Tārīkh mukhtaṣar al-Duwal

A world chronicle from the creation of the Earth until the 1280s, written in Arabic by a learned bishop of the Syrian Orthodox Church drawing on a range of sources, for earlier periods drawing heavily on the Syriac <em>Chronicle</em> of Michael the Syrian, as well as Arabic and Persian sources for more contemporary history. Bar Hebraeus initially composed his history in Syriac as the first part of his <em>Maktebānūt Zabnē</em> (his so-called <em>Chronicon Syriacum</em>), and in reworking this work as this Arabic <em>tārīkh mukhtaṣar</em> ('compendious history') adapted his material to his readership, expanding and eliding earlier material. Bar Hebraeus is a valuable witness to the Mongol ascendancy in Iran and Iraq.