Tarikh-i Bayhaqi


Tārīkh-i Bayhaqī is a history book written by Abul-Fazl Bayhaqi, in Persian, in the 11th century CE. Much of this extensive work is lost, but its remains is the most important source on the history of the Ghaznavid Empire. The work is of literary value as well due to its unique style of narration.

Names

The work has been published under multiple names:
Tarikh-i Bayhaqi is believed to have consisted of thirty books, of which only six books remain. The main topic of the remaining books is the reign of Mas'ud I, sultan of the Ghaznavid Empire. In addition to reporting political events, the work reports on geographical places and on the history of the Persian literature by mentioning notable writers and poets of the time.
K. Allin Luther compared the epistemology of Bayhaqi's History to later Seljuq historians and advises a rhetorical approach to the work. Marilyn Waldman also recommends a rhetorical approach through speech act theory, yet does not give a comprehensive break down of the text. Julie Scott Meisami also points to the analytical nature of the work and places Bayhaqi among the historians of the Islamic renaissance.
Tarikh-e Bayhaqi is well known for its rich use of language. Several features of the work has transformed it into literary prose, including the use of neologisms, novel word combinations and syntaxes, archaic words, imagery, Quranic verses and Hadith, Persian and Arabic poems, and various types of parallelism and repetition.
The work has also been compared to a historical novel.