al-Tabarī
At a glance:
- Series: Dictionary of World Biography: Middle Ages
- Categories: Education, Religion, Ethics
- Subcategories: Authors, Writers, Theology, Theologians, Historians, Islam, Muslims, Mosques
- Curriculum: Medieval History/Middle Ages, Middle Eastern History
Article abstract: The premier historian on the first century of the Islamic empire and a renowned commentator on Koranic tradition, al-Tabarī established a model of universal history and a corpus of religious tradition crucial to the development of later Islamic theology and scholarship.
Early Life
Abū Jaʿfar Muhammad ibn Jarīr al-Tabarī was born to a moderately wealthy family. He demonstrated all the traits of a child prodigy and began formal study at an extremely early age. Legend has it that he memorized the entire Koran by the time he was seven....
[The entire page is 1742 words long]