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Abū al-Faraj b. al-Ṭayyib, ʿAbd Allāh (d. 435/1044), a Nestorian Christian physician, philosopher and commentator on both the Old and New Testaments. Little is known about his life and education. In the historical sources only Ibn al-Khammār, the renowned Christian physician and philosopher, is mentioned as his master (Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa, 1/240), but it appears that he was mostly engaged in studying the traditional sciences, particularly philosophy, in the monasteries and Nestorian schools of Iraq. A…

Bahār-i ʿAjam is a comprehensive lexicon of the Persian words and idioms used by Persian poets, which was compiled by Lāla Tīk Chand (d. 1180/1766), an Indian poet and literary figure, who had the pen name ( takhalluṣ) Bahār and was popularly known as Munshi Ray Lala Tek Chand Bahār (Rypka, 730). The author worked on the lexicon for twenty years, and given that the chronogram ‘ yādigār-i faqīr-i ḥaqīr Bahār’ at the colophon equates to a completion date of 1152/1739, it is likely that it was started in 1132/1720 (see Bahār, ed. 1916, 1/2, 2/512; ed. 2001, introd., …

ʿAqīl b. Abī Ṭālib, Abū Yazīd (d. ca. 50/670), was a Companion of the Prophet and brother of ʿAlī. His kunya has also been recorded as Abū ʿĪsā (see Ibn ʿAsākir, 4/41; Ibn al-Ḥajar, Tahdhīb, 7/254). According to a well-known report, there was an interval of ten years between the birth of each of the sons of Abū Ṭālib and Fāṭima bint Asad, and therefore ʿAqīl was ten years older than Jaʿfar b. Abī Ṭālib and twenty years older than ʿAlī (see al-Kalbī, Jamhara, 30; al-Zubayrī, 39; Ibn Saʿd, 4/42). However, according to a saying attributed to Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, ʿAqīl was fifteen yea…

al-Ashʿath b. Qays al-Kindī, Abū Muḥammad (d. ca. 40 or 41/660 or 661) was a character of some renown in the history of the first half of the 1st/7th century. He was the chief of the influential Yemeni tribe of Kinda, which had constituted a ruling dynasty in the Pre-Islamic era; he played an important part in many of the significant events of his age from the time of his conversion to Islam in 10/631 until his death. Reports concerning him have been the subject of contention by historians, largely on account of his ambiguous relationship with the ʿAlids. The Kinda tribe were Arabs of souther…