HAMZA el-İSFAHÂNîŽ VE BÜVEYHîŽLER (I)

Abstract

Hamza al-Isfahani is the one of the leading historians of the tenth century. Especially his book, Tarihu Sini Mülûk al-Arz ve al-Anbiya (Chronology of the Kings of the Earth and the Prophets) is a remarkable and an important chronicle, which reached us completely and without destruction. The book, thought it is a kind of general world history, has also some of the earliest and contemporary records of the Buwayhids and their racial group the Dailamits. At the same time, it is an important historical source to learn how the history of the Buwayhids is dealt with by Hamza al- Isfahani as a their contemporary historian and where they were put in the general history of Islam. In this article, believing that without enough knowledge of the author's biography, it is almost impossible to understand his ideas and to evaluate or interpret them correctly, we firstly considered the life of Hamza al- Isfahani as a scholar, historian and an eyewitness of his age. Then we examined his records on the Buwayhid dynasty and the Dailamits.