Then turning to the Marzban they asked, "Did he ever write to you?"
"Yes," said Mazyar, "His brother Khash used to write to my brother Quhyar to the effect that this splendid religion of theirs will have help from nobody except himself, Quhyar and Babak."
[In the sequel Tabari relates how when Afshin's house was searched, after he was starved to death, among other incriminating articles a book was discovered sumptuously bound and bedecked with gems which related, to the old faith of Iran.]
APPENDIX V
NOELDEKE'S INTRODUCTION TO TABARI.
[The Arabs have long been credited with maintaining learning and civilisation in general when Europe was slumbering in its dark ages. History as a science was rarely known even to the gifted Hindus. The Arabs cultivated it with peculiar enthusiasm. Wustenfeld has collected the lives of 590 historians, the first of whom died in the year 50, and the last was born in 1061 A.H. But it is now proved beyond all doubt that many of these writers were Persians who employed the Arabic language and that the art of Arab annalists had its root in the archives of the Sasanians. We owe this discovery to Goldziher and Von Kremmer in the first instance, and to Brockelmann, Browne, Blochet and Huart who have done ample justice to the Iranian element in Arab culture. One of the best of these histories is by Tabari. Noeldeke translated in 1879, the portion relating to the Sasanians into German, and added footnotes to his translation, which are a mine of information on pre-Moslem Persia. The introduction which he wrote to his translation is equally valuable especially for the light it throws on the sources of Firdausi. The following is a translation of that German introduction by Noeldeke.
Tabari was a most prolific author and is reported to have written daily forty sheets for forty years. He was of pure Iranian descent G.K.N.]
[Sidenote: Tabari's method.]
Abu Jafar Muhammed bin Jarir born in the winter of 839 at Amul not far from the Caspian Sea in the Persian Province of Tabaristan, hence called Tabari, and who died in Baghdad on the 17th February 923, wrote many, partly very large, works in the Arabic language, among them an extremely voluminous chronicle, which reaches from the creation down to nearly the close of his life. Tabari, mainly occupied with theological tradition, was no man of original research or of historical acumen even in the sense applied to a few other Persian scholars in those centuries. His annals are a compilation, a mass of rich material put together with extraordinary industry. He does not work into unity the various versions in his divergent sources, but simply brings them up in order one after another. But it is just this circumstance which considerably enhances in our eyes the value of the work; for in this way the older reports themselves are preserved more faithfully than if the chronicler had laboured to reconcile them one with the other.
[Sidenote: Abounds in extracts from Arab and Iranian predecessors, but does not mention his sources.]