Abolfazl Beyhaghi

Abu'l-Fadl Bayhaqi
Statue of Bayhaqi in Sabzevar, Iran
Native name	ابوالفضل بیهقی
Born	995 Harethabad, Bayhaq, Khorasan, Samanid amirate
Died	September 21, 1077 (aged approximately 81–82) Ghazni, Zabulistan, Ghaznavid Empire
Occupation	Historian
Notable work	Tarikh-i Bayhaqi
Parent(s)	Husayn (father)

Abu’l-Fadl Muḥammad ibn Ḥusayn Bayhaqī (Persian: ابوالفضل محمد بن حسین بیهقی‎‎; died September 21 1077), better known as Abu'l-Fadl Bayhaqi (ابوالفضل بیهقی; also spelled Beyhaqi), was a Persian secretary, historian and author.

Educated in the major cultural center of Nishapur, and employed at the court of the famous Ghaznavid Sultan Mahmud, Bayhaqi was a highly cultured man, whose magnum opus—the Tarikh-i Bayhaqi, is seen as the most reliable source of valid information about the Ghaznavid era, which was written in a exquisite and vivid Persian prose that would become an ideal model for several eras.

Bayhaqi is praised by modern scholars for his frankness, precision, and elegant style in his book, which he had spent 22 years to write, finishing it in in thirty volumes, of which however only five volumes and half of the sixth exist today. Julie Scott Meisami places Bayhaqi among the historians of the Islamic Golden Age.

Bayhaqi was born in the village of Harethabad in Bayhaq in the Khorasan Province, then under the rule of the declining Samanid emirate; in 998, the Ghaznavid ruler Mahmud of Ghazni (r. 998-1030) declared independence from the Samanids, and eventually divided the Samanid state with the Karakhanids, ending the Samanid dynasty. In his youth Bayhaqi studied in the major cultural center of Nishapur, and later in 1020/1 joined the secretariat (dīvān-e resālat) of Mahmud, where he worked as a assistant and pupil under the chief secretary Abu Nasr Mushkan for 19 years.

After Mushkan's death in 1039/40, Mas'ud I (r. 1030–1040) appointed Bayhaqi as minister to Abu Sahl Zawzani, who had succeeded Muskhan as the chief secretary of the empire. Muskhan substantially urged the Sultan that Bayhaqi should be his successor, and the Persian vizier Ahmad Shirazi had also commended Bayhaqi in the Sultan’s attendance. Bayhaqi (who was at that time 46 years old) was supposedly told by Mas'ud I that he was too young to be appointed the new chief secretary.