Muqatil ibn Sulayman

Muqatil ibn Sulayman al-Balkhi (d. 150 AH / 767 CE) was an early Muslim Quranic exegete of Khurasanian origin, remembered as the author of Tafsir Muqatil, one of the earliest surviving complete commentaries on the entire Quran. Born in Balkh around 700-710 CE, he spent his early life in Khurasan (Balkh and Marw) before migrating to Iraq, where he settled in Basra and Baghdad and ultimately died in Basra. Working in the late Umayyad and early Abbasid periods, he was an influential and prolific transmitter of exegetical and narrative material, and his tafsir is a foundational source for the early history of Quranic interpretation. Later hadith critics frequently questioned his reliability as a transmitter and criticized statements attributed to him as anthropomorphic in their depiction of God, while still drawing on his exegetical work.