Abu'l-Fadl Bayhaqi

Abūʾl-Fazl Muḥammad ibn Ḥusayn Bayhaqī (Persian: ابوالفضل محمد بن حسین بیهقی; died September 21, 1077), better known as Abu'l-Fazl Bayhaqi (ابوالفضل بیهقی; also spelled Beyhaqi), was a secretary, historian and author.

Educated in the major cultural center of Nishapur, and employed at the court of the famous Ghaznavid Sultan Mahmud, Bayhaqi was a highly cultured man, whose primary work—the Tarikh-i Bayhaqi, is considered a key source of information about the Ghaznavid era, written in Persian prose that influenced writers of subsequent eras.

Bayhaqi is praised by modern scholars for his frankness, precision, and elegant style in his book, which he had spent 22 years to write, finishing it in thirty volumes, of which however only five volumes and half of the sixth exist today. Julie Scott Meisami places Bayhaqi among the historians of the Islamic Golden Age.