8vo. 271 pp., [1], Arabic text, contemporary cloth, lightly faded and soiled, title gilt on front cover, new endpapers, front fly leaf soiled, otherwise copy in very good condition, after the Dar Al-Kutub Al-Misriyyah and the Al-Khazanah Al-Taymouriyyah edition, published by Maktabat al-Qudsi, Cairo, 1356, [1937].

Synopsis

Abu Ja’far Muhammad b. Jarir b. Yazid al-Tabari, the most important universal historian and the Qur’an commentator of the first three centuries of Islam. It was this long duration of half a century in which al-Tabari produced his best-known works which were admired even in his own age which was extraordinarily rich in scholarship. His writings were to embrace all the classical subjects of Islamic tradition: history, tafsir, hadith and fiqh and like so many learned men of his time, he was drawn to Arabic poetry.
Al-Tabari was not only a prolific writer, but he was also intimately connected with the intellectual life of his time and seemed to have debated with Abu Bakr Muhammad b. Dawud, the son of the founder of the Zahiri school of Law. His Ikhtilaf al-Fuqaha, brought sharp criticism from the Hanbalis because he did not consider Ibn Hanbal a jurist and this may have been the reason behind the riots around his house.