The history of the kings of Persia ascribed to aṯ-Ṯaʿālibī is the first part of an Arabic universal history. It survives in only three manuscripts, all incomplete, one at Constantinople and two at Paris.[1] The part on Persia runs from Kayūmarṯ to Yazdgird III, the last of the Sasanians.[2]

Author and date

The manuscripts do not agree on the author. The copy at Constantinople names one al-Ḥusayn ibn Muḥammad al-Marġanī, a man otherwise unknown. The copy from Mosul names Abū Manṣūr aṯ-Ṯaʿālibī.[3] The editor took the second name to be a short form of the name of the well-known man of letters Abū Manṣūr ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl aṯ-Ṯaʿālibī. He found in the text itself passages that the same author repeats in his other works.[4]

The author wrote at the command of his patron, the emir Abū l-Muẓaffar Naṣr. Naṣr was the brother of the Ghaznavid sultan Maḥmūd, commander of the army of Khurasan and governor of Nishapur.[5] Naṣr died young, about 412 of the hijra.[6] From passages in the text, the editor dated the composition between 408 and 412, about 1017 to 1021.[7] The history of the Persian kings was written at about the same time and in the same milieu as the Shahnameh of Firdausi, and from the same sources.[8]

The Göktürks in the text

In the chapter on Khosrow I Anushirvan, the king closes the passes and fortifies his frontiers. He builds stone fortresses in Gurgan, the gate of Ṣūl, five parasangs long and of marble. He also builds the wall at Bāb al-Abwāb as a barrier between Iran and the Khazars. Between his empire and the Caucasus he raises more than a hundred citadels to protect his people against “the Turks, the Khazars and the Russians”.[9] Kings send envoys with gifts to declare their submission and to pay tribute. The khāqān offers Anushirvan his daughter in marriage, in the hope of grandsons. When the king agrees, the khāqān sends her to him in procession with countless riches from all that the Göktürks possessed.[9] When Anushirvan dies after forty-eight years, the mobeds and the marzbans choose as his successor his son Hormizd, “born of the daughter of the khāqān, the king of the Turks”.[10]

The longest passage is the war of Hormizd IV with the Göktürks. Enemies pressed on every frontier, and “the khāqān called Šāba-Šāh” advanced on Balkh with a hundred thousand horsemen. Hormizd’s counsellors judged the Göktürks the worst danger. Most of them named Bahrām Čūbīn, marzban of Azerbaijan, to command against them.[11] Bahrām took twelve thousand chosen men.[12] Before the battle Šāba-Šāh sent his brother Faġfūra to offer him service and the government of Iran. Bahrām replied that his master had sent him for Šāba-Šāh’s head.[13] In the battle Bahrām feigned retreat and then charged. As Šāba-Šāh fled, Bahrām shot him with an arrow. The arrow went through his armour and his body and buried itself in the ground to the feathers. Bahrām cut off his head.[14] Faġfūra was found among the dead. Šāba-Šāh’s son Barmūḏa had shut himself in Baykand with the treasure and the chief men of the Göktürks. Hormizd ordered Bahrām to march against him.[15]

Relation to the Shahnameh

The editor set the work beside the Shahnameh story by story. Several of Firdausi’s tales of Anushirvan’s reign are missing here. Among them are the war of the khāqān with the Hephthalites and Anushirvan’s campaign against the khāqān with his marriage to the khāqān’s daughter. Much of Firdausi’s Bahrām Čūbīn is missing as well.[16] Where the two agree, they agree because they drew on the same Persian tradition, not because one copied the other.

Reliability

The history reports the Göktürks as the Persian royal tradition remembered them four centuries later: a khāqān who gave a Sasanian king his daughter, and a king of the Göktürks killed by Bahrām’s arrow. It does not name the khāqān of Anushirvan’s time. The names it gives in Hormizd’s war, Šāba-Šāh, Faġfūra and Barmūḏa, belong to the Perso-Arabic tradition alone.

References

  1. ^ Zotenberg 1900, i
  2. ^ Zotenberg 1900, ii, v
  3. ^ Zotenberg 1900, iii–iv
  4. ^ Zotenberg 1900, v, xviii
  5. ^ Zotenberg 1900, v–vi
  6. ^ Zotenberg 1900, vii
  7. ^ Zotenberg 1900, vii–viii
  8. ^ Zotenberg 1900, xix
  9. ^ a b aṯ-Ṯaʿālibī
  10. ^ aṯ-Ṯaʿālibī
  11. ^ aṯ-Ṯaʿālibī
  12. ^ aṯ-Ṯaʿālibī
  13. ^ aṯ-Ṯaʿālibī
  14. ^ aṯ-Ṯaʿālibī
  15. ^ aṯ-Ṯaʿālibī
  16. ^ Zotenberg 1900, xxxix

Literature

  • Hermann Zotenberg (ed., trans.), Histoire des rois des Perses par Abou Mansour ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Mohammad ibn Ismaʿil al-Thaʿalibi (1900)

Articles resting on this source 14

Bahram Chobin · Derbent · Faghfura · Gate of Sul · Göktürk prisoners with the cross (591) · Göktürk–Persian war, 588–589 · Gurgan · Hormizd IV · Istemi · Kayen · Khorasan · Murder of Bahram Chobin · Natra · Parmudha

Related

What links here12

Persons
Bahram Chobin · Faghfura · Hormizd IV · Istemi · Kayen · Natra · Parmudha
Conflicts
Göktürk–Persian war, 588–589
Places
Gate of Sul · Gurgan · Khorasan
Sources
Tabari

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “aṯ-Ṯaʿālibī.” Turkic Atlas, revised 8 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/sources/al-thaalibi/

Last revised: 8 November 2026