INTRODUCTION

THE PURPOSE of this paper is to contribute to an evaluation of the early Islamic historical material transmitted by Sayf ibn ‘Umar al-Tamīmī al-Usayyidī al-Kūfī (d. ca. 18o/7g6), to whom a work entitled Kitāb al-futū∼ al-kabzr wa ‘l-ridda is attributed. Such evaluation needs to take into account a seeming paradox connected with t his somewhat mysterious figure. On the one hand, his surviving transmission has for long been regarded as untrustworthy and he himself has been denounced as a liar. On the other hand, a great many of the detailed reports about the so-called ridda wars of Arabian t ribes and about t he subsequent Ara b conquests have been transmitted through him; this is particularly so in the case of al-Ṭabarī's History. Why did al-TabarT give such prominence to this material, when it is clear that by his time no small measure of odium attached to Sayf's name? What, indeed , were al-Ṭabarī's own purposes? Was he consciously seeking to set forth an overa ll interpretation of Islamic history up to his own time, and, if so, is he to be regarded as having played “a role somewhat comparable, in setting attitudes to early events, to t he role of al-Shafi'ī in

law” ? Or was it al-':fabaīT's concern merely to gather together what seemed to him to be the most informative and accurate available reports about the various phases of early Islamic history, so that any interpretive input on his part should be regarded as having been secondary and on an instinctive and unconscious level implicit in the very process of selection?

Answers to such questions as these are needed if we are ever to deepen our understanding and appreciation of al-':fabarī as an historian. None are hazarded here, however, because it seems to be necessary first to evaluate al-'Ṭabarī's own sources, by asking similar questions about them, and not least about Sayf. Was Sayf an historical interpreter or merely a collector of historical or quasi-historical reports?