Uzbekistan: a land multifarious geniuses. ABU BAKR NARSHAKHI (899-959)

Abu Bakr Narshakhi is the author of "Tarikhi Bukhara" (The History of Bukhara) which became known as one of the pearls of the earliest samples of Central Asian historiography. He wrote his book in 943-944 in the Arabic language and devoted it to the ruler of the Samani state Amiri Hamid whose full name sounded as Abu Muhammad Nuh ibn Nasr ibn Ahmad ibn Ismail as-Samani (943-954). Neither "Tarikhi Bukhara" nor other historical sources contain perfect information about the life and activities of the author. The only written source that gives us very short information about him is the book titled as "Kitab al-ansab" written in the 13th century by Samani. As the book informs us, the full name of the author of "Tarikhi Bukhara" was Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Ja’far ibn Zakariyya ibn Hattab ibn Sharik who was from the village Narshah not far from Bukhara and was born in 286/899 and died in 348/959.

It is a great pity that the copy of "Tarikhi Bukhara" written in . Arabic did not reach us but only a Persian translation of the book have reached us which was edited with some changes, additions and shortenings during the past three centuries.

The preface of the book states that in 1129 a man from modern Quva whose name was Abu Nasr Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Nasr al-Qubavi translated "Tarikhi Bukhara" from Arabic into Persian in accord with the request of his friends but the text of the book suffered from some shortenings and additions during the translation. After half a century, the Persian version experienced one more edition: in 1178-1179, a man called Muhammad ibn Zufar ibn Umar edited the book for the second time with shortenings. I lowever, reading the book, we can come across some short inlormation dealing with the events from 1178 to 1220. This fact •hows that after the edition of Muhammad ibn Zufar (i.e. 1178) some unknown authors made additions to the text of the book. It can be easily seen that those editors also made some additions to the main text of the book.

The copies of the book that we own include some information about the events taken place up to 1220. We have only the Persian version of the book that had suffered some changes and additions but the original Arabic version did not reach us. The translator Abu Nasr Ahmad not only shortened some places of the book but also added some important information about the events taken place after the author of the book, i.e. Abu Bakr Narshakhi. In this process, he tried to use the information taken from the author of the 9th century Abu-1-Hasan Abdurrahman ibn Muhammad Nishapuri’s book "Hazain-al-ulum". Besides, he borrowed some necessary additional materials from Abu Is’haq Ibrahim ibn al-Abbas as-Suli’s book titled as "Akhbari Muqanna" and from Abu Ja’far Muhammad at-Tabari’s book "Tarikhi Tabari" (The History of Tabari).

Although the translator Abu Nasr Ahmad and the editors following him made some additions to the main text of "Tarikhi Bukhara", they kept the name of Abu Bakr Narshakhi as the author of the book. For example, in some instances we can come across the notes: "as the real author of the book considers..." (Tehran edition of 1939, p.4). However, it seems correct to acknowledge the translators and the editors following them as the authors of the information about the events happened from 944 up to 1220.