The only local history of the Shirvanshahs and the emirs of Derbent, surviving as extracts in a 17th-century Ottoman compilation. Its own narrative stops in 1075, before the Kasranid line, so for 1200 it gives only the dynastic frame; Minorsky's edition adds from the same compilation the line of Shirvanshahs down to Akhsitan I (reigning about 1160 to about 1197) and his successors, and his commentary uses Khaqani and Nizami for the court of Shirvan about 1200. Thin for 1200; use for the names and for Derbent's position between the Shirvanshahs, the Alans and the Kipchaks.
About this source
- Title
- Tarikh al-Bab wa Sharvan
- Author
- Anonymous (an 11th-century author of Derbent, excerpted by Munejjim-bashi, died 1702)
- Written
- about 1075; preserved in an Ottoman compilation of the 1670s
- Language
- Arabic
- Covers
- to 1075 for Derbent and Shirvan, with the compiler's list of later Shirvanshahs
- Kind
- Chronicle
Minorsky's 1958 volume is the only edition and translation and is in copyright; a copy circulates on the Internet Archive without licence and is not linked here. The evidence for Shirvan and Derbent at 1200 is thin everywhere; the Wikipedia link is to the editor, as no article on the text was found.
Where to read it
Editions
- V. Minorsky, A History of Sharvan and Darband in the 10th to 11th Centuries (Cambridge, 1958), Arabic text with English translation and commentary (not freely online)