The works of ninth century historians ?abar? and D?navar? are often gleaned for kernels of historical fact. However, the sections dealing with Iranian history may shed light on the earliest forms of the shu‘?b?yah movement, as recent scholarship has determined, was a literary movement. The paper first deals with how the shu‘?b?yah movement is understood and interpreted by modern scholarship to provide a framework for inquiry into ?abar?’s T?r?kh and Tafs?r (and to a lesser extent D?navar?’s al-Akhb?r) as early examples of texts involved with the shu‘?b?yah movement. The paper addresses the importance of genealogies for the Arabs and the way in which ?abar? and D?navar? utilize ancient Iranian history and intertwine it with the Judeo-Islamic history to provide Iranians with a genealogy equal to that of the Arabs who themselves had been given a new pan-Arabo-Islamic genealogy by the biographer Ibn Is??q. The conclusion of this inquiry illustrates that the earliest forms of the shu‘?b?yah movement manifested itself in a competitive style where one author emulates the style of an earlier or contemporary rival’s work.