The first portion runs from Adam down to the 11th year of Heraclius and consists of a series of 166 numbered biographies, in some manuscripts ending with a list of the Patriarchs of the Church of Alexandria.
The Kitāb al-Taʾrīḫ is essentially a learned compilation of earlier sources: the Bible first and foremost, the world chronology of Ibn al-Rahib, but also the works of the Melkite authors Ibn Biṭrīq (Eutychius of Alexandria) and Agapius (al-Manbiǧī), the Josippon, hermetic sources, and a mysterious Rūzbihān, who is credited with a history of pre-Islamic Persia.
The Historia Saracenica, as Erpenius entitled it, was a breakthrough in European knowledge of Islamic history and it was soon translated into French by Pierre Vattier as L'Histoire mahométane (Paris, 1657).
In 2023 Martino Diez published a critical edition with English translation of the first quarter, from Adam to the end of the Achaemenids, which is expected to be followed by a second volume from Alexander the Great to Heraclius.
The last part, from the author's birth to the end of the work, was edited by Claude Cahen [9] and translated into French by Anne-Marie Eddé and Françoise Micheau.
From the manuscript British Library, Oriental 814, E. Wallis Budge translated the chapter on Alexander the Great, which contains verbatim extracts from the old Arabic Hermetic work al-Isṭimākhīs.
The continuation was apparently written for personal use and has been edited and translated in European languages: from the beginning to 1317 by Edgar Blochet, in French; from 1317 to the end by Samira Kortantamer, in German.