| The History of Al-Tabari Vol. 5: The Sasanids, the Byzantines, the Lakhmids, and Yemen Contributor(s): Bosworth, C. E. (Translator) |
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ISBN: 0791443558 ISBN-13: 9780791443552 Publisher: State University of New York Press OUR PRICE: $90.25 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: November 1999 Annotation: The fifth of 39 volumes presenting the full English translation of al-Tabari's (839-923 AD) history of the world of Islam up to 915. Here he continues his account of the centuries preceding the rise of the Prophet, and though he has yet to adopt a year-by-year format, he shifts from his early tales of monotheism decaying into idolatry and ignorance to what modern readers recognize as real history. The focus is on the Sasanid dynasty and its relations with Romans and Byzantines to the west, Persians to the east, and Bedouins to the south. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - History | Middle East - General |
| Dewey: 955.02 |
| LCCN: 99038279 |
| Series: Suny Near Eastern Studies |
| Physical Information: 1.31" H x 6.34" W x 9.26" (1.75 lbs) 458 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Developing World - Cultural Region - Middle East |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: This volume of al-T'abari'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 history of 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 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-T'abari's work, one for which non-Arabists have hitherto relied on a partial German translation, meritorious for its time but now 120 years old. This new translation is enriched by a detailed commentary which takes into account up-to-date scholarship. |