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[ʾAbū Saʿīd ʿAbd al-Ḥayy b. al-Daḥḥāk b. Maḥmūd Gardīzī] early 11th century ad (5th cenury ah). Persia. Author of a concise Persian-language work which is to some extent a general history in the Islamic tradition, beginning with the legendary kings of Persian national history, but whose originality stems from what is a chronicle of the history of the eastern Islamic world (essentially Eastern Persia, Transoxania, Afghanistan and northwestern India) from ad 650 to 1041. His Kitab Zayn al-akhbar (Book of the Ornament of Histories) seems to have been composed ca 1050. The a…

Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Yūsuf al-Kātib al-Khwārazmī Date of Birth: Unknown Place of Birth: Unknown Date of Death: Unknown (Ḥajjī Khalīfa gives 387/997); he was active in the latter part of the 10th century Place of Death: Unknown Biography Al-Khwārazmī was almost certainly a member of the bureaucracy that served the emirs of the Sāmānid dynasty of Transoxiana and Khurāsān in their capital Bukhārā, since his only known work is dedicated to Abū l-Ḥasan al-ʿUtbī, vizier of Nūḥ II ibn Manṣūr (r. 976-97). He is not to be confus…

Keys of the sciences Abū ʿAbdallāh al-Khwārazmī Date: Late 10th century, and after 977 Original Language: Arabic Description In this work, which is dedicated to Abū l-Ḥasan al-ʿUtbī, fixing the date of its composition as some time shortly after 977, al-Khwārazmī aims at compiling a concise dictionary of definitions, a reference work, of the technical terms that a secretary of the chancery or financial departments of the bureaucracy would need, and which a narrow education in language, grammar and rhetoric would n…