Foreword to the New 2024 Edition

I am delighted to see this volume of essays on al-Ṭabarī and his great Ta'rīkh al-rusul wa ‘l-muluk in print again. Al-Ṭabarī's work is by far the most important source for our understanding of the history of the first three centuries of Muslim rule and major source for the pre-Islamic Sasanian Empire of Iran. Despite this, there are comparatively few modern studies on this great work and many questions have hardly been investigated, still less answered. This volume is a collection of the papers presented at a conference which I convened at the University of St Andrews in 1996 which was the first, and as far as I am aware, the last academic meeting devoted solely to the works of the great man. Many fruitful discussions were held in the conference room in what was then Hamilton Hall overlooking the famous golf-course and the sea, not to speak of walks on the long sandy beaches. As with many conference proceedings, the publication was slower than I would have wished. This was in the dark days of ‘camera ready copy’ before computer typesetting was available and I would not have been able to do it without the help of my student, Judy Ahola.

This volume then reflects the scholarship of the 1990s but the papers have, in the main, not been superseded by later research. Sadly, some of the contributors, Zeev Rubin and Walter Kaegi among them, are no longer with us. The collection is notable for papers given by Byzantinists like James Howard-Johnston, Michael Whitby and Ralph-Johannes Lilie who have continued to use al-Tabarī in their own work. On the other side of the ancient divide, Mohsen Zakeri and Zeev Ruben give a Sasanianist point of view. Al-Ṭabarī's influence on later historians is considered by Elton Daniel and Chase Robinson while Arnoud Vrolijk gives a fascinating insight into the practicalities and difficulties faced by de Goeje in his collection of the Leiden edition.

There are still many questions about al-Ṭabarī and his work which invite further research. One of these is whether we should consider al-Ṭabarī as an author or simply a compiler of other men's writings, an editor if you like. Linked this is the question of whether he has a “bias” or a consistent line which he is trying to promote.