Maqātil aṭ-Ṭālibīyīn wa-akhbaruhum

Maqātil al-ṭālibīyīn wa-akhbāruhum is a work by Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣbahānī, a literary scholar born in 897 in Isfahan, Iran, who died in Baghdad in 967. This book is a collection of biographies of Shiʿi martyrs descended from ʿAlī and his father, Abū Ṭālib. Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣbahānī was a descendant of Marwān II, the last Umayyad caliph, but he was a Shiʿi Muslim who supported the rights of the descendants of Muhammad’s son-in-law, ʿAlī, to the caliphate. He spent most of his life in Baghdad, where he was supported by the Buyid emirs. His major work, Kitāb al-aghānī (“The Book of Songs”), contains extensive information on Arabic song, composers, poets, and musicians, as well as details about the life and customs of early and Umayyad and ʿAbbāsid period Arabs.1