The Most Famous
HISTORIANS from Iraq
This page contains a list of the greatest Iraqi Historians. The pantheon dataset contains 561 Historians, 5 of which were born in Iraq. This makes Iraq the birth place of the 16th most number of Historians behind Spain, and Czechia.
Top 7
The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Iraqi Historians of all time. This list of famous Iraqi Historians is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.
1. Al-Baladhuri (806 - 892)
With an HPI of 63.45, Al-Baladhuri is the most famous Iraqi Historian. His biography has been translated into 37 different languages on wikipedia.
ʾAḥmad ibn Yaḥyā ibn Jābir al-Balādhurī (Arabic: أحمد بن يحيى بن جابر البلاذري) was a 9th-century West Asian historian. One of the eminent Middle Eastern historians of his age, he spent most of his life in Baghdad and enjoyed great influence at the court of the caliph al-Mutawakkil. He travelled in Syria and Iraq, compiling information for his major works. His full name was Ahmad Bin Yahya Bin Jabir Al-Baladhuri (Arabic: أحمد بن يحيى بن جابر البلاذري), Balazry Ahmad Bin Yahya Bin Jabir Abul Hasan or Abi al-Hassan Baladhuri.
2. Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi (1002 - 1071)
With an HPI of 57.51, Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi is the 2nd most famous Iraqi Historian. His biography has been translated into 18 different languages.
Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī ibn Thābit ibn Aḥmad ibn Māhdī al-Shāfiʿī, commonly known as al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī (Arabic: الخطيب البغدادي) or "the lecturer from Baghdad" (10 May 1002 – 5 September 1071; 392 AH-463 AH), was a Sunni Muslim scholar known for being one of the foremost leading hadith scholars and historians at his time. He is widely considered an important authority in hadith, fiqh and history.
3. Hisham ibn al-Kalbi (737 - 819)
With an HPI of 55.79, Hisham ibn al-Kalbi is the 3rd most famous Iraqi Historian. His biography has been translated into 20 different languages.
Hishām ibn al-Kalbī (Arabic: هشام بن الكلبي), 737 AD – 819 AD/204 AH, also known as Ibn al-Kalbi (إبن الكلبي), was an Arab historian. His full name was Abu al-Mundhir Hisham ibn Muhammad ibn al-Sa'ib ibn Bishr al-Kalbi. Born in Kufa, he spent much of his life in Baghdad. Like his father, he collected information about the genealogies and history of the ancient Arabs. One of the notable works of Ibn al-Kalbi is the Book of Idols (Kitab al-Asnam), which aims to document the veneration of idols and pagan sanctuaries in different regions and among different tribes in pre-Islamic Arabia. In this work, Hisham posited a genealogical link between Ishmael and the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and put forth the idea that all Arabs were descended from Ishmael. He relied heavily on the ancient oral traditions of the Arabs, but also quoted writers who had access to Biblical and Palmyran sources. According to the Fihrist, he wrote 140 works. His account of the genealogies of the Arabs is continually quoted in the Kitab al-Aghani.
4. Ibn Wahshiyya (900 - 930)
With an HPI of 55.45, Ibn Wahshiyya is the 4th most famous Iraqi Historian. His biography has been translated into 21 different languages.
Ibn Waḥshiyya (Arabic: ابن وحشية), died c. 930, was a Nabataean (Aramaic-speaking, rural Iraqi) agriculturalist, toxicologist, and alchemist born in Qussīn, near Kufa in Iraq. He is the author of the Nabataean Agriculture (Kitāb al-Filāḥa al-Nabaṭiyya), an influential Arabic work on agriculture, astrology, and magic. Already by the end of the tenth century, various works were being falsely attributed to him. One of these spurious writings, the Kitāb Shawq al-mustahām fī maʿrifat rumūz al-aqlām ("The Book of the Desire of the Maddened Lover for the Knowledge of Secret Scripts", perhaps 1022–3 CE), is notable as an early proposal that some Egyptian hieroglyphs could be read phonetically, rather than only logographically.
5. Baha ad-Din ibn Shaddad (1145 - 1234)
With an HPI of 55.41, Baha ad-Din ibn Shaddad is the 5th most famous Iraqi Historian. His biography has been translated into 18 different languages.
Bahāʾ al-Dīn Abū al-Maḥāsin Yūsuf ibn Rāfiʿ ibn Tamīm (Arabic: بهاء الدين ابن شداد; the honorific title "Bahā' ad-Dīn" means "splendor of the faith"; sometimes known as Bohadin or Boha-Eddyn) (6 March 1145 – 8 November 1234) was a 12th-century Kurdish jurist, scholar and historian notable for writing a biography of Saladin whom he knew well.
6. Khalifah ibn Khayyat (777 - 854)
With an HPI of 50.79, Khalifah ibn Khayyat is the 6th most famous Iraqi Historian. His biography has been translated into 17 different languages.
Abū ʿAmr Khalīfa ibn Khayyāṭ al-Laythī al-ʿUṣfurī (Arabic: خليفة بن خياط) (born : 160/161 AH/777 AD– died 239/240 AH/854 AD) was an Arab historian. His family were natives of Basra in Iraq. His grandfather was a noted muhaddith or traditionalist, and Khalifa became renowned for this also. Among the great Islamic scholars who were his pupils were Bukhari and Ahmad ibn Hanbal. He wrote at least four works, of which two have survived, these being the Tabaqat (biographies) and Tarikh (history). The latter is valuable as being one of three of the earliest Arabic histories, but the full text was not known until an 11th-century copy was found in 1966, in the Nassiriyya Zawiya in Tamegroute, where the local dry climate helped preserving it, and was published in 1967 after being scrutinized by Syrian historian Souhail Zakkar.
7. Avi Shlaim (b. 1945)
With an HPI of 47.85, Avi Shlaim is the 7th most famous Iraqi Historian. His biography has been translated into 15 different languages.
Avi Shlaim (born 31 October 1945) is an Israeli and British historian of Iraqi Jewish descent. He is one of Israel's "New Historians", a group of Israeli scholars who put forward critical interpretations of the history of Zionism and Israel.
People
Pantheon has 7 people classified as Iraqi historians born between 737 and 1945. Of these 7, 1 (14.29%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living Iraqi historians include Avi Shlaim. The most famous deceased Iraqi historians include Al-Baladhuri, Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, and Hisham ibn al-Kalbi. As of April 2024, 1 new Iraqi historians have been added to Pantheon including Khalifah ibn Khayyat.
Living Iraqi Historians
Go to all RankingsDeceased Iraqi Historians
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Al-Baladhuri
806 - 892
HPI: 63.45
Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi
1002 - 1071
HPI: 57.51
Hisham ibn al-Kalbi
737 - 819
HPI: 55.79
Ibn Wahshiyya
900 - 930
HPI: 55.45
Baha ad-Din ibn Shaddad
1145 - 1234
HPI: 55.41
Khalifah ibn Khayyat
777 - 854
HPI: 50.79
