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Ibrāhīm b. al-Mahdī, Abū Isḥāq (162–224/779–839), an ʿAbbāsid prince, singer ( mughannī), musician and poet. He was the son of the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Mahdī (r. 158–169/775–785) and a woman named Shikla, who came from a noble Zoroastrian family in Ṭabaristān (al-Ṭabarī, 7/513; Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī, 9/49; Ibn al-Nadīm, 129; see also Minorsky, 745; Madelung, 544). Some sources referred to him using his mother’s name as ‘Ibn Shikla’ (‘the son of Shikla’), sometimes in a derogatory manner as in the poetry o…