Was Ibn Wāḍiḥ al-Yaʿqūbī a Shiʿite Historian? The State of the Question*

Abstract

The works of the third/ninth-century historian and geographer Ibn al-Wāḍiḥ al-Yaʿqūbī have long served as an indispensable source in the modern study of Islamic historiography, but nagging questions about alYaʿqūbī’s purportedly Shiʿite identity have continued to bedevil modern attempts to interpret his works. This essay re-visits the question of al-Yaʿqūbī’s Shiʿite identity in of light of new data and a re-evaluation of the old, and it questions what evidence there exists for considering him a Shiʿite as well as what heuristic value, if any, labeling him as a Shiʿite holds for modern scholars who read his works.