o have written daily
forty sheets for forty years. He was of pure Iranian descent G.K.N.]

[Sidenote: Tabari's method.]

Abu Jafar Muhammed bin Jarir born in the winter of 839 at Amul not far
from the Caspian Sea in the Persian Province of Tabaristan, hence called
Tabari, and who died in Baghdad on the 17th February 923, wrote many,
partly very large, works in the Arabic language, among them an extremely
voluminous chronicle, which reaches from the creation down to nearly the
close of his life. Tabari, mainly occupied with theological tradition,
was no man of original research or of historical acumen even in the
sense applied to a few other Persian scholars in those centuries. His
annals are a compilation, a mass of rich material put together with
extraordinary industry. He does not work into unity the various versions
in his divergent sources, but simply brings them up in order one after
another. But it is just this circumstance which considerably enhances in
our eyes the value of the work; for in this way the older reports
themselves are preserved more faithfully than if the chronicler had
laboured to reconcile them one with the other.

[Sidenote: Abounds in extracts from Arab and Iranian predecessors, but
does not mention his sources.]

The principal value of Tabari's compilation consists in the extremely
exhaustive presentation of the history of Islam from the first
appearance of the Prophet; no other Arabic work in this respect can
compare with his. The pre-Islamic history comprises, may be, a twentieth
portion of the whole work and gives a very groat deal of what we would
rather be without. Of the highest moment, however, is the tolerably
detailed section on the history of the Sasanides and their times
embodied in it, and whose German translation forms the text of our book.
This section goes back partly to good Arabic records and mostly, at
least mediately, to very important ancient Persian sources. But the
stories from the mythological and historical traditions which appear
scattered in Tabari in proceeding sections have a cognate origin. If the
criticism of the sources is here very much facilitated on the one hand,
because these orientals where they excerpt love to adhere, as far as
possible, to the letter of their models or sources, it is on the other,
rendered difficult because Tabari does not mention his immediate
authorities. Only in reports of theological interest, to which the whole
of the history of t