Is the printed Futuh al-Sham the work of al-Waqidi?

The Futuh al-Sham circulates under the name of al-Waqidi (d. 207 AH). The question is whether the whole printed text is his. This entry sets out what the edition says, what academic research says, and the marks within the text itself, without a verdict.

The title page of the Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyya edition (Beirut 1997) reads "by Abu Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Umar ibn Waqid al-Waqidi, d. 207 AH". ¹ In the introduction the editor Abd al-Latif Abd al-Rahman lists al-Waqidi's works after Ibn al-Nadim's al-Fihrist, among them "Kitab Futuh al-Sham", commenting: "and it is the one before us". The edition does not discuss the book's manuscripts or the later names that appear in it. ²

Yoones Dehghani Farsani, in his Göttingen dissertation, notes that the book has been considered a forgery for more than two centuries, and argues that it is essentially al-Waqidi's original Futuh al-Sham, later changed in form and partly in content in a redaction probably made between the 12th and 13th centuries CE, so that not all of it can be ascribed to al-Waqidi. His evidence is that Ibn Asakir (1106-1175) quotes the original in a form, and partly with a content, different from the present text, and that the oldest known manuscript was copied in 678/1279; he suggests the redaction may have served religious aims during the Crusades, in Egypt or Syria under the Ayyubids. ³

• In the Jerusalem account "al-Waqidi" says they used to read the Futuh at the tomb of Abu Hanifa before Ubada ibn Awf al-Dinawari, and then attaches to the book a rhymed passage Ubada composed on Umar's renunciation. ^{4 5}
• In the al-Bahnasa account it names its authorities: al-Mas'udi, "Abu Ja'far al-Tabarani", al-Waqidi, Ibn Ishaq and Ibn Hisham, and then "Ibn Khallikan in the history al-Bidaya wa-l-nihaya". ^{6 7}
• A narrator who calls himself Abu Abd Allah Muhammad ibn al-Muhaddith al-Misri introduces the al-Bahnasa account, saying he found additions and omissions in the books of conquests and selected "this book" after visiting the al-Bahnasa cemetery. ^{7 8}
• It contains a note on Abu Muhammad al-Hasani reading "these Futuh" in the Ghazzi Umari mosque before a shaykh who corrected his account of how the gate of al-Bahnasa was opened. ⁹
• It closes with a dream of Dhu al-Nun al-Misri about the martyrs of al-Bahnasa, ¹⁰ and Dhu al-Nun was brought before al-Mutawakkil, after al-Waqidi's time. ¹¹

These marks fit the view of a later redaction, and do not by themselves settle whether an original of al-Waqidi's lies within the book.