After an overview of the Near East and the Fertile Crescent as a liminal (border) space where cultural transgressions and exchanges take place, this study aims to show how Hellenistic influences were present in the formation of Arab-Islamic historiography. We argue that the latter incorporated rhetorical and methodological notions already installed in the late Mediterranean and added them to strictly Semitic traditions. The interaction of two ‘parallel’ cultural worlds —the Hellenistic and the Islamic— is detected in the rhetorical uses expressed in historiographic production. The culmination of this process is exemplified in Al-Tabari1.