RESOURCESor Arabia and about Muslim emigration from Iraq to Iran in the early
Islamic period.
Adab
A great deal of information about the past is preserved in works of
Arabic literature which were intended to serve as references for bu-
reaucrats and scholars. Letters, documents, and speeches are quoted
in this literature as examples of style to be emulated by scribes; as
sources of historical, genealogical, and biographical information for
allusions and comparisons; and as guides to practical ethics and rules
of conduct for standards of behavior.
Such information is organized and classified by topic in these works
in an encyclopaedic fashion for ease of reference. The earliest is al-
Adab al-kabtr wa-I-adab a$-$aghzr of Ibn al-Muqaffa' (Beirut, 1956).
The works of 'Amr ibn Bahr al-Ja}:ti~ (ca. 160/776-77-255/868-69)
are dominated by stylistic expression, but his Kitiib al-bayiin wa-t-
tabyzn (Cairo, 1948-49, Beirut, 1388/1968) is worth consulting. A
sampling of the range of subjects he covered is given in C. Pellat's The
Life and Works of Jii~i?,-: Translations of Selected Texts, tr. D. M.
Hawke (Berkeley, 1969), which includes selections from unpublished
manuscripts along with the major works of Ja}:ti~. His younger con-
temporary 'Abdullah ibn Muslim ibn Qutayba (828-889?) produced
two such works: the ten-part Kitiib 'uyun al-akhbiir, published in four
volumes (Cairo, 1964) and a one-volume manual called the Kitiib al-
ma'iirif (Cairo, 1969). For modern introductions to his work and
evaluations thereof, see I. Huseini, The Life and Works of Ibn Qutayba
(Beirut, 1950), and G. Lecompte, Ibn Qutayba, l'homme, son oeuvre,
ses idees (Damascus, 1965). The Kitiib al-kiimil (Leipzig, 1864-92) of
Mu}:tammad ibn Yazid al-Mubarrad (d. 898) is a useful historical
encyclopedia, with topics arranged in a general chronological frame-
work; on the other hand, the Kitiib al-mu~abbar (Haydarabad, 1943)
of Mu}:tammad ibn I:Iabib (d. 860) organizes historical and geneolog-
ical information by categories of people with particular attributes in
the pre-Islamic and early Islamic periods. The first part of the Kitiib
akhbiir az-zamiin has been attributed to al-Mas'iidi. There is an edi-
tion by 'A. a~-Sawi (Cairo, 1357/1938), as well as a French translation
by B. Carra de Vaux called L'abrege des merveilles (Paris, 1898).
One of the major works of this type from the tenth century is the
multivolume Kitiib al-'iqd ai-faTui (Cairo, 1367-72/1948-53) of Abii
A}:tmad ibn Mu}:tammad ibn 'Abd Rabbihi al-Andaliisi (246/860-328/