RESOURCESwhich were available to them but which no longer survive; this of
course means that there is no way to verify such information, which
is complicated in the case of Bar Hebraeus by his inclusion of material
which is highly partisan or clearly legendary. These thirteenth-century
chronicles thus represent the point of diminishing returns in the search
for vestiges of earlier chronicles covering the late Sasanian and early
Islamic periods.
Because Muslim armies based in Iraq conquered Iran in the seventh
century, local histories in the New Persian language contain infor-
mation bearing on conditions in Iraq. They are either later Persian
translations of earlier Arabic compositions or made use of earlier
materials referring to the seventh and eighth centuries which no longer
survive. The Fars Nameh of Ibn al-Balkhi was completed before 1116
and is edited by G. Le Strange and R. A. Nicholson (London, 1921).
The Ma~asin I?fahan (Teheran, 1949) of Mufa4Qal ibn Sa'd al-Ma-
farriikhi was written in Arabic in 42111030 and survives in a Persian
translation of 729/1349. The Tartkh-i Qumm was originally written
in Arabic by Basan ibn Mul)ammad ibn Basan Qummi in 378/988-
89 and translated into Persian by Basan ibn 'All ibn Basan ibn 'Abd
al-Malik Qummi in 805-6/1402-3. The surviving Persian translation
was edited by S. Tehrani (Teheran, 1313/1934). The contents are
discussed in A.K.S. Lambton's "An Account of the Tarikhi Qumm,"
BSOAS 12 (1948): 587-96. The Tartkh-i Ntshiibur of Mul)ammad
ibn 'Abdullah al-Bakim an-Nisabiiri (3211933-40511014) survives in
an epitome edited by B. Karimi (Teheran, 1339/1960) and by R. Frye
as The Histories of Nishapur (Cambridge, Mass., 1965). The Tiirtkh-
i Tabaristan, ed. 'A. Iqbal (Teheran, 1942) of Mul)ammad ibn al-
Basan ibn Isfandiyar was compiled in about 613/1216 and was trans-
lated into English by E. G. Browne as An Abridged Translation of the
History of Tabaristan (Leiden and London, 1905). The anonymous
Tiirtkh-i Ststiin, ed. M. S. Bihar (Teheran, 131411935) covers the period
of conquest on pages 80 to 127 and is particularly useful. The Tartkh-
i Bukhiirii, ed. Razavi (Teheran, 1938) of Abii Bakr Mul)ammad Nar-
shaki covers the conquest on pages 8 to 12 and 45 to 73 and is available
in a French translation by C. Schefer, Description topographique et
historique de Boukhara, avant et pendant la conquete par les Arabes
par Mohammad Nerchaky, 943 (332 H.) (Paris, 1892; repr. 1975),
and in an English translation by R. Frye, The History of Bukhiirii
(Cambridge, Mass., 1954). All of these local histories contain some
information about Iranian captives and booty that were taken to Iraq