Like many mediaeval Muslim historiographers before and after him, Ibn Aʿtham widely used a number of well-distinguishable narratological features for shaping his Kitāb al-futūḥ. Broadly speaking, they can be ascribed to two larger groups. The first and, from a historical point of view, theoretically more interesting, is made up of shorter or longer textual units used to designate sources the author employs. In short, we may label them isnāds, although, as we shall see below, the four categories gathered under this umbrella term do not in all instances fit the requirements of isnāds in the stricter sense of the term. The second, by and large, covers what has been labelled as literary forms in Albrecht Noth's ground-breaking study, including letters, speeches, and lists.

In this chapter, I will concentrate on the first category. The principal aim of the following investigation is to get a clearer picture of Ibn Aʿtham's use of his sources. At the first stage of this research, the critical text of the Kitāb al-futūḥ's first collective isnād (henceforth Isn 1), which introduces the book's first part comprising the ridda narrative, will be presented. This will be accompanied by an in-depth analysis of the isnād. Given the very intimate connection between the coverages of this and the other three collective isnāds (henceforth Isn 2, Isn 3, and Isn 4), it is also necessary to study the latter three properly as well. Therefore, a separate chapter (Chapter 7) is dedicated to Isn 2, Isn 3 and 4 in which, in addition to their critical editions, translations and commentaries, some general conclusions are formulated regarding the Kitāb al-futūḥ's possible sources.

Since this analysis revealed several problematic points in Isn 1, at the second stage, it seems prudent to double-check whether a comparative analysis of the text itself confirms the author's claim of using traditions harking back to the authorities named in Isn 1. To this end, the best-known and most often narrated ridda episode of the Kitāb al-futūḥ, namely Mālik b. Nuwayra's conflict with Khālid b. al-Walīd, was chosen for more in-depth scrutiny. Needless to say, I am fully aware that these small steps will not be sufficient to clarify the range of traditions to which Ibn Aʿtham might have had access and chose to include in his work.