Zayn al-Dīn Abū Jaʿfar (or Abū ʿAbdallāh) Muḥammad b. ʿAlī Ibn Shahrāshūb b. Abī Naṣr b. Abī l-Jaysh (d. 588/1192), from Sārī in Māzandarān near the southern coast of the Caspian Sea, was a Twelver Shīʿī biographer, historian, Qurʾān commentator, ḥadīth transmitter, jurist, poet, and preacher. He was one of the most influential Shīʿī scholars of the sixth/twelfth century. He travelled extensively and wrote at least seventeen books, most importantly a collection of biographies of the Imāms titled Manāqib āl Abī Ṭālib ("Virtues of the descendants