al-Faḍl b. Marwān - Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
[Article]
Gordon, Matthew S.
Leiden
Brill
(615 words)
Al-Faḍl b. Marwān (b. c. 160/777, d. 250/864) was an ʿAbbāsid courtier and diplomat. Dominique Sourdel has assessed the information available in the Arabic sources: the central references are found in al-Ṭabarī's Taʾrīkh , with further details provided by the Taʾrīkh of al-Yaʿqūbī and other historiographic works and by select adab texts, notably al-Tanūkhī's Nishwār al-muḥādara , the source of key remarks. Al-Faḍl's career is to be set against the backdrop of two interrelated developments: the expansion of the ʿAbbāsid imperial