Private Letters, Official Correspondence

One of the major principles of critical historiography is the investigation of the credibility of historical sources. In a critical study, Klaus U. Hachmeier, by dividing the historical sources of each period into the two categories of narrative sources (Tradition) and extant works (Uberreste), has shown that the narrative sources in his target area of study (the Buyids) suffer from problems such as: flaws and deviations in transferring the material, the authenticity of the author, and biasness. Hence, most of the studies that have been conducted about this period by scientists such as Busse and Kabir are not complete. Hachmeier believes that reports belonging to the category of narrative sources should be corrected or completed by the use of extant works which in turn are divided into the three groups of abstract extant works, object extant works, and written extant works. By studying the collection of “al-Sabi Letters” which is one of the four collections remaining from “Diwan al-Insha’” from the Buyid period, he tries to demonstrate the value of this group of sources, which in his opinion belongs to the third category of extant works (the written category), to the science of historiography and completion of narrative sources.