Abū al-Wazīr, ʿUmar b. Muṭarrif b. Muḥammad al-ʿAbdī (d. 188/804), was a man of letters, a genealogist (nassāba), and also the secretary to several of the early ʿAbbāsid caliphs. Al-Ṣābiʾ called him ‘Abū al-Wazīr b. Hānī’, possibly because of the name of one of his forefathers (p. 28). The title ‘al-ʿAbdī’ indicates that he was a mawlā of the Banū ʿAbd al-Qays tribe (Abū al-Faraj, 3/46; Yāqūt, 16/72). His father, Muṭarrif, was a scribe from Marw (al-Jahshiyārī, 227) and entered the service of the ʿAbbāsid al-Mahdī, al-Manṣūr's heir-apparent, when he …