al-Tabari

Abu Jafar Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari was born around 839 in Amol, in the Caspian province of Tabaristan, and spent most of his life in Baghdad, where he died in 923. Britannica describes him as author of enormous compendiums of early Islamic history and Quran commentary that helped consolidate Sunni thought.

His History of the Prophets and Kings runs from Creation through the biblical prophets and Persian kings to the Islamic caliphate of his own time. His Tafsir collects, verse by verse, the interpretations handed down from Muhammad's Companions and their successors, each with its chain of transmitters. He often records several conflicting reports without deciding between them.

On Surah 2:102 he records a longer story about the angels Harut and Marut: the angels scorned human weakness, so two of them were given human appetites and sent to earth, where they were tempted by a beautiful woman and sinned. This narrative is not in the Quran itself, and many later scholars rejected it.