Thermal entanglement of a two-qubit Ising chain subjected to an external magnetic field and Dzialoshinski-Moriya (DM) interaction is examined. The effect of magnetic field, strength of DM interaction and temperature are analyzed by adopting negativity of partial transpose as the measure of entanglement. It is shown that when the DM interaction along the Ising axis is considerable, thermal entanglement can be sustained for higher temperature. The usefulness of longitudinal DM interaction over the one that is perpendicular to the Ising axis, in the manipulation and control of entanglement at a feasible temperature, is illustrated.PACS numbers: 03.65. Ud, 75.10.Jm, 05.50.+q,03.67.Lx The study of thermal entanglement, the entanglement in the thermal equilibrium state of a quantum system, particularly quantum spin chains in solid state systems, is known to provide a bridge between quantum information processing and condensed matter physics [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. The usefulness of entangled spin chains in thermal equilibrium to the future realization of quantum computers [16] necessitates this potentially rich area of study. In this context many authors have studied the entanglement properties in both the ground and thermal states of spin chains interacting through various Heisenberg interaction models such as XX, XY , XXZ and XY Z [2-6]. The study of thermal entanglement properties in solid state systems with Ising like interaction subjected to an external transverse magnetic field has also been carried out quite extensively [7][8][9][10].Dzialoshinski-Moriya (DM) interaction [17,18], an anisotropic and antisymmetric exchange interaction, arising due to spin orbit coupling is seen to enhance the thermal and ground state entanglement of Heisenberg spin chains [11][12][13][14]. The anisotropy and antisymmetry of the interaction is evident through its form , 18]. Thermal entanglement of a two-qutrit Ising system subjected to a magnetic field and DM interaction, both along the direction of Ising axis, is studied by C. Akyüz et. al. [10]. Qin Meng et.al [13] have studied the effect of DM interaction on a two-qubit Heisenberg XY spin chain with transverse magnetic field and it reduces to the two-qubit Ising chain when the anisotropic parameter is ±1. Very recently, there has been an effort to analyze the thermal entanglement in a two-qubit Ising chain with inhomogeneous magnetic field and DM interaction both along the Ising axis [15]. Despite these studies [13,15] leading to interesting results, there has not been an explicit study on the effect of DM interaction * Electronic address: arss@rediffmail.com on the thermal entanglement in a two-qubit Ising chain with either a transverse or a longitudinal magnetic field. The distinct roles of transverse or longitudinal magnetic fields in a two-qubit Ising chain with DM interaction is an interesting study in itself due to the importance of Ising interaction. Towards this end, we examine the combined effect of external magnetic field as well as DM...