Khalifa Ibn Khayyat's History on the Umayyad Dynasty (660-750) - Paperbackby Carl Wurtzel (Translator), Robert G. Hoyland (Editor) Khalifa ibn Khayyat was born in the southern Iraqi city of Basra in the 770s AD and in his lifetime Iraq grew into a thriving centre of culture and trade and one of the most populous and prosperous regions of the world. He was one of a generation of scholars who gave concrete form to Islamic religion and culture and bequeathed to us the first books that can be said to be distinctively Islamic.