In this paper I examine the nexus between various modes of piety and the subsequent authority it conferred in historical literature from early Islamic Persia. This paper incorporates both historiographical research and social history. I posit that the authors of Persian local histories employed various modalities of piety and literary devices in portraying the virtues of their cities; this in turn bound the city to key moments and characters in Islamic and cosmic history. By embedding the city deep into the fabric of Islamic history and its continued development, the authors of these city histories fostered a sense of local Persian Islamic identity along the twin bases of piety and authority. The pietistic virtues that bind Persian cities to critical moments in Islamic history and therefore to prophetic and religious authority incorporate both modes of piety that are tied to Islamic institutions or organizations as well as extra-institutional elements of piety. The former include awqaf, localized hadith collections and local hadith transmitters, as well as ulama and pious exemplars, both deceased and living; the latter are constituted by dreams and visions of Muhammad, Khidr, and other prophets, and ziyarat sites such as graves and tombs of pre-Islamic prophets, religious notables, and holy men, such as ascetics and saints. Critical to this construction of piety and authority in early Islamic Persia is that these pre-Mongol local histories evidence styles and techniques generally not used elsewhere. I offer some paradigmatic examples of texts from Syria, Arabia, Iraq, and Andalusia to provide a contrast. I apply a functionally skeptical methodology in my approach to hadith study and the local city histories and borrow from literary theories to address the schema and rhetorical devices they contain. My sources are pre-Mongol Persian local histories composed in Arabic, Persian or both, which include: T?rrkh-i Bayhaq, T r kh-i Bukhara, Tar kh-i Qum, TQrmkh al-Mawhil, Tarikh Irbil, Fada'il al-Sham, Fada'il al-Madina, and Dhikr Fath al-Andalus. The historiographical element of this paper examines the rhetorical and literary devices characteristic of local Persian histories that underscore piety as the dominant quality of the city and its denizens. I consider the implications of these modalities of piety on the social histories of cities and their relations to structures of authority. I suggest some hypotheses - such as tensions between forces for and against decentralization of religious and political authority - that may have contributed to the development of these Persian characteristics.