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Abū ʿAmra ʿAbdallāh b. al-ʿAjlān (in some sources called ʿAjlān, Ibn al-ʿAjlān or al-ʿAjlānī) b. ʿAbd al-Aḥabb b. ʿĀmir b. Kaʿb b. Ṣubāḥ b. Nahd was a pre-Islamic poet who lived in the sixth century C.E. He was a sayyid (chief) of the Banū Nahd, like his father, who was also one of the wealthiest members of the tribe. ʿAbdallāh was married to Hind, a woman of the same tribe, and lived with her for more than seven years without having children. His father asked ʿAbdallāh to repudiate Hind because of their childlessness, but he refused…

ʿAdī b. al-Riqāʿ (Abū Dāwūd or Abū Duʾād ʿAdī b. Zayd b. Mālik b. ʿAdī b. al-Riqāʿ al-ʿĀmilī, d. shortly after 100/718) was an Arab poet of the Banū ʿĀmila (of Quḍāʿa), who lived in Damascus in the second half of the first/early-seventh century. Apart from some invective poems in which he replied to insults made by Jarīr (d. 110/728–9) and al-Rāʿī al-Numayrī (d. 96/714 or 97/715), his poetry consists mainly of panegyrical odes in classical Bedouin style. These were addressed to the caliph al-Walīd b. ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 86–96/705–15), of whom he was the official maddāḥ (panegyrist), to his s…

Abū Mālik ʿAmr b. Kirkira al-Aʿrābī or al-Numayrī was an Arab lexicographer who lived in Basra in the second half of the second/eighth century. Very little information is available about ʿAmr's life and activities. He was a mawlā (client) of the Banū Saʿd. He first worked as a Bedouin teacher, like his stepfather, the famous Basran philologist Abū l-Baydāʾ al-Riyāḥī, for whom he acted as rāwiya, or transmitter. He later settled in Basra, where he copied books and transmitted his wide-ranging knowledge of the Arabic language, a subject in which he was said to …

Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn Abū l-Saʿādāt Hibatallāh b. ʿAlī (450–542/1058–1148), known as Ibn al-Shajarī, was a famous grammarian and an authority on poetry from Baghdad. He was a descendant of the cousin of the Prophet and the last of the Rightly Guided Caliphs, ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (r. 35–40/656–61), and thus he was known as al-Sharīf al-Ḥasanī al-ʿAlawī (for his genealogy see al-Suyūṭī, Tuḥfat al-adīb, 2:541). He was born in Baghdad and spent his entire life in al-Karkh, a quarter in western Baghdad. After studying philology, poetry, and other subjects in the classical …

Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm b. ʿAlī b. Salama b. ʿĀmir  Ibn Harma al-Fihrī al-Madanī (d. mid-to-late second/eighth century), was an Arab poet of Medina, whose lifetime spanned the Umayyad and ʿAbbāsid eras. His poetry praises, among others, prominent figures of both dynasties and descendants of the fourth caliph, ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib. His nasab, or lineage—albeit in a shorter form—is known from Ibn al-Sikkīt (d. 244/858) (followed by Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī, d. 356/967, in al-Aghānī), who left out b. ʿĀmir, and by Ibn al-Nadīm (d. 380/990), who calls him only Ibrāhīm b. ʿAlī b. H…

Laqīṭ b. Yaʿmur (or b. Yaʿmar, Maʿbad, Maʿmar, or Bakr) b. Khārija was a pre-Islamic Arab poet who lived in the sixth century C.E. He was a member of the Iyād, a tribe who were once settled in the Tihāma region, south of Mecca. Due to the barrenness of the soil they were forced to leave their territory and went to Iraq, where they settled in the Sawād, the region between Kufa and Basra, mainly in the city of al-Ḥīra. Here Laqīṭ came into contact with urban Arab culture as well as the Persian langu…

Abū ʿUmar ʿĪsā b. ʿUmar al-Thaqafī (d. 149/766) was a reader of the Qurʾān and a grammarian of the Basran school. (His kunya is given as Abū Sulaymān in Ibn al-Anbārī, 28). The son of a client ( mawlā) of Khālid b. al-Walīd al-Makhzūmī (d. 21/642), more often designated as simply “ mawlā Khālid,” he settled at Basra among the Banū Thaqīf, a relationship he claimed with his nisba. He studied the Qurʾān and philology under ʿAbdallāh b. Abī Isḥāq al-Ḥaḍramī (d. 117/735), Yaḥyā b. Yaʿmar (d. 129/746), and Abū ʿAmr Ibn al-ʿAlāʾ (d. 154/771 or 157/774), and profited f…

Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl al-Naḥḥās (d. 338/950) was an Egyptian philologist with expertise in the fields of Qurʾānic philology, grammar, and pre-Islamic Arabic poetry. From Egypt, al-Naḥḥās, who is also called Ibn al-Naḥḥās or al-Ṣaffār by some biographers, travelled to Baghdad, where he studied philology under al-Zajjāj (d. 311/923), who familiarised him with the Kitāb by the famed grammarian Sībawayh (d. c.180/796). He also studied philology with ʿAlī b. Sulaymān al-Akhfash al-Aṣghar (d. 315/927), Nifṭawayh (d. 323/935), and Abū Bakr …

Abū ʿAmr al-Shaybānī, Isḥāq b. Mirār (d. 206/821, or 210/825, or 213/828, or 216/831), was a famous transmitter of poetry and lexicographer of the Kufan school in the second/eighth century. Abū ʿAmr was born in Kufa sometime in the first quarter of the second/eighth century. According to a statement of Abū Isḥāq al-Najīramī (lived in the first half of the fourth/tenth century) in his Amālī, quoted in Yāqūt (d. 626/1229), Muʿjam 2:625, his father was the descendant of an Iranian landowner (dihqān) and his mother a Nabaṭī woman. He grew up in Kufa, in the neighborhood of the B…

Bahāʾ al-Dīn Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad b. Abī Naṣr Ibn al-Naḥḥās al-Ḥalabī (d. 698/1299) was an Arab grammarian. He was born at the end of Jumādā II 637/1240 in Aleppo, where he grew up, became a student of philology under Muwaffaq al-Dīn Ibn Yaʿīsh (d. 643/1245), Jamāl al-Dīn Ibn Mālik (d. 672/1274), ʿAbdallāh b. ʿUmar Ibn al-Lattī (d. 635/1237), Abū l-Qāsim ʿAbdallāh b. al-Ḥusayn Ibn Rawāḥa al-Anṣārī (d. 646/1248), Shams al-Dīn Yūsuf Ibn Khalīl (d. 648/1250), ʿAlī b. Shujāʿ al-Kamāl al-…

Al-Haytham b. al-Rabīʿ Abū Ḥayya al-Numayrī was an Arab poet of the Banū Numayr, who lived in the late Umayyad period in Basra and probably died some time between 158/775 and 180/796. (Ibn al-Muʿtazz, Ṭabaqāt al-shuʿarāʾ, 146, says that he died about 210/825, but this date is obviously wrong.) The sources do not yield any clear facts about his life but abound with anecdotes about his personal weaknesses, including that he was an epileptic, a liar, and a coward. His poems, however, which are of the classical Bedouin type, were hig…

Abū ʿUbayd al-Qāsim b. Sallām al-Harawī or al-Baghdādī (154–224/770–838) was an Arab philologist and the author of many standard works on lexicography, Qurʾānic sciences, ḥadīth, and fiqh. He was born in Herat, the son of a Byzantine slave. He left his native town and studied philology in Basra under scholars such as al-Aṣmaʿī (d. 213/828), Abū ʿUbayda (d. c.210/825), and Abū Zayd al-Anṣārī (d. 214 or 215/830–1), and in Kufa under, among others, Abū ʿAmr al-Shaybānī (d. c.210/825), al-Kisāʾī (d. c.189/805), al-Farrāʾ (d.…

Abū Zuhayr Khidāsh b. Zuhayr al-ʿĀmirī was a pre-Islamic poet who lived in the late sixth century C.E. His nisba relates to the ʿĀmir b. Ṣaʿṣaʿa, a subgroup of the Hawāzin tribe, and he was a contemporary of his cousin, the Muʿallaqa poet Labīd b. Rabīʿa. Evidence for this period comes from his poems that centre around the wars called al-Fijār between the Quraysh and the Kināna on the one side and, on the other, the Hawāzin and other tribes of the Qays ʿAylān. Khidāsh uttered most of his verses on the occasion of the various battle-days (ayyām), such as Yawm Nakhla, Yawm Shamṭa, Yawm al-ʿAb…

Abū Dūdān, or Abū Ziyād, ʿAbīd b. al-Abraṣ al-Asadī was a pre-Islamic Arab poet of the Banū Saʿd b. Thaʿlaba, who lived in the first half of the sixth century C.E. He was one of the leading men of his tribe when they revolted against the supremacy of Ḥujr b. al-Ḥārith, the king of the Banū Kinda and father of the poet Imruʾ al-Qays (d. c.550), and killed him. There are many divergent versions of how this uprising took place, but it is an undoubted historical event, as  ʿAbīd’s poems prove that he took …

Abū Yaḥyā Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAbd al-Aʿlā al-Asadī, Ibn Kunāsa (123–207/741–823), was a transmitter of ḥadīth, philologist, and poet, who lived in Kufa and Baghdad. Born in Kufa, he was named Ibn Kunāsa after his father’s (or his grandfather’s) nickname Kunāsa ( kunāsa means sweepings or refuse, although there is no convincing explanation for its use in his name). His mother was the sister of the well-known ascetic and mystic Ibrāhīm b. Adham (d. 161/778), whose death was lamented by Ibn Kunāsa in a short elegy. He grew up in Kufa,…

Abū Ḥafṣ ʿUmar b. Khalaf Ibn Makkī al-Māzarī al-Ṣiqillī (d. 501/1107–8), was an Arab lexicographer and jurist, who lived in Sicily and Tunis. Ibn Makkī grew up in Sicily, where he studied under Ibn al-Birr (d. 460/1068) and became a master of ḥadīth, Islamic law, Arabic philology, and poetry. After the beginning of the Norman invasion in Sicily, in 452/1060, Ibn Makkī emigrated to Tunis, where he was appointed qāḍī (judge). We owe this information to his fellow student Ibn al-Qaṭṭāʿ (d. 515/1121), who presented him in his anthology of Sicilian poets al-Durra al-khaṭīra (“The noble pearl…

Abū ʿAmr Kulthūm b. ʿAmr al-ʿAttābī (d. c.220/835) was an Arab poet and prose writer who flourished at the court of the ʿAbbāsid caliphs Hārūn al-Rashīd (r. 170– 93/786–809) and al-Maʾmūn (198–218/813–833). He took his nisba from the Banū ʿAttāb b. Saʿd, a sub-group of the Taghlib, who lived in the neighbourhood of Qinnasrīn, in northern Syria. A descendant of ʿAmr b. Kulthūm, a pre-Islamic poet famed for his Muʿallaqa ode, he was born probably in the middle of the second/eighth century and seems to have come to Baghdad at an early stage in his life, because he m…

Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. al-Qāsim b. Muḥammad b. Bashshār al-Anbārī (271–328/885–940), also known as Ibn al-Anbārī, was an eminent Arab philologist of the ʿAbbāsid period. 1. Life Al-Anbārī spent his life in Baghdad. His teachers were his father, Abū Muḥammad al-Anbārī (d. 304/916 or 305/917); Thaʿlab (d. 291/904); and many other shuyūkh, including Ibn Durayd (d. 321/953). For an extensive list of his teachers see Ḥātim Ṣāliḥ al-Ḍāmin in the foreword to his edition of al-Zāhir fī maʿānī kalimāt al-nās (1:15–7). Al-Anbārī devoted himself to an ascetic life of studying and teachin…

Abū Rabīʿa al-Muhalhil (often Muhalhil without definite article) b. Rabīʿa b. al-Ḥārith b. Zuhayr b. Jusham was a pre-Islamic poet and a leader of the Banū Taghlib in the “War of al-Basūs”. In literature, he always appears under his sobriquet al-Muhalhil (“he who finely weaves [poems]”), and not under his given name, about which the sources disagree. The majority, including Abū ʿUbayda (d. c.210/825) and Ibn Sallām al-Jumaḥī (d. 231/846), followed by Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/889), al-Mubarrad (d. 285/898), and al-Qurashī (fl. mid-f…

Abū ʿAmr Bundār b. ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd b. Lurra al-Karajī al-Iṣfahānī (fl. first half of the third/ninth century) was an authority on Arabic philology and poetry. According to Ḥamza al-Iṣfahānī’s (d. before 360/970) Kitāb Iṣfahān, quoted by Yāqūt (d. 626/1229) in Muʿjam, 2:766, Bundār was a Persian scholar from al-Karaj, a town halfway between Hamadhān and Iṣfahān (see (al)-Karadj, EI2), in the region called al-Jabal; hence the nisba al-Karkhī (which would refer to a quarter in Baghdad), found in Yāqūt, Muʿjam, and al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505), Bughya, has to be dismissed as an obvious mi…