Abū Muḥammad Aḥmad ibn Aʿtham al-Kūfī al-Kindī (Arabic: أبو محمد أحمد بن أعثم الكوفي) was a 9th-century Arab Muslim historian, poet and preacher (qāṣṣ) active in the late 8th and early 9th centuries.
He was a Shīʿī of the akhbārī school, a son of a student (or tradent) of the sixth imam, Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, who died in 765.
[1] The writing of the Kitāb al-Futūḥ was interrupted in AH 204 (AD 819) as a result of the Abbasid Civil War.
At that time Ibn Aʿtham had brought his narrative down to the Battle of Karbalāʾ AH 61 (AD 680) using several existing monographs.
The whole compilation including the continuations was considered a work of Ibn Aʿtham by the 13th-century biographer Yāqūt, who called it Kitāb al-Taʾrīkh ("Book of History").