al-Qurtubi

Abu Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Ansari al-Qurtubi was a Maliki scholar (a follower of one of Sunni Islam's four legal schools) born in Cordoba, then a major center of learning in Muslim Spain (al-Andalus). His exact birth year is not securely recorded; modern scholars place it sometime in the decades before 1200, and a date of c. 1214 (610-611 AH) is often repeated but not firmly established. He is best known as a mufassir, a commentator on the Qur'an.

After Cordoba fell to the Christian armies of Ferdinand III in 1236, al-Qurtubi left al-Andalus for Egypt, as did many Andalusi scholars of his generation. Sources report that he studied and worked in Alexandria and Cairo before settling in the Upper Egyptian town of Munyat Bani Khasib (also called Munya Abi al-Khusayb, near modern Minya), where he spent his later years and where he is reported to have died on 9 Shawwal 671 AH (29 April 1273).

His major work, al-Jami' li-Ahkam al-Qur'an ("The Compendium of the Qur'an's Legal Rulings"), is an encyclopedic commentary. Despite its title's stress on ahkam (legal rulings), it ranges widely over grammar, the occasions of revelation, variant readings, and theology, and it remains one of the most cited tafsirs in the Sunni tradition. In creed he is generally described as Ash'ari; in law he was Maliki but at times preferred the rulings of other schools.