THE PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK is to make available an important but hitherto neglected text that sheds light on the history of Palestine and its neighbouring countries, Syria and Egypt, during the early Muslim period, from the time of the Arab conquest to the fourth decade of the tenth century. This text, which will be called the Continuatio (for reasons that will be clarified below), appears at the end of the Samaritan chronicle Kitiib al-ta'rfkh, written in Arabic and compiled from earlier sources by Abu 1-FatJ:! ibn Abi 1-I:Iasan al-Samiri al-Danafi in CE 1355. The text , the main part of which appears solely as part of one of the oldest and most trustworthy Mss. of the chronicle, 1 the Bibliotheque Nationale Ms . Samaritain no. 10 ,2 describes the history of the Samaritans in Palestine during the early Muslim period up to and including the first third of the tenth century. It contains considerable information not only about the history of the Samaritan people, but also about political events of the period in Palestine, Syria and Egypt. What makes the information in this text especially valuable is the fact that it is of a completely different character from that conveyed in the Muslim chronicles pertaining to the same period. While the latter focus upon events, changes and intrigues that influenced the Muslim world in general, and the ruling class in its political centres in particular, our text presents the history of the period from two other points of view. The first is the point of view of the dhimmfs , the "protected non-Muslim population" living under Muslim rule, whose conditions of life were essentially different from that of any Muslim of any class or status; a description of the life of the dhimmfs thus provides us with many new facts concerning how they lived, as well as a completely different outlook upon the events themselves. The second differentiating characteristic lies in the fact that Muslim chronicles were usually written in important Muslim centres of government such as Iraq (Baghdad) or Egypt (Fustat/Cairo), Palestine being just a marginal and neglected province serving mainly as a throughway or, at most, as a post given to an aspiring general. The Samaritan t ext, on the other hand , is a local chronicle that naturally considers Palestine as the centre and views other countries and provinces as peripheral and marginal to its concerns.