, Abū Ḏj̲aʿfar Muḥammad b. Ḏj̲arīr b. Yazīd, polymath, whose expertises included tradition and law but who is most famous as the supreme universal historian and Ḳurʾān commentator of the first three or four centuries of Islam, born in the winter of 224-5/839 at Āmul, died at Bag̲h̲dād in 310/923. .

1. Life.

It should be noted at the outset that al-Ṭabarī’s own works, in so far as they have been preserved for us, give little hard biographical data, though they often give us leads to his teachers and authorities and help in the evaluation of his per…