ʿUmāra ibn Wathīma
# ʿUmāra ibn Wathīma

Abū Rifāʿa ʿUmāra ibn Wathīma ibn Mūsā ibn al-Furāt al-Fārisī (died 4 June 902) was a Muslim historian from Egypt. Born in Fusṭāṭ, he was a son of the historian and silk trader Wathīma ibn Mūsā, a native of Fasā in Persia. The year of his birth is unknown, but his father died in 851. He wrote in Arabic the oldest surviving book of the qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ genre, entitled Kitāb badʾ al-khalq wa-qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ. It is the earliest source to cite the enigmatic Abū al-Ḥasan al-Bakrī. It was itself never widely cited. There is a modern French translation by R. G. Khoury [de].

