A Comparative Look at the Historiography of Tabari and Masoudi

Iranian historiography, as part of the tradition of Islamic historiography, emerged from the heart of the Iraqi school of historiography in the first centuries of the rise of Islam and nurtured some of the greatest Muslim historians. Although Islamic historiography grew rapidly with the emergence of Islamic civilization, it did not have much dynamic and philosophical growth. In the best case, it is examined with a theological approach and in a way influenced by the rule of the sciences of hadith and rijal. Of course, exceptional figures such as Tabari and Masoudi acted somewhat differently from others and had a more specific view of the issue. One of the reasons for Tabari's fame over the centuries can be attributed to his method of historiography; A method that is strongly influenced by the method of narrators; Both in collecting and writing historical data. On the other hand, Masoudi, a prominent historian of the third and fourth centuries AH, is one of the founders of analytical and intellectual historiography who, by writing his works, applied a special approach to analytical historiography based on reason. Based on this, in this research, we will try to compare the historiography style of Tabari and Masoudi by using analytical-descriptive method.