History of the Prophets and Kings

The History of the Prophets and Kings (Arabic: تاريخ الرسل والملوك Tārīkh al-Rusul wa al-Mulūk), more commonly known as Tarikh al-Tabari (تاريخ الطبري) or Tarikh-i Tabari or The History of al-Tabari (Persian: تاریخ طبری) is an Arabic-language historical chronicle completed by the Muslim historian Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari (225–310 AH, 838–923 AD) in 915 AD, presenting a history of the entire world, all the way from its creation, down to the Abbasid era, up until the time when the text was completed. Al-Tabari's Tarikh is considered one of the most important sources for early Islamic history, and it appeared during an intense period of canonization of Islamic history, representing a culminating prism through which future Muslims read and learned about the past. According to Fred Donner, "it is reasonable to consider al-Ṭabarī's work as a representative product of the early Islamic historiographical tradition, if not, indeed, as the culmination and crowning glory of that tradition."

Al-Tabari arranges his material into annals, meaning chronologically (or, year after year), as opposed to biographically (i.e. narrating the life of one figure, then another, and so on), which makes his work useful for understanding broad historical themes. His work is also not sectarian, and is broadly representative of the mainstream Islamic view. Tabari also often cites conflicting versions of the same event when he is aware of them.

Al-Tabari focuses on a limited number of themes relevant to his interests. Al-Tabari writes extensively about the pre-Islamic history of Persia, but very little space about the histories of Ancient Greece or the Roman Empire. Likewise, significant space is devoted to recounting Old Testament history, but very little to the life of Jesus and narratives concerning the history of the Christian community. Much more attention is given to Iran and Iraq compared to Syria and Egypt. He devotes much more space to documenting political uprisings (even minor ones) and battles compared to more mundane but significant matters of everyday society such as taxation, commerce, industry, agriculture, and so forth. This selectivity is likely a product of a combination of al-Tabari's own interests as well as what sources of information were themselves able for access to al-Tabari as he composed his history.

Another feature of Al-Tabari's work was to introduce methods of hadith into it, meaning that he would supply isnads (chains of transmission) for the reports he mentions. This was important for the ta'rikh genre as it had, by then, been seen as lacking in rigor by Islamic scholars specialized in the hadith sciences (known as the muḥaddithūn). In one sense, Al-Tabari can be viewed as having combined the formats of khabar (report/account/narrative) and ḥadīth.

An appendix or continuation, was written by Abu Abdullah b. Ahmad b. Ja'far al-Farghani, a student of al-Tabari.