[2] Of Arab ethnicity,[3] his nickname means 'furrier' or 'tailor who works with fox fur', and medieval biographers speculated that this was his job or his father's, but there is no convincing evidence for either proposition.

Al-Thaʿālibī travelled widely beyond Nishapur, however: autobiographical information scattered in his works shows that he spent time in Bukhārā, Jurjān, Isfarāʾīn, Jurjāniyya, Ghazna, and Herat.

His most famed, however, for his two anthologies of roughly contemporary Arabic verse, much of which would otherwise have been lost: the Yatīmat al-dahr and its sequel the Tatimmat at Yatīma.

This is al-Thaʿālibī's best known work and contains valuable extracts from the poetry of his own and earlier times;[1] its title means 'The Matchless Pearl of the Age on the Fine Qualities of Contemporary Men'.

[4]: xvii–xix  The Yatīmat and its sequel the Tatimmat have been characterised as 'our main, if not the sole, source about literary activity' in al-Tha'ālibī's time.