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The story of Persia from the first mythical Kings to the last of the Sasanides exhibits in Tabari, as in allied Arabic works, a certain similarity of conception and presentation which leads to the assumption of an indigenous original work at least respecting a very large portion.
Again the version which does not proceed from Ibn Mukaffa is for the most part in accord with the epitome of the story of the Sasanides in the introduction to Yakubi's History of the Abbasides; there the excellent author occasionally subjoins extraneous information. More often than not this presentment is in touch with Ferdausi.
Tabari reproduces the conflicting versions of the same incident separately one after another; Dinawari works them up into a single unified narrative. The small book which Hamza Ispahani wrote in 961, contains in brief much independent information on the Sasanides.
Of the highest moment, however, is the tolerably detailed section on the history of the Sasanides and their times embodied in it, and whose German translation forms the text of our book. This section goes back partly to good Arabic records and mostly, at least mediately, to very important ancient Persian sources.
I am unable to aver from whom has originated this other recension of the story of the Sasanides. We know indeed the names of a number of persons who redacted the History of Persia, originally in Pahlavi, for Arab readers.
On to this ancient autochthonous tradition was immediately joined the story of the last Darius and Alexander emanating from a foreign source, the Greek romance of Alexander. Not more than a few names was all that was preserved of the long period covering the Macedonian and the Parthian supremacy. With the Sasanides the national reminiscences became clearer.
To judge by the express statements and suggestions as also by various features in style and phraseology and further by all that we are aware of touching the circumstances of the literature we can say with certainty that, that original work like all other Persian narrative productions of the Sasanides and of the period of Arab conquest was composed in the written, language of this period, the Pahlavi.
But the best comprehensive statement of the story of the Sasanides on the basis of this tradition is furnished us by Tabari, all his shortcomings notwithstanding and despite the pre-eminence which Firdausi's poem possesses as such. But in his narrative of this period Tabari had laid under contribution reports which were not of Persian origin.
The mythical tales which in their crude nascent forms were already there at the period of the Avesta were in course of time richly developed and under the Sasanides were no doubt universally known. To these were joined ecclesiastical speculation and traditions concerning the genesis of the world, civilisation and the legislation of Zoroaster. There were also several genealogical trees.
We should, therefore, be inclined from the first to derive other information in Eutychius on the Sasanides from Ibn Mukaffa.
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