Al-Nawfali's Lost History: The Issue of a Ninth-Century Shiite Source Used by Al-Tabari and Abu l-Faraj al-Isfahani

The vast number of compilations by Muslim scholars of the ninth to the eleventh centuries is clear evidence of the 'knowledge society' that characterised Islamic civilisation in classical times. Then, as today, these often voluminous Arabic compendia intrigued readers with their wealth of information and sophisticated structure, as well as their complex and, at times, ambiguous nature in terms of the age and historicity of the materials they preserved. Thus, the question as to the 'sources' Muslim scholars used in composing these compendia is key to understanding Islamic society and academic culture in medieval times. This article traces just such an early source: namely, a collection of historical accounts by 'Ali ibn Muhammad al-Nawfali, an Imami-Shi'ite scholar from the ninth-century CE. His compendium has only been preserved in quotations found in certain later compilations, especially in those by the celebrated Muslim scholars al-Tabari and Abu l-Faraj al-Isfahani. These passages and the context of al-Nawfali's scholarly activities are the focus of our source-critical inquiry, which is intended to shed light on some of the mechanisms at work in medieval Islamic historiography