This attractive publication, adorned with a dust jacket reproducing a scene from Ghaznavid history in Rashīd al-Dīn's Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh, contains an annotated translation of a substantial section of Gardīzī's Zain al-akhbār. This is referred to as the “historical section”, which transpires to be the chapters on the governors and rulers of Khurasan down to the accession of the Ghaznavid sultan, Maudūd b. Masʿūd in 432/1041. Bosworth does not fully explain why this is the “historical section” rather than other parts of the work, which includes historical and historiographical information of considerable interest on the various peoples of the eastern Islamic world, their calendars, festivals and customs (not omitting the Greeks, Rūmiyān). It is the narrative or chronological history that is the “more strictly historical part of book”, however, and after the briefest imaginable statement of the contents of the Zain, Bosworth notes that after dealing with the pre-Islamic dynasties and giving “a sketchy account” of the rise of Islam and the caliphate, “the author gets to what obviously interested him most” (p. 2, cf. p. 81), which clearly applies to Professor Bosworth as well. As Elton Daniel remarks (“The rise and development of Persian historiography” in C. Melville (ed.), Persian Historiography, London, 2012, p. 124): “Gardizi's own interests are unabashedly in the history of Khorasan as the heart of Iran”, indeed marvellously congruent with Bosworth's own, given his lifelong association with the political history of the Ghaznavids and the medieval eastern Islamic world more generally. As Farhad Daftary observes on the dust jacket appreciation, Bosworth is eminently qualified for presenting Gardizi's work to a wider audience, thanks to his long engagement with these texts and experience of translating them.

There is an opportunity here, however, to say rather more about Gardizi's work as a whole and its historiographical significance, not merely as a source of information, but Bosworth chooses to leave this to Julie Meisami's fine study (Persian Historiography to the End of the Twelfth Century, Edinburgh, 1999, pp. 66–79), and references to his own work elsewhere. Although it is true that the Zain al-akhbār, surviving only in two late and imperfect manuscripts, was not widely known nor apparently used by later historians, its interest in neighbouring peoples, especially the Indians and the Turks, as well as its narration of the pre-Islamic rulers of Iran, the caliphs and then the rulers of Iran in the Islamic period, makes it a model for the work of Baiḍāwī's Niẓām al-tawārīkh, not to mention prefiguring Rashīd al-Dīn's much-lauded “world” history, and stands as a testament to the imperial horizons of the Ghaznavid court – which included of course such luminaries as al-Bīrūnī, briefly referred to as a colleague (p. 1).

Bosworth's introduction provides useful information on the text and the history of its discovery, use, previous publication and translation. Throughout the translation, the first to be published in English and independent of a Russian translation by A.K. Arends, Bosworth refers to the editions of M. Nazim, ʿA. Ḥabībī and Raḥīm Riḍāzāda Malik, while preferring that of Ḥabībī; reference is made to the first, calligraphic, edition published in Kabul in 1347/1968, rather than the typeset text reprinted in Tehran, 1363/1984, which most readers, including the present reviewer, are more likely to have to hand. It is not clear whether Bosworth took advantage of the rough unpublished translation by H.G. Raverty to which he refers (p. 8). Some confusion arises over Bosworth's view of the present work, the dust jacket calling the book “The Persian text of … Gardīzī”, whereas the title page calls it “The original text…”; in either case, the reader might be expecting the volume to include a Persian text, and however definitive the translation may become (it is unlikely to be superseded for some time), it is perhaps somewhat misleading to refer to it as an “edition”.

The translation itself, as one would expect, is accurate and reliable, with occasional difficulties in the readings properly discussed in the endnotes. Bosworth's text reads smoothly in modern English and is not of course literal, for this would lead to a very stilted and often unclear narrative; a certain amount of interpretation is necessarily included within the English version. Readers who want to know what Gardīzī actually said, however, will be wise to refer to the Persian text, not only for the terminology used but also for the linguistic turns of phrase in general. On one hand, the Zain is a rather unedifying chronicle of ambition, jealousy, treachery and aggression – notably in the late Samanid period; on the other, Gardīzī frequently asserts that complaints against oppressive governors resulted in their dismissal and replacement, thus upholding the model of just government that was fundamental to the didactic purpose of historical writing.

All in all this is a most useful publication which, alongside Bosworth's recently published translation of Baihaqī's History (in 2011, not 2009 as anticipated, p. 10), makes available one of the earliest examples of Persian historical literature and most important sources for the history of Khurasan. One can now read quickly through a large section of this work, which is perhaps normally only dipped into for specific pieces of information. Bosworth is at his most magisterial in elucidating these facts and identifying the correct record of names, dates and places, upon which a secure knowledge of medieval history can be based.