Akhbar wulat Khurasan

The present work is not an historical text in the regular sense of the word. It is rather an inventory of as many citations and borrowings in later sources as possible from a text now lost. Written in Arabic, the Akhbar wulat Khurasan was started by ?Abd al-Husayn b. Ahmad al-Sallami (d. 300/912) of Khwar near Bayhaq, whose account ran to the year 289/902, and then continued by his brother Abu ?Ali b. Ahmad al-Sallami, finishing in the year 344/955. As stated by the author of the present compilation, the work is important in that it is an early history of the governors of Khurasan which was not written from religious or political motives. A trusted source, it saw at least three abridgements and is cited or used by many later authors, among them Abu Rayhan Biruni (d. 440/1048), ?Izz al-Din b. al-Athir (d. 630/1233), and ?Abd al-Hayy b. Dahhak Gardizi (fl. middle 5th/11th century).