Abu Ishaq al-Tha'labi
11th century Islamic scholar
Abū Isḥāq Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Nīsābūrī al-Thaʿlabī أبو اسحاق أحمد بن محمد بن ابراهيم الثعلبي; died November 1035), who was simply known as Al-Tha'labi (Arabic: الثعلبي), was an eleventh-century Sunni Muslim scholar of Persian origin. Al-Tha'labi was considered a leading Quranic exegete of the fifth/eleventh century who famously authored the classical exegesis Tafsir al-Tha'labi, and his Ara'is al-Majalis is perhaps the best and most frequently consulted example of the Islamic qisas al-anbiya genre. He was an expert Quranic reciter and reader (muqriʾ), traditionist, linguist, philologist, preacher, historian, litterateur, and theologian.
Name
The word al-Tha'labi, most biographers stress, was a nickname laqab), and not a tribal name (nasab). This means that al-Tha'labi was of Persian descent and not a member of the Arab tribal groups that carries the name.
Life
According to Tilman Nagel, al-Tha'labi was born in the city of Nishapur during the fifties of the fourth century (350).
Although there is little information available about al-Tha'labi's studies, he lived in Nishapur, a thriving city with a large number of educational institutions, and his knowledge of geography probably helped him. Al-Farsi claims that al-Tha'labi had numerous masters and was a guy with a vast grasp of Hadith. Al-Tha'labi's own admission that he had relevant material from over three hundred teachers supports this claim.
Al-Farsi claims that ten of al-Tha'labi's teachers—three of whom are the most well-known—were crucial to his academic success.
“Abu Ishaq al-Tha'labi” enters the record as 11th century Islamic scholar. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Ishaq, al-Tha'labi and 11th can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3015226. VIAF identifies the subject as 98257472. The Library of Congress control number is n88205202. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1035.
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This entry incorporates text from “Abu Ishaq al-Tha'labi” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.