Despite the epithet, al-Isfahani, it does not seem that the Isfahani family has much to do with the city, Isfahan. Rather, the family was mainly based in Sāmarrāʾ, from the generation of Ahmad b. al-Ḥaytham, and then Baghdad.[49] In the seats of the caliphate, a few members of this family worked as scribes, while maintaining friendship or alliance with other scribes, viziers, and notables.[50] Like many of the court elite, al-Isfahani's family maintained an amicable relationship with the offspring of Ali and allied with families, such as the Thawaba family,[lower-alpha 12] sharing their veneration of Ali and Alids. However, it is hard to pinpoint such a reverential attitude towards Alids in terms of sectarian alignment, given the scanty information about al-Isfahani's family and the fluidity of sectarian identities at the time.