Al-Tabari in the context of "List of cities founded by Alexander the Great"

Ardashir I (Middle Persian: 𐭠𐭥𐭲𐭧𐭱𐭲𐭥, romanized: Arda(x)šēr), also known as Ardashir the Unifier (180–242 AD), was the founder of the Sasanian Empire, the last empire of ancient Iran. After defeating the last Parthian shahanshah Artabanus IV on the Hormozdgan plain in 224, he overthrew the Arsacid dynasty and established the Sasanian dynasty. Afterwards, Ardashir called himself shahanshah and began conquering the land that he called Eranshahr, the realm of the Iranians.

There are various historical reports about Ardashir's lineage and ancestry. According to al-Tabari's History of the Prophets and Kings, Ardashir was son of Papak, son of Sasan. Another narrative recorded in Kar-Namag i Ardashir i Pabagan and Ferdowsi's Shahnameh states that Ardashir was born from the marriage of Sasan, a descendant of Darius III, with the daughter of Papak, a local governor in Pars.

The Zanj Rebellion (Arabic: ثورة الزنج Thawrat al-Zanj / Zinj) was a major revolt against the Abbasid Caliphate, which took place from 869 until 883. Begun near the city of Basra in present-day southern Iraq and led by one Ali ibn Muhammad, the insurrection involved both enslaved and freed Africans (collectively termed "Zanj" in this case) exported in the Indian Ocean slave trade and transported to slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate in the Middle East, principally to drain the region's salt marshes. It grew to involve slaves and freemen, including both Eastern Africans and Arabs, from several regions of the Caliphate, and claimed tens of thousands of lives before it was fully defeated.

Several Muslim historians, such as al-Tabari and al-Mas'udi, consider the Zanj revolt to be one of the "most vicious and brutal uprisings" of the many disturbances that plagued the Abbasid central government. Modern scholars have characterized the conflict as being "one of the bloodiest and most destructive rebellions which the history of Western Asia records," while at the same time praising its coverage as being among the "most fully and extensively described campaign[s] in the whole of early Islamic historical writing." The precise composition of the rebels remains a subject of debate, both as regards their identity and as to the proportion of slaves and free among them – available historical sources being open to various interpretations.

Ḥamza ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Mū'addib al-Iṣbahānī Abū ‘Abd Allāh (Arabic: حمزة بن الحسن المُؤَدِّب الأصفهاني ابو عبد الله; c. 893 – after 961), commonly known as Ḥamza al-Iṣfahānī or Hamza Esfahani (Persian: حمزه اصفهانی), was a Persian philologist and historian, who wrote in Arabic during the 'Abbasid and Buyid eras. He spent most of his life in his native town, Isfahan, and visited Baghdad at least three times during his lifetime. He had contact with many important scholars and historians, among them al-Tabari and Ibn Durayd. He wrote a history of Isfahan, a famous chronology of pre-Islamic and Islamic dynasties known as Taʾrīk̲h̲ sinī mulūk al-arḍ wa ’l-anbiyāʾ (تاریخ سنی ملوک الارض و الانبیا), and some other works on lexicography and poetry.

Ishmael (Arabic: إسماعيل ʾIsmāʿīl) is regarded by Muslims as an Islamic prophet. Born to Abraham and Hagar, he is the namesake of the Ishmaelites, who were descended from him. In Islam, he is associated with Mecca and the construction of the Kaaba within today's Masjid al-Haram, which is the holiest Islamic site. Muslims also consider him to be a direct ancestor to Muhammad. His paternal half-brother was Isaac, the forefather of the Israelites.

Islam's conception of Ishmael is similar to that of Judaism and Christianity. Sources for this narrative include the Quran and tafsir (i.e., Quranic exegesis); Muhammad's ahadith; historiographic collections by al-Tabari and other Muslim scholars; and Israʼiliyyat, which collectively refers to information and religious literature sourced primarily from the Jews for details about early prophets and messengers.

Al-Sīrah al-Nabawiyyah (السيرة النبوية, 'The Life of the Prophet') also known as Siraat-e Ibn Hisham and Sirat Al Nabi is a prophetic biography of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, written by Ibn Hisham. According to Islamic tradition, the book is an edited recension of Ibn Isḥāq's Sīratu Rasūli l-Lāh (سيرة رسول الله) 'The Life of God's Messenger'. The work of Ibn Hishām and al-Tabari work, along with fragments by several others, are the only surviving copies of the work traditionally attributed to Ibn Ishaq. Ibn Hishām and al-Tabarī share virtually the same material.

Ibn Hishām said in the preface that he chose from the original work of Ibn Isḥāq in the tradition of his disciple Ziyād al-Baqqāʾi (d. 799), omitting stories from Al-Sīrah that contain no mention of Muḥammad, certain poems, traditions whose accuracy Ziyād al-Baqqāʾi could not confirm, and offensive passages that could offend the reader. Al-Tabari includes controversial episodes of the Satanic Verses including an apocryphal story about Muḥammad's attempted suicide. Ibn Hishām gives more accurate versions of the poems he includes and supplies explanations of difficult terms and phrases of the Arabic language, additions of genealogical content to certain proper names, and brief descriptions of the places mentioned in Al-Sīrah. Ibn Hishām appends his notes to the corresponding passages of the original text with the words: "qāla Ibn Hishām" (Ibn Hishām says).

Turan (also spelled Turgistan and Turestan) was a province of the Sasanian Empire located in present-day Pakistan. The province was mainly populated by Indo-Aryans, and bordered Paradan in the west, Hind in the east, Sakastan in the north, and Makuran in the south. The main city and bastion of the province was Bauterna (Khuzdar/Quzdar).

The province had been a kingdom under the Indo-Parthian king Pahares I, before submitting to the first Sasanian monarch Ardashir I (r. 224–242) in 230 AD. These events were recorded by al-Tabari, describing the arrival of envoys from Makran and Turan to Ardeshir at Gor:

Theodor Nöldeke (German: [ˈteːodoːɐ̯ ˈnœldəkə]; born 2 March 1836 – 25 December 1930) was a German orientalist and scholar, originally a student of Heinrich Ewald. He is one of the founders of the field of Quranic studies, especially through his foundational work titled Geschichte des Qorāns (History of the Quran). His research interests also ranged over Old Testament studies, and his command of Semitic languages ranging across Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, and Ethiopic allowed him to write hundreds of studies across a wide range of Oriental topics, including a number of translations, grammars, and works on literatures found in various languages.

Among the projects Nöldeke collaborated on was Michael Jan de Goeje’s published edition of al-Tabari's Tarikh ("Universal History"), for which he translated the Sassanid-era section. This translation remains of great value, particularly for the extensive supplementary commentary.His numerous students included Charles Cutler Torrey, Louis Ginzberg and Friedrich Zacharias Schwally. He entrusted Schwally with the continuation of Geschichte des Qorāns.