Passing over many other historians, two more only will be mentioned, viz., Abu Jafir at-Tabari and Al-Masúdi.
Tabari (whose annals are now being edited by a company of European Orientalists) was born A.D. 838, at Amol, in the province of Tabaristan. He travelled a great deal, and composed many works on history, poetry, grammar and lexicography. His work on jurisprudence extends to several volumes, and his historical works stamp him as one of the most reliable of Arab historians, while his numerous other works also bear witness to the variety and accuracy of his acquirements. He died at Baghdad A.D. 923, and has been called by Gibbon the Livy of the Arabians.
Al-Masúdi, a contemporary of the great historian Tabari, died thirty-four years after him, in A.D. 957. His great work, 'Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems,' with the Arabic text above and a French translation below, has been published in nine volumes (1861-1877) by Barbier de Meynard, in connection with Pavet de Courteille, at the expense of the French Government. Dr. A. Sprenger (who translated one volume of the work into English for the Oriental Translation Fund, London, 1841) calls the author of it the Herodotus of Arabian history, because he had, like his Greek prototype, undertaken extensive travels, and had like him made the description of countries and nations his chief occupation. The titles of ten of his works are known to us, but the principal one is that named above, in the composition of which he used eighty-five historical, geographical, and philological works, as he himself informs us in the first chapter of his history. The work itself contains one hundred and thirty-two chapters.
Ibn al Athir al Jazari, born A.D. 1160 and died A.D. 1233, was also an historian of note, and a personal friend of Ibn Khallikan, who writes of him as follows: 'His knowledge of the Traditions, and his acquaintance with that science in its various branches, placed him in the first rank; and his learning as an historian of the ancients and moderns was not less extensive; he was perfectly familiar with the genealogy of the Arabs, their adventures, combats and history; whilst his great work, "The Kâmil or Complete," embracing the history of the world from the earliest period to the year 628 of the Hijrah (A.D. 1230-1231), merits its reputation as one of the best productions of the kind.' Another of Ibn Al Athir's works is the history of the most eminent among the companions of Muhammad, in the shape of a biographical dictionary.
As the development of Arab letters proceeded, in the course of time various authors began to tabulate the different branches of knowledge and science, and these, with the biographies of many of the writers, and the lists of their works, formed a distinct branch in the literature of that day.
The most noteworthy of them all was Abul Faraj Muhammad bin Ishak, who is generally known by the name of Ibn Ali Yakub al Warrak the copyist, surnamed An-Nadim al Baghdadi, the social companion from Baghdad, and the author of the 'Fihrist.' It may be truly said that this writer, along with Ibn Khallikan, laid the foundations of the records of the edifice of encyclopædical and biographical works, which was afterwards completed by Haji Khalfa and Abul Khair. Without the work of Ibn Khallikan it would be as impossible to give a history of Arab scholars, as without the work of An-Nadim to give an account of Arab literature.
The 'Kitab al-Fihrist' was written by An-Nadim in A.D. 987, and is divided into ten sections, dealing with every branch of letters and learning. It gives the names of many authors and their works long since extant, and shows the enormous amount of writings produced by the Arabs during the periods under review, up to A.D. 987, the date of the author's work. A short account of this ancient and curious book has been given in the Journal Asiatique for December, 1839, and from the work itself Von Hammer Purgstall has been able to gather that the 'Thousand and One Nights' ('Arabian Nights') had a Persian origin. In the eighth section of the 'Fihrist' the author says that the first who composed tales and apologues were the kings of the early Persian dynasties, and that these tales were augmented and amplified by the Sasanians (A.D. 228-641). The Arabs then translated them into their own language, and composed other stories like them.
Ibn Khallikan, the most worthy of biographers, must also be mentioned here, though he died in A.D. 1282, twenty-four years after the fall of Baghdad, having been born in A.D. 1211. This very eminent scholar and follower of Shafa'i doctrines, was born at Arbela, but resided at Damascus, where he had filled the place of Chief Kadi till the year A.D. 1281, when he was dismissed, and from that time to the day of his death he never went out of doors. He was a man with the greatest reputation for learning, versed in various sciences, and highly accomplished. He was a scholar, a poet, a compiler, a biographer and an historian. By his talents and writings he merited the honourable title of the most learned man and the ablest historian. His celebrated biographical work, called the 'Wafiat-ul-Aiyan,' or Deaths of Eminent Men, is the acme of perfection. This work was translated from the Arabic by Baron MacGuckin de Slane, a member of the council of the Asiatic Society of Paris, and printed by the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland in A.D. 1842, 1843, 1868 and 1871. For all those who wish to gain a knowledge of the legal literature of the Muhammadans it is a most valuable work, as the Baron has added to the text numerous learned notes, replete with curious and interesting information relating to the Muhammadan law and lawyers. Ibn Khallikan died, aged seventy-three lunar years, in the Najibia College at Damascus, and was buried in the cemetery of As-Salihiya, a well-known village situated on the declivity of Mount Kasiun, a short distance to the north of Damascus, and from which a splendid view of the town and its surrounding gardens is obtained. When lately there I made inquiries about the tomb of this great Arab littérateur, but without success. His tomb has quite disappeared, and his name seemed to be forgotten; but his work still lives, an everlasting monument of his industry and his intelligence.
It will be remembered that the early Arab poets described men, women, animals, and their surroundings in their effusive Kasidas before prose-writing was established. Later on grammarians and philologists began to write books on the different objects of nature and on the physiology of man; also treatises on the horse, the camel, bees, mountains, seas, rivers, and all natural phenomena. There were thus laid down, though not a scientific, at least a philological basis, for the future development of the natural sciences and geography. Such monographs were only in later times collected in encyclopaedic works, in which they were inserted in such a manner as to constitute various chapters only, and no longer separate treatises.
Khalef-al-Ahmer (whom Suyuti declared to be a great forger, because he pretended that some poems written by himself had been composed by ancient Arab poets) wrote the first book on Arab mountains, and about the poems recited concerning them. Ahmed bin-ud Dinveri wrote, in addition to several grammatical and mathematical works, a book on plants, and after him the grammarian Al-Jahiz wrote the first treatise on animals, but more from a philological point of view than from that of natural history. He wrote, moreover, on theology, geography, natural history, and philology; but his most celebrated work is his 'Book of Animals,' in which he displayed all his knowledge of the Arabic tongue. He was frightfully ugly, and obtained the surname of Jahiz on account of his protuberant eyes. He himself informs us that the Khalif Mutwakkil intended to appoint him as tutor to his sons, but was deterred by his ugliness, and dismissed him with a present of ten thousand dirhems. Al-Jahiz died A.D. 869, over ninety years of age.