The History of al-Tabari Vol. 11

The History of al-Tabari :Tarikh al-Rusul wa’l muluk ‘Annals of the Apostles and Kings’ ,by Abu Ja’far Muhammad b Jarir al-Tabri (839-923). It is by common consent the most important universal history produced in the world of Islam.

The Challenge to the Empires

Volume 1 of the thirty-eight volume translation of Tabari’s great History begins with the creation of the world and ends with the time of Noah and the Flood.

It not only brings a vast amount of speculation about the early history of mankind into sharp Muslim focus, but it also synchronizes ancient Iranian ideas about the prehistory of mankind with those inspired by the Qur’an and the Bible.

The volume is thus an excellent guide to the cosmological views of many of Tabari’s contemporaries.

The translator, Franz Rosenthal, one of the world’s foremost scholars of Arabic, has also written an extensive introduction to the volume that presents all the facts known about Tabari’s personal and professional life.

Professor Rosenthal’s meticulous and original scholarship has yielded a valuable bibliography and chronology of Tabari’s writings, both those preserved in manuscript and those alluded to by other authors.

Source: kalamullah