The Ta'rīkh al-islām of adh-Dhahabī

Abstract

In Arabic literature there is hardly any separation between works on political history and historical biography. This is due to the two sources from which historical traditions are derived: the sīra-literature dealing with the life of the prophet Muḥammad and the rather legendary traditions on the tribal warfare of the jāhiliyya known as ayyām al-'arab. It was on this double basis that Arabic historiography had gradually been built up. On the one hand, parallel to the sīra-literature, there developed the so-called ṭabaqāt-literature containing biographies first on the companions of Muḥammad ('ilm ar-rijāl), then on all sorts of illustrious men arranged into classes (ṭabaqāt) according to the year of their death. The Kitāb aṭ-ṭabaqāt al-kabīr of Ibn Sa'd az-Zuhrī (died in 230/845) was the first standard work of this kind of literature, which flourished especially in the post-classical period of Arabic literature in the increasing quantity of ṭabaqāt-works on rulers, theologians, jurisconsults, and poets.