The Conquest of the Lands (Futuh al-Buldan)
al-BaladhuriBefore AD 892
A ninth-century Arabic history of the Muslim conquests, arranged region by region, with the terms on which each city surrendered. It is among the earliest surviving Muslim accounts of the taking of Jerusalem.
Ahmad ibn Yahya al-Baladhuri lived in Baghdad, was close to the Abbasid caliphs of his day, and died in 892. His book collects reports on the conquest of each province and names the men who handed each report down. Where reports disagree he sets them side by side, as he does for Jerusalem.
He wrote about 250 years after the conquest of Syria and Palestine. His interest is practical: whether a city was taken by force or by treaty decided how it was taxed, so the terms of surrender are what he records most carefully.
Cited in
- AD 637/638, estimated date