Local histories from medieval Persia remain a largely untapped resource from which to draw nuanced understandings of how local communities conceptualized religion, identity, and community in ways that simultaneously challenge and complement the dominant historical narrative based on universal histories and chronicles. This paper examines center-periphery power dynamics in 10th – 14th century Persian local histories and the various strategies that authors employed to "center" their cities or regions located on the "peripheries" of the Islamic empire. Etymologies, dream narratives, past or present notables such as prophets, saints, teachers associated with the region, and descriptions of pious visitation sites all embed these ostensibly peripheral places into a central Islamic narrative and legitimate local practices. Trimmed like frivolous fat off the real meat of history that historians so often crave –names, dates, facts, and figures– accounts of dreams, myths, improbable etymologies, and dubious stories have generally been disregarded as fabulist embellishments created for literary effect in local histories. This historiographical study turns its attention to precisely such narratives and argues that, on close examination, these local sources express profound truths about local communities and the times in which they were composed. This research is informed by recent theoretical insights into sacred space, the built environment, the Islamic city, Arabic and Persian historiography, and articulations of communal and sectarian identity. This paper explores 10th – 14th century Persian local histories including Tarikh-i Bukhara, Tarikh-i Bayhaq, Tarikh-i Qum, Tarikh-i Sistan, Tarikh-i Tabaristan, Fada?il-i Balkh, Farsnama, Tarjama-i Mahasin-i Isfahan, Tarikh-i Ruyan, and Shiraz-namah. Dream narratives are one type of literary device that authors use to legitimate and “center” their regions by describing how dreams, in certain cases, bring the Prophet Muhammad to a city on the physical periphery of the Islamic empire. Notables including Companions of the Prophet and subsequent generations (sahaba and tabi?un), pre-Islamic prophets, saints, and scholars associated with peripheral regions of the empire “center” these regions by linking them to Muhammad and the prophetic legacy. Some pious notables taught hadith, while others lived, died, and were buried in the region. Authors bind their cities to prophetic authority through local sites of pious visitation (ziyarat) and other sources of blessing or sacred power (baraka). Local and regional histories from Persia challenge and reconfigure notions of what constitutes “central” or “peripheral” in the medieval Islamic world and articulate identities that are simultaneously deeply local yet enmeshed within the broader Muslim umma.