Abū 'Amr Khalifa ibn Khayyat al Laythī al 'Usfurī (c. 777 - c.854), Arab historian.

His family were natives of Basra

Basra

Basra is the capital of Basra Governorate, in southern Iraq near Kuwait and Iran. It had an estimated population of two million as of 2009...

 in Iraq

Iraq

Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

. His grandfather was a noted muhaddith or traditionalist, and Khalifa became renowned for this also. Among the great Islamic scholars who were his pupils were Bukhari and Ahmad ibn Hanbal

Ahmad ibn Hanbal

Ahmad bin Muhammad bin Hanbal Abu `Abd Allah al-Shaybani was an important Muslim scholar and theologian. He is considered the founder of the Hanbali school of fiqh...

.

He is known to have written at least four works, of which two have survived. These are the Tabaqat (biographies) and Tarikh (history). The latter is valuable as being one of three of the earliest Arabic histories, but the full text was not known until an 11th-century copy was found in Rabat

Rabat

Rabat , is the capital and third largest city of the Kingdom of Morocco with a population of approximately 650,000...

, Morocco

Morocco

Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...

in 1966 (published in 1967).