muslims, Imam is most commonly used as the title of a prayer leader of a mosque. In this context, imams may lead Salah, Islamic prayers, serve as community leaders, ...
, 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 (813–833). It survives in a single two-volume manuscript, Ahmad III 2956, now in
Istanbul Istanbul is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, largest city in Turkey, constituting the country's economic, cultural, and historical heart. With Demographics of Istanbul, a population over , it is home to 18% of the Demographics ...
. 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 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 (786–809). Thereafter two Sunnī writers continued the ''Kitāb'' down to the reign of
al-Muqtadir Abū’l-Faḍl Jaʿfar ibn Al-Mu'tadid, Aḥmad ibn Al-Muwaffaq, Ṭalḥa ibn Al-Mutawakkil, Jaʿfar ibn al-Mu'tasim, Muḥammad ibn Harun al-Rashid, Hārūn Al-Muqtadir bi'Llāh () (895 – 31 October 932 AD), better known by his regnal name a ...
(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 Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Muhammad ibn Abd Allah ibn Abi Sayf al-Qurashi (; 752/753–843), commonly known by his al-Mada'ini (), was a scholar of Iranian peoples, Iranian descent who wrote in Arabic language, Arabic and was active under the early Ab ...
, 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 Uthman ibn Affan (17 June 656) was the third caliph of the Rashidun Caliphate, ruling from 644 until Assassination of Uthman, his assassination in 656. Uthman, a second cousin, son-in-law, and notable Companions of the Prophet, companion of ...
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 and the
Arab–Byzantine wars The Arab–Byzantine wars or Muslim–Byzantine wars were a series of wars from the 7th to 11th centuries between multiple Arab dynasties and the Byzantine Empire. The Muslim Arab Caliphates conquered large parts of the Christian Byzantine empir ...
. 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) 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 Year of birth unknown 9th-century Arabic-language writers 9th-century historians from the Abbasid Caliphate 9th-century Arab people 9th-century Shia Muslims