Ibn Isfandiyar

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Baha al-Din Muhammad ibn Hasan ibn Isfandiyar (Persian: بهاءالدین محمد بن حسن بن اسفندیار), commonly known as Ibn Isfandiyar (ابن اسفندیار), was a 13th-century Iranian[1] historian from Tabaristan, who wrote a history of his native province, the Tarikh-i Tabaristan. What little is known of his life comes from the introduction of this work.[2]

Biography

Ibn Isfandiyar belonged to a prominent bureaucratic family from

Mongol sack of Khwarazm in 1220.[6]

His history, which was not completed before 1217/17, ends with the first fall of the Bavandid dynasty in 1210. An anonymous later author continued it up to 1349, when the dynasty’s second period ended, based chiefly on

Tabari language and a Persian translation of the Letter of Tansar, an important piece of Pahlavi literature, sent by the Sasanian ruler Ardashir I's chief priest to Gushnasp, prince of Tabaristan.[2][6]

References

  1. ^ Van Donzel 1994, p. 151.
  2. ^ a b Yarshater 1971, p. 810.
  3. ^ Ghereghlou 2021.
  4. ^ Edward G. Browne (1905). An Abridged Translation of the History of Tabaristan. Leiden: Brill. 3.
  5. ^ Browne, 3. Ibn Isfandiyar excoriates this book as "a work wherein the author sought rather to display his mastery over the Arabic language than to impart information to the reader". Yazdadi includes anecdota up to the time of "Qabus Shamsu'l-Ma'ali (A. D. 976—1012)": Browne p. 36.
  6. ^ a b Melville 1997, pp. 20–23.

Sources