al-Akhfash, cognomen of a number of grammarians of Arabic, the most famous of whom is Abū al-Ḥasan Saʿīd b. Masʿada al-Mujāshiʿī (d. 215/830) known as Akhfash al-Awsaṭ, a Baṣran grammarian and man-of-letters. He was a mawlā (client) of the Banū Mujāshiʿ b. Dārim, hence his nisba al-Mujāshiʿī (see al-Sīrāfī, 50; al-Zabīdī, 72; al-Mufaḍḍal, 85). Some earlier writers, like al-Mubarrad (see al-Qifṭī, 2/39) and Abū al-Ṭayyib al-Lughawī (p. 68), believed him to have been Iranian and a resident of Balkh. Al-Balkhī, the author of Faḍāʾil …