Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri (d. 124/742) was a central actor in the transmission of knowledge during the Umayyad period. His importance stems both from the volume of material attributed to him and from the controversies about methods of transmission in which he played a pivotal role. Later scholarship on al-Zuhri has focused almost exclusively on his influence on the field of hadith. A. A. Duri’s 1957 article, “Al-Zuhri, A Study on the Beginnings of History Writing in Islam,” (BSOAS 19: 1957) is the only work dedicated to al-Zuhri’s impact on historical writing. This work is narrowly focused on sira and maghazi and does not address al-Zuhri’s connections to the Umayyad court, despite the centrality of those connections in controversies about his hadith corpus. This paper examines al-Zuhri specifically as an historian. It begins with an appraisal of al-Zuhri’s significance for later historical texts, outlining the volume and nature of the reports attributed to him in later sources. It then turns to reports found in al-Isfahani’s Kitab al-aghani that suggest that al-Zuhri was hired by Khalid al-Qasri (and possibly others) to write their genealogies. I will attempt to uncover traces of these lost works in later sources to determine whether they can be reconstructed. Finally, the paper turns to al-Zuhri’s close association with the Umayyad caliphal court, focusing on the question of whether al-Zuhri’s historical writing can be considered as “official,” or at least caliphally sanctioned, versions of the earlier Islamic past. This exercise will offer a more nuanced understanding of al-Zuhri as a scholar and courtesan, and will provide insights into the role the Umayyad court itself played in shaping the past.