SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Abu'l-Fazl Muhammad ibn al-Husayn al-Bayhaqi, the author of the Tarikh I Mas'udi, was born in the year 385 A.H. (995) or 386 A.H. (996), and died in Safar , 470 A.H. (August, 1077). Among his contemporaries included several great men both in the field of literature and otherwise. His main work, the history of Sultan Mas'ud, the son of Mahmud of Ghaznah, is perhaps the only history of its kind which draws entirely first upon the first-hand, and then upon the eye-witness, information. So far there has been known in Europe and India only one edition of this book, i.e., the Bibliotheca Indica, Calcutta; but there is another, and more complete, edition of it, namely, the Tehran ed. 1307 A.H. (1889-90). The real title of this history is unknown, various authors calling it by different names. The greater part of the existing portion was composed during the years 450 - 451 A.H. (1058 - 1060), though a beginning was made in 448 A.H. (1056-7). The extant part comprises only Vols V and X, in part, and VI and VII to IX in full. It is generally said that this history started from the beginning of the Ghaznawid dynasty, but internal evidence shows that it began with the year 409 A.H. (1018-19) perhaps in continuation of Utbi's Tarikh I Yamini which is brought down to the year 409 or 410 (1018-19 or 1019-20). The period covered by the extant portion extends from Zu'l-Hijjah, 421 A.H. (November, 1030) to 15th, Sha'ban, 432 A.H. (21st April, 1041); while the period dealt with in the whole including the lost parts, may be summed up, though with no scrupulous exactitude, within the years 409 A.H. and 44 A.H. (1018-19 and 1053).