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The History of Al-Tabari, Volume 5 book cover
The History of Al-Tabari, Volume 5
The Sasanids, the Byzantines, the Lakmids, and Yemen
912
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This volume of al-Tabari's History has a particularly wide sweep and interest. It provides the most complete and detailed historical source for the Persian empire of the Sasanids, whose four centuries of rule were one of the most glorious periods in Persia's long history. It also gives information on the pre-Islamic Arabs of the Mesopotamian desert fringes and eastern Arabia (in al-Hira and the Ghassanid kingdom), and on the quite separate civilization of South Arabia, the Yemen, otherwise known mainly by inscriptions. It furnishes details of the centuries'-long warfare of the two great empires of Western Asia, the Sasanids and the Byzantine Greeks, a titanic struggle which paved the way for the for the subsequent rise of the new faith of Islam. The volume is thus of great value for scholars, from Byzantinists to Semitists and Iranists. It provides the first English translation of this key section of al-Tabari's work, one for which non-Arabists have hitherto relied on a partial German translation meritorious forms time but now 120 years old. This new translation is enriched by a detailed commentary which takes into account up-to-date scholarship.
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Author

Clifford Edmund Bosworth
Clifford Edmund Bosworth
Author · 3 books

Clifford Edmund Bosworth FBA is an English historian and orientalist, specializing in Arabic and Iranian studies. He received his B.A. degree from Oxford University and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Edinburgh University. He held permanent posts at St. Andrews University, Manchester University, and the Center for the Humanities at Princeton University. He is the author of 100s articles in academic journals and composite volumes. His other contributions include nearly 200 articles in the Encyclopaedia of Islam and some 100 articles in the Encyclopædia Iranica, as well as articles for Encyclopædia Britannica and Encyclopedia Americana. He's currently a visiting professor at the University of Exeter, where he has held the post since 2004. His book The Islamic dynasties has been translated to Arabic and Persian. He is the chief editor of the Encyclopaedia of Islam and a consulting editor of Encyclopaedia Iranica.

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