In the well-known introduction to the moralistic animal fable, Kalilaw wa Dimna, the author Ibn al-Muqaffa (d. 759) explains the role of illustrations.

In an equally celebrated account, the historian al-Mas’udi recounts that in 915 in Istakhr, he saw a chronicle of the Sasanian dynasty which was compiled in 731 from documents found in the Persian royal treasury and translated from Persian into Arabic for Umayyad Caliph Hisham ibn ‘Abd al-Malik. The work contained portraits of twenty-five kings and two queens, each depicting a likeness of the ruler at death a custom of the Sasanian dynasty.

Despite the fact that these accounts, as well as records of thousands and hundreds of thousand of manuscripts in the libraries of Cordoba, Cairo, and Baghdad, point to an early production date, the beginnings of the Arabic illustrated book are marked by uncertainty and cannot be easily identified. Many have been lost : not a single dated illustrated Arabic book survives from before the year 1000 and the earliest surviving visual evidence consists of isolated leaves among the large motley body of undated fragmentary works on paper discovered at Fustat. The scarcity of early surviving works and the discrepancy between documentary and material evidence have led scholars to question the reliability of the documentary evidence and even to cast doubt on whether there was any significant production of illustrated manuscripts before the eleventh century.

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