BALADHURI, AL-

in full Ahmad Ibn Yahya Al-baladhuri died c. 892 Arabic historian best known for his history of the formation of the Arab Muslim empire. Al-Baladhuri lived most of his life in Baghdad and studied there and in Syria. He was for some time a favoured visitor at the Baghdad court of the 'Abbasid caliphs. His chief extant work, a condensation of a longer history, Futuh al-buldan (The Origins of the Islamic State, 1916, 1924), tells of the wars and conquests of the Muslim Arabs from the time of the Prophet Muhammad. It covers the conquests of lands from Arabia west to Egypt, North Africa, and Spain and east to Iraq, Iran, and Sind. Al-Baladhuri drew on oral history and on the few earlier biographies and campaign accounts, giving variants and authorities for them. His history, in turn, was much used by later writers. Ansab al-ashraf (Lineage of the Nobles), also extant, is a biographical work in genealogical order devoted to the Arab aristocracy, from Muhammad and his contemporaries to the Umayyad and 'Abbasid caliphs. It contains histories of the reigns of rulers.