[3][4] Tabari's work appeared during an intense period of canonization of Islamic history, and, in many ways, represented a culminating prism through which future Muslims read and learned about the past.

Al-Tabari also organizes his material in an annalistic way, meaning that the events are arranged altogether chronologically (year after year) as opposed to biographically (i.e. narrating the life of one figure, then another, and so on), which makes it, compared to a number of other texts, much more useful to understand the broad historical themes that the text is conveying.

Furthermore, Tabari's work is typically considered representative of the mainstream Islamic view as opposed to being closely tied to any particular sectarian interests.

He devotes much more space to documenting political uprisings (even minor ones) and battles compared to more mundane but significant matters of everyday society such as taxation, commerce, industry, agriculture, and so forth.

The main episodes of this master narrative are:[9] Another feature of Al-Tabari's work was to introduce methods of hadith into it, meaning that he would supply isnads (chains of transmission) for the reports he mentions.

The Kitab al-ta'rikh of Ibn Habib (d. 852) covers early Islamic history with a focus on administrative matters.