Abū Ḥudhayfa Isḥāq ibn Bishr Qurashī ( Arabic: أبو حذيفة بن بشر القرشي, d. 206/821) was the author of Mubtadaʾ al-dunyā wa-qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ ( Arabic: كتاب مبتدأ الدنيا وقصص الأنبياء, 'the beginning of the world and the stories of the prophets'), an important early work in the qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ (Islamic histories of prophets) genre. Long thought to be lost, a copy was identified around the early 1990s in the manuscript Oxford, Bodleian Library, Huntington 388. [1] Though fragmentary, the manuscript contains over two hundred folios, covering biblical history from the Creation to Abraham, indicating its importance in the development of the genre. [2]: 132–33