Baihaqi, 'Abu'l Haq

(996-1077)

   The author of Tarikh-i Baihaqi (Baihaqi's History), he was the son of Husain Baihaqi, a native of Harisabad in the district of Baihaq in Khurasan. Baihaqi served for several decades in the Correspondence Department (diwan-i risalat) of the Ghaznavid central government. While out of employment between 1052 and 1059, he undertook to write Tarikh-i Baihaqi, which originally comprised his reminiscences of events from 1018 to 1059. The surviving part of the book mainly deals with the happenings of the reign of Sultan Mas'ud of Ghazni (1030-1041).