RESOURCESselection of texts. Grohmann's Arabische ChronologielArabische Pa-
pyruskunde, Handbuch der Orientalistik, supp. vol. II (Leiden, 1966)
is more up to date; his Arabic Papyri from Ijirbet el-Mird (Louvain,
1963) contains some important early documents. N. Abbott's The
Kurrah Papyri from Aphrodito in the Oriental Institute (Chicago,
1938), and "A New Papyrus and a Review of the Administration of
'Ubaid Allah ibn al-Habhab," in Arabic and Islamic Studies in Honor
of Hamilton A. R. Gibb, ed. G. Makdisi (Leiden, 1965) are equally
important. Arabic papyri from the early Marwani period were also
published by C. J. Kraemer in Non-Literary Papyri (Princeton, 1958).
On the controversial issue of the use of Arabic writing for literature,
see N. Abbott's Studies in Arabic Literary Papyri (Chicago and Lon-
don, 1957-72), and M. J. Kister, "On the Papyrus of Wahb b. Mu-
nabbih," BSOAS 37 (1974): 545-71.
Chronicles
For the most part, a sense of the succession of events in a temporal
framework rests on a series of overlapping chronicles. Although the
Sasanian royal annals do not survive in their original form, contem-
porary Byzantine chronicles serve as part of the basis for reconstructing
Sasanian political history. Since they are primarily concerned with
Byzantine matters, they tend to provide information about the Sa-
sanians only when they were involved with them. Byzantine chroniclers
tend to be better informed about the border region and western parts
of the Sasanian empire than about eastern Iran; this makes the chron-
icles somewhat useful in studying Iraq. The Rerum gestarum libri qui
supersunt of Ammianus Marcellinus covers the years from 284 until
- Since he participated in Julian's invasion of Iraq, his eyewitness
account is a primary source for conditions existing on the middle
Euphrates in the fourth century. The Latin text was published with
an English translation by J. Rolfe in the Loeb Classical Library (Cam-
bridge, Mass., 1935-39). The Syriac chronicle of Joshua the Stylite to
the end of A.D. 506 contains the only contemporary account of the
Mazdaki movement as well as an account of the campaigns of Qubadh
I in Byzantine Mesopotamia. It survives in the chronicle of Dionysius
of Tell Mahre, from which it was extracted and published by W. Wright
(Cambridge, 1882). Prokopios (Procopius) of Caesarea was also an
eyewitness and participant in the campaigns of Belisarios against the
Persians under Justinian. The first two books of his History of the
Wars cover the Persian wars from 408 until 549 and are full of gossip