The History of al-Tabari

This is not a sahih collection. Al-Tabari (d. 310 AH) was a compiler of akhbar: he wrote down what reached him, named the men who carried it, and left the weighing to the one who reads. His own words in the introduction are the law of this shelf: if a report is strange or unsound, the fault is not his pen — it is the transmitter’s.

Tarikh al-Rusul wa al-Muluk runs from the beginning of creation to the year 302 AH. Beside it stands his tafsir, Jami al-Bayan. The same man, two doors: the Book of Allah, and the news of the world.

Nur does not reprint forty SUNY volumes. This is an authentic door into the work: who he was, how he wrote, the spine of the history, and the famous reports he carried — with a plain mark when a line is Quran, when it is sahih hadith, and when it is only an isnad in the Tarikh. Israiliyyat are named as such. The fitnah of the Companions is told as Tabari told it: with chains, without a party.