The First Dynasty of Islam: The Umayyad Caliphate ad 661-750

Developments concerning the sources
The sources and problems concerning them, especially the Arabic
Muslim literary sources upon which modern scholars depend for

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Bibliographical Postscript to the Second Edition
detailed reconstruction of the events of Umayyad history, remain at
the centre of scholarly attention. Apart from the continuing work of
editing, publishing and republishing Arabic works which are
important for the material they contain on the period, one major
development has been the completion of the English translation of
the whole of the 
History (Ta’rikh)
 of al-?abari (d. 923) (39 volumes,
State University of New York Press: Albany, New York State). The
editor of the whole series is Ehsan Yar-Shater but each volume has
been translated and annotated by an individual scholar. Publication
of the volumes in fact began slightly before that of 
First Dynasty
 and
the last volume to be published appeared in 1999 (the volumes have
appeared in random order). Generally speaking, volumes 17 to 27
cover the period of the Umayyads but relevant material is scattered
throughout the entire work. Those interested in the period but unable
to read Arabic, therefore, now have access to the most important
Arabic source for Umayyad history.
Another translated text relevant to Umayyad history is part of a
work by the 11th–12th century Omani scholar al-?wtabi. His
collection of biographies contains material pertaining to the family
of Yazid b. al-Muhallab (see pp. 73–76 of the present work), some of
which is not to be found in the main sources for Umayyad and
Abbasid history. Martin Hinds’ 
An Early Islamic family from Oman:
al-?wtabi’s Account of the Muhallabids,
 University of Manchester.
Journal of Semitic Studies Monographs no. 17, 1991, is in fact not
merely a translation but a learned commentary and reedition of a
text which was considerably corrupt in its original Arabic edition.
The problem of how such sources, some of the more important of
which are referred to in Appendix 1 of the present work, are to be
approached and understood, however, continues to be the subject of
intense discussion and debate.
In Appendix 2, which summarizes the development of scholarly
views about the value of the literary sources for enabling us to
reconstruct and understand events, prominence is given to the
important 1973 book of Albrecht Noth, 
Quellenkritische Studien zu
Themen, Formen und Tendenzen frühislamischer
Geschichtsuberlieferung,
 which called into question some of the
views about the sources dominant since the time of Julius
Wellhausen. Happily, Noth’s work is now available in an English
translation by Michael Bonner in the 
Late Antiquity and Early Islam
studies series: 
The Early Arabic Historical Tradition. A Source-
Critical Study
 (Princeton: The Darwin Press, Inc., 1994). In fact the

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Bibliographical Postscript to the Second Edition  
131
English version is more than a translation of the original. Noth,
together with Lawrence I.Conrad who collaborated with him on the
text, seized the opportunity to expand and develop the original work
in order to take account of the appearance of the new texts, editions
and studies, as well as to bring in some new ideas. In effect,
therefore, the English version has superseded the German.
Unhappily Noth himself, a scholar much liked as well as respected,
died in 1999.
The first workshop (1989) organized by the 
LAEI
 project was
devoted to the question of the literary sources for the transition
period between Late Antiquity and early Islam, and Cameron and
Conrad jointly edited the resulting publication: