In Defence of the Caliph: Abū Bakr al-Ṣūlī and the Virtues of al-Muqtadir

This paper looks mainly at the Akhbār al-Muqtadir bi-llāh by Abū Bakr al-Ṣūlī (d. 335/947), focusing on events of which the author himself is an eyewitness and especially on those describing his personal interaction with the caliph. The Akhbār al-Muqtadir bi-llāh is a short annalistic chronicle of the years 295-315 of the Hijra. It is a part of al-Ṣūī’s large Kitāb al-awrāq, which contains, besides caliphal chronicles, also akhbār of poets. This particular section, which is extant only in one manuscript kept at the library of al-Azhar in Cairo, has only recently become available in published form. Al-Ṣūlī spent most of his life in Baghdad, where he earned his living at court as a boon companion of several caliphs and teacher of caliphs’ children. In his chronicles, and especially in those concerning the caliphs for whom he worked, al- Ṣūlī mixes accounts of political and military events with anecdotes of life court and events in his own life. Such accounts, if they make al- Ṣūlī a mediocre historian in the eyes of many modern scholars, can still help us greatly in understanding the mentality of the man and his environment, as well as providing a point of reference for comparison with his more famous contemporaries with whom his work overlaps (and sometimes coincides), as for instance al-Ṭabarī and al-Masʿūdī. The general aim of the paper is to assess the reliability of Abū Bakr al- Ṣūlī as an (inevitably partial) eyewitness and to evaluate his contribution to our knowledge of al-Muqtadir.