"I see a man in whom the secretarial dignity is manifest, One who displays the brilliant culture of ‘Iráq."[660]
Thither the young Ṭabarí came to complete his education. He travelled by way of Rayy to Baghdád, visited other neighbouring towns, and extended his tour to Syria and Egypt. Although his father sent him a yearly allowance, it did not always arrive punctually, and he himself relates that on one occasion he procured bread by selling the sleeves of his shirt. Fortunately, at Baghdád he was introduced to ‘Ubaydulláh b. Yaḥyá, the Vizier of Mutawakkil, who engaged him as tutor for his son. How long he held this post is uncertain, but he was only twenty-three years of age when his patron went out of office. Fifteen years later we find him, penniless once more, in Cairo (876-877 a.d.). He soon, however, returned to Baghdád, where he passed the remainder of his life in teaching and writing. Modest, unselfish, and simple in his habits, he diffused his encyclopædic knowledge with an almost superhuman industry. During forty years, it is said, he wrote forty leaves every day. His great works are the Ta’ríkhu ´l-Rusul wa-’l-Mulúk, or 'Annals of the Apostles and the Kings,' and his Tafsír, or 'Commentary on the Koran.' Both, even in their present shape, are books of enormous extent, yet it seems likely that both were originally composed on a far larger scale and were abbreviated by the author for general use. His pupils, we are told, flatly refused to read the first editions with him, whereupon he exclaimed: "Enthusiasm for learning is dead!" The History of Ṭabarí, from the Creation to the year 302 a.h. = 915 a.d., is distinguished by "completeness of detail, accuracy, and the truly stupendous learning of its author that is revealed throughout, and that makes the Annals a vast storehouse of valuable information for the historian as well as for the student of Islam."[661] It is arranged chronologically, the events being tabulated under the year (of the Muḥammadan era) in which they occurred. Moreover, it has a very peculiar form. "Each important fact is related, if possible, by an eye-witness or contemporary, whose account came down through a series of narrators to the author. If he has obtained more than one account of a fact, with more or less important modifications, through several series of narrators, he communicates them all to the reader in extenso. Thus we are enabled to consider the facts from more than one point of view, and to acquire a vivid and clear notion of them."[662] According to modern ideas, Ṭabarí's compilation is not so much a history as a priceless collection of original documents placed side by side without any attempt to construct a critical and continuous narrative. At first sight one can hardly see the wood for the trees, but on closer study the essential features gradually emerge and stand out in bold relief from amidst the multitude of insignificant circumstances which lend freshness and life to the whole. Ṭabarí suffered the common fate of standard historians. His work was abridged and popularised, the isnáds or chains of authorities were suppressed, and the various parallel accounts were combined by subsequent writers into a single version.[663] Of the Annals, as it left the author's hands, no entire copy exists anywhere, but many odd volumes are preserved in different parts of the world. The Leyden edition is based on these scattered MSS., which luckily comprise the whole work with the exception of a few not very serious lacunæ.
‘Alí b. Ḥusayn, a native of Baghdád, was called Mas‘údí after one of the Prophet's Companions, ‘Abdulláh b. Mas‘úd, Mas‘údí († 956 a.d.). to whom he traced his descent. Although we possess only a small remnant of his voluminous writings, no better proof can be desired of the vast and various erudition which he gathered not from books alone, but likewise from long travel in almost every part of Asia. Among other places, he visited Armenia, India, Ceylon, Zanzibar, and Madagascar, and he appears to have sailed in Chinese waters as well as in the Caspian Sea. "My journey," he says, "resembles that of the sun, and to me the poet's verse is applicable:—
"'We turn our steps toward each different clime, Now to the Farthest East, then West once more; Even as the sun, which stays not his advance O'er tracts remote that no man durst explore.'"[664]
He spent the latter years of his life chiefly in Syria and Egypt—for he had no settled abode—compiling the great historical works,[665] of which the Murúju ’l-Dhahab is an epitome. As regards the motives which urged him to write, Mas‘údí declares that he wished to follow the example of scholars and sages and to leave behind him a praiseworthy memorial and imperishable monument. He claims to have taken a wider view than his predecessors. "One who has never quitted his hearth and home, but is content with the knowledge which he can acquire concerning the history of his own part of the world, is not on the same level as one who spends his life in travel and passes his days in restless wanderings, and draws forth all manner of curious and precious information from its hidden mine."[666]
Mas‘údí has been named the 'the Herodotus of the Arabs,' and the comparison is not unjust.[667] The Murúju ’l-Dhahab. His work, although it lacks the artistic unity which distinguishes that of the Greek historian, shows the same eager spirit of enquiry, the same open-mindedness and disposition to record without prejudice all the marvellous things that he had heard or seen, the same ripe experience and large outlook on the present as on the past. It is professedly a universal history beginning with the Creation and ending at the Caliphate of Muṭí‘, in 947 a.d., but no description can cover the immense range of topics which are discussed and the innumerable digressions with which the author delights or irritates his readers, as the case may be.[668] Thus, to pick a few examples at random, we find a dissertation on tides (vol. i, p. 244); an account of the tinnín or sea-serpent (ibid., p. 267); of pearl-fishing in the Persian Gulf (ibid., p. 328); and of the rhinoceros (ibid., p. 385). Mas‘údí was a keen student and critic of religious beliefs, on which subject he wrote several books.[669] The Murúju ’l-Dhahab supplies many valuable details regarding the Muḥammadan sects, and also regarding the Zoroastrians and Ṣábians. There is a particularly interesting report of a meeting which took place between Aḥmad b. Ṭúlún, the governor of Egypt (868-877 a.d.), and an aged Copt, who, after giving his views as to the source of the Nile and the construction of the Pyramids, defended his faith (Christianity) on the ground of its manifest errors and contradictions, arguing that its acceptance, in spite of these, by so many peoples and kings was decisive evidence of its truth.[670] Mas‘údí's account of the Caliphs is chiefly remarkable for the characteristic anecdotes in which it abounds. Instead of putting together a methodical narrative he has thrown off a brilliant but unequal sketch of public affairs and private manners, of social life and literary history. Only considerations of space have prevented me from enriching this volume with not a few pages which are as lively and picturesque as any in Suetonius. His last work, the Kitábu ’l-Tanbíh wa-’l-Ishráf ('Book of Admonition and Recension'),[671] was intended to take a general survey of the field which had been more fully traversed in his previous compositions, and also to supplement them when it seemed necessary.
We must pass over the minor historians and biographers of this period—for example, ‘Utbí († 1036 a.d.), whose Minor historians. Kitáb al-Yamíní celebrates the glorious reign of Sultan Mahmúd of Ghazna; Khaṭíb of Baghdád († 1071 a.d.), who composed a history of the eminent men of that city; ‘Imádu ’l-Dín of Iṣfahán († 1201 a.d.), the biographer of Saladin; Ibnu ’l-Qiftí († 1248 a.d.), born at Qifṭ (Coptos) in Upper Egypt, whose lives of the philosophers and scientists have only come down to us in a compendium entitled Ta’ríkhu ’l-Ḥukamá; Ibnu ’l-Jawzí († 1200 a.d.), a prolific writer in almost every branch of literature, and his grandson, Yúsuf († 1257 a.d.)—generally called Sibṭ Ibn al-Jawzí—author of the Mir’átu ’l-Zamán, or 'Mirror of the Time'; Ibn Abí Uṣaybi‘a († 1270 a.d.), whose history of physicians, the ‘Uyúnu ’l-Anbá, has been edited by A. Müller (1884); and the Christian, Jirjis (George) al-Makín († 1273 a.d.), compiler of a universal chronicle—named the Majmú‘ al-Mubárak—of which the second part, from Muḥammad to the end of the ‘Abbásid dynasty, was rendered into Latin by Erpenius in 1625.
A special notice, brief though it must be, is due to ‘Izzu ’l-Dín Ibnu ’l-Athír († 1234 a.d.). Ibnu ’l-Athír († 1234 a.d.). He was brought up at Mosul in Mesopotamia, and after finishing his studies in Baghdád, Jerusalem, and Syria, he returned home and devoted himself to reading and literary composition. Ibn Khallikán, who knew him personally, speaks of him in the highest terms both as a man and as a scholar. "His great work, the Kámil,[672] embracing the history of the world from the earliest period to the year 628 of the Hijra (1230-1231 a.d.), merits its reputation as one of the best productions of the kind."[673] Down to the year 302 a.h. the author has merely abridged the Annals of Ṭabarí with occasional additions from other sources. In the first volume he gives a long account of the Pre-islamic battles (Ayyámu ’l-‘Arab) which is not found in the present text of Ṭabarí; but De Goeje, as I learn from Professor Bevan, thinks that this section was included in Ṭabarí's original draft and was subsequently struck out. Ibnu ’l-Athír was deeply versed in the science of Tradition, and his Usdu ’l-Ghába ('Lions of the Jungle') contains biographies of 7,500 Companions of the Prophet.
An immense quantity of information concerning the various countries and peoples of the ‘Abbásid Empire has been preserved Geographers. for us by the Moslem geographers, who in many cases describe what they actually witnessed and experienced in the course of their travels, although they often help themselves liberally and without acknowledgment from the works of their predecessors. The following list, which does not pretend to be exhaustive, may find a place here.[674]
1. The Persian Ibn Khurdádbih (first half of ninth century) was postmaster in the province of Jibál, the Media of Ibn Khurdádbih. the ancients. His Kitábu ’l-Masálik wa-’l-Mamálik ('Book of the Roads and Countries'), an official guide-book, is the oldest geographical work in Arabic that has come down to us.