Agapius of Menbij

Agapius of Menbij (aka Agapius of Hierapolis) wrote in Arabic in the 10th century CE when he was the Melkite bishop of Manbij (aka Mabbug, Hierapolis Bambyce). Kitab al-‘Unvan (trans. Book of History) is his best known work. The book is divided into two parts with the second part starting with Julius Caesar and extending until the mid 8th century CE.

Hoyland (2022:385-386) notes that Agapius used as sources a universal Syriac chronicle of the Umayyad period, the historical work of the Melkite scholar Qusṭā b. Lūqā (d. ca. 300/912) to write about the classical world, and the chronicle of the astrologer-scholar Theophilus of Edessa for Byzantine and Muslim affairs during the seventh and eighth centuries.