Introduction

Tarikh al-Rusul wal-Muluk — commonly known as Tarikh al-Tabari — is the most important work of Islamic historiography ever produced. Its author, Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari (224–310 AH / 839–923 CE), was a Persian-born scholar who settled in Baghdad and devoted his life to the twin sciences of Quranic exegesis and history. He was a mujtahid of the first rank, founder of the now-extinct Jariri school of fiqh, and a master of hadith criticism whose reliability was attested by the greatest scholars of his generation.

The work covers universal history from the creation of the world and the stories of the prophets through the Islamic conquests, the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates, and up to al-Tabari's own lifetime, ending around 302 AH. The original Arabic runs to approximately thirty-eight volumes in the Cairo edition. Al-Tabari worked from primary sources — preserved documents, oral transmissions with full chains of narrators (isnad), eyewitness accounts, and earlier chronicles — and he reproduced competing traditions side by side rather than flattening them into a single narrative. This methodology, familiar from his tafsir, allows scholars today to assess sources independently and explains why the work remains irreplaceable even after more than a millennium.

Al-Tabari explicitly states in his introduction that he transmits what he found in the sources without vouching for every report. Readers should understand this principle before engaging with the text: the presence of a narration does not mean al-Tabari endorsed it. His chains of transmission allow specialists to evaluate each report on its own merits, and Muslim scholars throughout history have done exactly that, distinguishing the authentic from the weak or fabricated within these pages.

The book's influence on all subsequent Islamic historiography cannot be overstated. Ibn al-Athir, Ibn Kathir, al-Dhahabi, and virtually every later chronicler wrote in dialogue with al-Tabari, whether abridging him, correcting him, or drawing on his sources. His account of the early caliphate, the civil wars (fitna), and the conquests remains the primary reference for reconstructing the first three centuries of Islamic history. A partial Persian translation commissioned in the Samanid era and the famous ten-volume English translation by a team of forty scholars (SUNY Press, 1985–2007) have made it accessible beyond the Arabic-reading world.

For the student approaching this work through Islam.wiki, chapters are organised chronologically by era and event. Prophetic history occupies the early volumes; the life of the Prophet ﷺ receives detailed treatment drawing on Ibn Ishaq and other early seerah sources; and the post-prophetic volumes follow the caliphates year by year. Reading al-Tabari rewards patience: the repetition of slightly differing accounts is not a flaw but a feature — it preserves the raw evidential record that later synthesis would otherwise obscure.