Where al-Tabari oʃers conɻicting versions of an event
from diʃerent sources, I have noted the diʃerence and
followed his example in reserving judgment. “In
everything which I mention herein,” he writes in the
introduction to the Tarikh, “I rely only on established
[written] reports, which I identify, and on [oral]
accounts, which I ascribe by name to their transmitters
... Knowledge is only obtained by the statements of
reporters and transmitters, not by rational deduction or
by intuitive inference. And if we have mentioned in this
book any report about certain men of the past which the
reader ɹnds objectionable or the hearer oʃensive ... he
should know that this has not come about on our
account, but on account of one of those who has
transmitted it to us, and that we have presented it only
in the way in which it was presented to us.”
I have made especially heavy use of the following
volumes:
The Foundation of the Community, tr. and annotated W. Montgomery
Watt and M. V. McDonald, Vol. VIII. Albany: State University of New
York Press,1987.
The Victory of Islam, tr. and annotated Michael Fishbein, Vol. VIII.
Albany: State University of New York Press,1997.
The Last Years of the Prophet, tr. and annotated Ismail K. Poonawala,
Vol. IX. Albany: State University of New York Press,1990.
The Crisis of the Early Caliphate, tr. and annotated R. Stephen
Humphreys, Vol. XV. Albany: State University of New York