Abū Sahl Ismāʿīl b. ʿAlī al-Nawbakhtī (237–311/851 or 852–924), of the Banū Nawbakht, a prestigious Persian family, was a senior governmental bureaucrat, a patron of poets, a prolific author, and the head of the Imāmī Shīʿī community in Baghdad. His career coincided with, and was helped by, the ascendancy of two of the city’s influential Imāmī Shīʿī families, the Banū Bisṭām and the Banū l-Furāt.
None of the works composed by Abū Sahl are extant. Only fragments of his Kitāb al-tanbīh (“The book of instructing”) are preserved by the Imāmī traditionist from Qum, Ibn Bābawayh …