Umara ibn Wathima

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.

Works
ʿUmāra wrote at least two works in Arabic. His only surviving work is what was, before the discovery of Abū Ḥudhayfa Isḥāq ibn Bishr Qurashī's Mubtadaʾ al-dunyā wa-qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ, thought to be the oldest surviving book of the qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ genre. Entitled Kitāb badʾ al-khalq wa-qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ ('Book of the Beginnings of Creation and the Stories of the Prophets'), it is a collection of didactic stories of those considered prophets in Islam. It is the earliest source to cite the enigmatic Abū al-Ḥasan al-Bakrī. It was itself never widely cited. Of its original two volumes, only the second survives, covering prophets from Moses to Jesus, in two manuscripts. There is a modern French translation by Raif Georges Khoury. It has been argued that the real author of the Badʾ al-khalq is Wathīma, who was much more prominent than his son.

According to Ibn al-Jawzī, ʿUmāra also wrote an Annalistic History.