He has edited and translated numerous Chaghatai, Arabic, and Persian literary and historical works.
Thackston is a graduate of Princeton's Oriental Studies department, where he was a member of Princeton's Colonial Club, and Harvard's Near Eastern Studies department (Ph.D., 1974), where he was Professor of the Practice of Persian and other Near Eastern Languages from 1972.
His best-known works are Persian and Classical and Qur'anic Arabic grammars and his translations of the Babur-nama, the memoirs of the Mughal prince and emperor Babur, The Gulistan of Saadi, and the memoirs of Emperor Jahangir, or the Jahangir-nama.
He has also produced important manuals or editions of texts in Levantine Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, Syriac, Uzbek, Luri, and Kurdish.
Thackston has retired from his position at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, at Harvard University.