[2] It is preserved in four manuscripts: The first edition of the Nihāyat by Mohammad Taqi Danesh Pajouh was published in Tehran in 1997.
It claims to be the work of al-Aṣmaʿī (d. 828) commissioned by the Caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd (d. 809) and assisted by Abū al-Bakhtarī (d. 815/6), who wrote an introduction to the Siyar al-Mulūk ("Chronicles of the Kings") based on the Kitāb al-Mubtadaʾ ("Book of Origins") to bring its history back to Creation.
[7] The Siyar is introduced thus: These are legends of bygone kings and former nations and past ages; of the Tyrants, the Kings of Yaman and the Monarchs of Persia, with accounts of their circumstances, their histories, their burial-places, and their lives, and of what hath been recorded by the Arabs and the Persians concerning their wars, their raids, their poems, their wise sayings, their customs, their harangues, their letters, and their decisions, from the time of Shem the son of Noah until God sent Muhammad.
[8] This second preface gives the impression that the Siyar was the Arabic translation of the Middle Persian Khwadāynāmag made by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, now lost.
[9] It is impossible that most of the Persian material in the Nihāyat come from the Khwadāynāmag, but some of the shorter and drier royal biographies may ultimately be derived from it.