The Trusted Envoy (On One of the Figures in the History of Beyhaqi)

Aḥmad ibn Abī al-Asba’/Al-Asbagh was a secretary and envoy to several Abbasid caliphs, including Al-Mu'taḍid, Al-Mu'ayyad, and his son Al-Mu'tazz. His name appears in several Persian texts, including Tārīkh-i Beyhaqī, Tārīkh-i Sīstān, and Tārīkh-i Herāt, but upon examining these works, only limited information is available. Although he was a well-known envoy of the Abbasid caliphs who frequently visited Iran, historians have not given him the attention he deserves. Due to the silence of the editors of Tārīkh-i Bayhaqī in their annotations, as well as the oversight by Malik al-Shu'ara Bahār in Tārīkh-i Sīstān, the author believes that it is necessary to explore this figure further. Although Ahmad was famous in his time and wrote books and works, little is known about him, and no works by him have survived. The scarcity of sources on this matter has led scholars to rely on the writings of Ibn al-Nadim in Al-Fihrist. Although Al-Fihrist is an important bibliographic work written a century after Aḥmad ibn Abī al-Asba's death, Ibn al-Nadim did not seem to know much about this figure or perhaps intentionally avoided providing a detailed biography. This article attempts to gather all available information on this person from Arabic sources and reconstruct his biography based on historical records. His name is mentioned in three categories of sources: local histories, general histories, and biographical dictionaries of secretaries and scholars. Sometimes his story is confused with that of Abul-Abbas Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Thawabah (d. 277), and his name has been subject to distortion and corruption in historical records.