Introduction

SINCE THE TIME of Theodor Nöldeke, historians have recognized Abū Jaʿfar Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Ṭabarī's Taʾrikh al-rusul wa-l-muluk as a source of great importance not only for early Islamic history, but also for the history of the Near East before the rise of Islam. Nöldeke himself highlighted al-Ṭabarī's unique and detailed accounts of Sasanian history by close textual criticism and comparison of the relevant sections of al-Tabarī's work with those from other historical sources, whether Arabic, Persian, Syriac, Hebrew, Armenian, Latin, or Greek. Yet since the time when Nöldeke first examined these sources together, the corpus of historical texts relating to the period immediately prior to the rise of Islam has grown considerably. There now exist printed editions of sources that bear directly on this period in Arabic, Greek, Syriac, and other languages that simply were not available to the early generations of Orientalists. Consequently, the value of al-Ṭabarī's narratives about events in this period needs to be re-examined in light of this larger corpus of sources. Where does al-Ṭabarī stand in relation to other sources on the history of the Near East on the eve of Islam?

Some recent scholarly discussion has suggested a possible answer, by demonstrating in a number of cases the complex interrelationship of eastern Christian and Islamic historical traditions relating to events in the early Islamic period, as well as the limitations and strengths of both traditions as historical sources. Understandably, most of these studies have concentrated on the traditions of the life of the Prophet Muḥammad, beliefs and practices in early Islam or on the Islamic conquests. Yet, despite the centrality of the Greek, Syriac and Arabic chronicles in reconstructing the history of the Sasanian and Byzantine Near East, few if any of these studies examine the Islamic and eastern Christian historiographical traditions in connection with events before the rise of Islam.

Obviously, it is beyond the scope of this paper to provide a definitive analysis of the value of the Islamic and eastern Christian historiographical traditions, and al-Ṭabarī's place among them, over the entire pre-Islamic period. However, even a single case-study can provide some firm conclusions that may prove to be more generally valid. Fortunately, one does not have to look far for an appropriate subject, that is, an event involving the political histories of the both Byzantine and Sasanian empires that both the Islamic and Christian historical traditions describe in some detail: the outbreak of hostility between the Sasanian Persian monarch Khusraw II and his general Shahrbarāz, probably late in the year 626 or early in 627,3 and Shahrbarāz's subsequent agreement in 629 with the Byzantine emperor Heraclius.