Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Isfarāyinī, Faḍl b. Aḥmad (d. 404/1013), was a state administrator and secretary in the Sāmānid period and then the first vizier of Sulṭān Maḥmūd Ghaznawī. The most important and earliest source available on al-Isfarāyinī's life is the Taʾrīkh al-Yamīnī, composed by the contemporaneous historian al-ʿUtbī. There is no information on the early part of his life. Initially, it seems he held a secretarial position in the office of Fāʾiq Khāṣṣa (d. 398/1008), a famous Sāmānid commander (al-ʿUtbī, 2/156; Munshī Kirmānī, 39).…