683
T
al-Tabari, Abu Jafar Muhammad ibn Jarir (839–
923) Persian historian, legal scholar, commentator on the
Quran
Born about 839 at Tabaristan in northern IRAN, al-Tabari
traveled to the great centers of ISLAM. His exegesis or
Commentaryon the QURANwas among the most influen-
tial among those extant. In it he collected the philologi-
cal, grammatical, legal, and theological material of earlier
scholars using the orthodox SUNNIapproach developed
during the classical period and still used today. He
inspired a school of LAW, the Jaririyya, named after him in
which he sought a more exact system than the one
employed until then. Besides writing a biographical dic-
tionary, he authored a History of the Prophets and Rulers
that ran from the creation of the world to his own time.
In that he concentrated on the personal decisions of indi-
vidual Muslims rather than only those of the CALIPHSor
rulers. He included different perspectives and interpreta-
tions of events and motivations in Islamic and world his-
tory. As his Commentarywas, his Historywas interpreted
and compiled from traditional material. In it he gave a
Muslim and universal representation of salvation history.
He died in 923 at BAGHDAD.
See also IBN AL-ATHIR,IZZ AL-DIN;IBN KHALDUN,
WALI AL-DINABD AL-RAHMAN IBNMUHAMMAD.
Further reading:al-Tabari, The Abbasid Caliphate in
Equilibrium,trans. C. E. Bosworth (Albany: State Univer-
sity of New York Press, 1989), one of many volumes of
translations of his history in the State University of New
York series in Near Eastern Studies, Bibliotheca Persica,
The History of al-Tabari—Tarikh al-rusul wal-muluk;Alfred
J. Butler, The Treaty of Misr in Tabari: An Essay in Criticism
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913); Joseph Dahmus, Seven
Medieval Historians(Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1982).
Taborites They were among the radical wings of the
Czech reform movement in the years between 1419 and- The first Taborites secretly met for forbidden Hus-
site rituals and prayers. That they celebrated at a place in
southern BOHEMIAcalled by the biblical name of Mount
Tábor, the site of Jesus’ TRANSFIGURATION. One of its
ideas, also discussed by John HUS, was the reception by
the LAITYof communion under the form or species of
both bread and wine or utraquism. The church permitted
only the CLERGYto partake in both the bread and the
wine. Its mission was largely nonviolent but based on far
more radical ideas than those held by most other follow-
ers of Hus. There were persecutions of the Hussites’ ide-
als after the death of King Wenceslas IV (r. 1378–1419)
in August 1419 accompanied by a wave of eschatological
visions about the end of the world, which they saw as
imminent within a few months.
A second Tábor movement arose in March 1420, when
the more radical Hussites while vainly awaiting Christ’s
arrival, founded a community of brothers and sisters on a
biblical model and installed on a strategically important
site. It, too, was given the name Tábor. These Taborites
scorned reasoned THEOLOGYand dispensed with institu-
tional churches and feast days. They sought the abolition
of OATHS, courts of JUSTICE, and all worldly honors. Mean-
while, Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg (r. 1410–37),
the orthodox claimant to the throne of Bohemia from
PRAGUE, launched a CRUSADEagainst the Hussites in July - Led by Jan ZˇIZˇKAof Trocnov, the Taborite “soldiers
of God,” repelled the crusaders. But the Taborites soon
succumbed to internal discord and expelled and even exe-
cuted dissidents within their movement. After Zˇizˇ ka’s
death they split into two parties. Some joined the Catholic
Bohemian nationalists after the Compactata of Prague in