Subscriber Essay: al-Tabari and His History

For this week’s subscriber essay I thought I’d write about somebody who unfortunately gets overlooked for the most part, except by people who study early Islamic history and/or the Quran. Abu Jafar Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari (d. 923) was born in 839, give or take, in Tabaristan, a region on the southern end of the Caspian Sea (hence “al-Tabari”). Appa…