Tārīkh mukhtaṣar al-duwal

About this book

A world chronicle from the creation of the Earth until the 1280s, written in Arabic by a learned bishop of the Syrian Orthodox Church drawing on a range of sources, for earlier periods drawing heavily on the Syriac Chronicle of Michael the Syrian, as well as Arabic and Persian sources for more contemporary history. Bar Hebraeus initially composed his history in Syriac as the first part of his Maktebānūt Zabnē (his so-called Chronicon Syriacum ), and in reworking this work as this Arabic tārīkh mukhtaṣar ('compendious history') adapted his material to his readership, expanding and eliding earlier material. Bar Hebraeus is a valuable witness to the Mongol ascendancy in Iran and Iraq.