<p style="text-align: justify;">In the introduction to his History, al-T'abari declared his intention to append to it a biographical work for the reader's convenience. Only a collection of excerpts has survived, however. It was first published as part of the Leiden edition of the History and is now presented as a volume in the T'abari Translation Project. It brings together biographies of Companions, successors, and scholars of subsequent generations; many chapters are devoted to women related to the Prophet who played a role in the transmission of knowledge. The biographies vary in length and style, ranging from a mere identification of a person to long accounts and anecdotes.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">This volume represents a long tradition characteristic of Muslim culture. Muslim scholars developed biographical literature into a rich and complex genre. It was intended to be an auxiliary branch of religious study, aimed at determining the reliability of chains of transmission through which traditions were handed down. More often than not, however, works in this genre contain valuable historical information of the kind often ignored by the authors of mainstream history books. Even though not a complete work, this volume is thus not merely a supplement to al-T'abari's History but also a source in its own right, often supplying new and rare insights into events and social conditions.</p>

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The History of Al-Tabari /Volume 39

Professor Ella Landau-Tasseron is a historian of medieval Islam affiliated with the department for Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She acquired her Ph.D. at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and is part of what is informally known among scholars as “the Jerusalem school of oriental studies”. She has investigated Islamic history, tradition, institutions and historiography, as well as tribal society. Among her publications is a series of articles on alliances in early Islamic tribal society, published between the years 2003-2006. She also participated in the Tabari translation project initiated by Columbia University, where she contributed the last volume of the series (published in 1998). In recent years she is working on the concept on jihad, a work begun while she was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Hebrew University.

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Ella Landau-Tasseron

Ella Landau-Tasseron

Ella Landau-Tasseron

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