Sharaf al-Dīn Abū l-Maḥāsin Muḥammad b. Naṣrallāh al-Kūfī al-Dimashqī Ibn ʿUnayn (d. 630/1233) was a poet of the Ayyūbid era, most famous for his invective and satirical poems against the ruling elite in his hometown of Damascus. Trained by eminent scholars, including the traditionist and historian Ibn ʿAsākir (d. 571/1176), the physician and eclectic author ʿAbd al-Rahmān al-Shayzarī (d. after 565/1169), and the jurist al-Shahrazūrī (d. 586/1190), he is said to have memorised the exhaustive lexicon al-Jamhara fī l-lugha of Ibn Durayd (d. 321/933). Ibn ʿUnayn’s poetry rev…

Ibn Rushayd (657–721/1259–1321), the greatest traditionist of his time in the Islamic West, possessed great intellectual authority and social prestige due to his extensive knowledge. He was recognised by his contemporaries and is still admired today. He is renowned for the seven-volume account of his three-year journey (riḥla) of pilgrimage and study to more than twenty-seven cities. His full name was Muḥibb al-Dīn Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad b. ʿUmar b. Muḥammad b. ʿUmar b. Muḥammad b. Idrīs b. ʿAbdallāh b. Saʿīd b. Masʿūd b. Ḥasan/Ḥusayn b. Muḥammad b. ʿ…

Abū Yaʿlā Ḥamza b. Asad al-Tamīmī, better known by his family name of Ibn al-Qalānisī (c. 465–555/1073–1160), was a Damascene official and littérateur. He is well known to modern historians for his chronicle Dhayl taʾrīkh Dimashq (“Continuation of the history of Damascus”), which constitutes one of the few sources available for the Muslim response to the Crusades of the late fifth/eleventh and early sixth/twelfth centuries. Yet despite this, actual knowledge about his life is sparse. Most of our information comes from the great biographical dictionary Taʾrīkh madīnat Dimashq (“His…

The Ibn al-Mudabbir brothers, Ibrāhīm and Aḥmad b. Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh (or ʿUbaydallāh) b. al-Mudabbir, were courtiers and fiscal officials who worked for the ʿAbbāsid caliphate in the mid-third/ninth century. Aḥmad was reportedly older than Ibrāhīm (al-Ṣafadī, 8:38). 1. Ibrāhīm Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm b. al-Mudabbir (d. 279/892–3) was a bureaucrat for several ʿAbbāsid caliphs, from al-Wāthiq (r. 227–32/842–7) to al-Muʿtamid (r. 256–79/870–92). He was a favourite of al-Mutawakkil (r. 232–47/847–61) and helped him stage the downfall of the…

ʿUbaydallāh Ibn Qays al-Ruqayyāt (d. 80/699; his correct ism is ʿUbaydallāh, not ʿAbdallāh, as given in several sources) was an Umayyad poet and a member of the Quraysh tribe. In some sources, he is described as the best poet of the Quraysh after the coming of Islam. He lived in Medina (al-Ṣafadī, 19:263). His mother, Qutayla bt. Wahb, was from the Kināna tribe. Al-Ruqayyāt (plural of the name Ruqayya) is a nickname of the poet, meaning “Ibn Qays” of the Ruqayyas. According to some scholars, it is a nic…

ʿAbdallāh b. ʿĀmir (or ʿAmr) Ibn al-Ḥaḍramī (d. c.38/658) is remembered in the sources as the agent sent by the Umayyad caliph Muʿāwiya (r. 41–60/661–80) to Basra in order to garner the support of its inhabitants after the Battle of Ṣiffīn (37/657). Some explanation for the choice of Ibn al-Ḥaḍramī is to be found in prosopographical and genealogical details. Ibn al-Ḥaḍramī was probably, at some point, the governor of Basra for the Rightly Guided caliph ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān (r. 23–35/644–56). This fact wa…

Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Muḥammad b. Idrīs b. al-Mundhir al-Ḥanẓalī al-Rāzī (240–327/854–5–938), known as Ibn Abī Ḥātim al-Rāzī, was a transmitter (rijāl) critic, traditionist, and exegete, who was born in Rayy (north-eastern Iran) to a family originating from the village of Jazz near Iṣfahān. His chief mentors included his father, Abū Ḥātim (195–277/810–1–90), and Abū Zurʿa al-Rāzī (200–64/815–6–78), both towering third/ninth-century ḥadīth experts. During his travels (riḥlāt) in pursuit of knowledge (255–64/869–78), which encompassed the Ḥijāz, Iraq, Eg…

Muhadhdhab al-Dīn Abū l-Ḥusayn Aḥmad b. Munīr b. Aḥmad b. Mufliḥ al-Ṭarābulusī (or al-Aṭrābulusī) al-Raffāʾ (the darner), known as Ibn Munīr al-Ṭarābulusī (b. 473/1080–1, d. 548/1153), was a Syrian poet famous for his panegyrics—especially those written for the Zangid rulers ʿImād al-Dīn Zangī (r. 521–41/1127–46) and his son Nūr al-Dīn (r. 541–65/1146–74)—and for several love poems and the Qaṣīda Tatariyya. Ibn Munīr was born in Ṭarābulus (Tripoli, Lebanon) the son of a darner, hence his laqab al-Raffāʾ. His father used to recite Shīʿī poetry in the markets of Tripoli,…

Ibn al-Muzawwiq (d. 833/1430), also known as Ibn al-Sadīd, Fakhr al-Dīn Mājid b. Abī l-Faḍāʾil b. Sanā l-Mulk, and sometimes as ʿAbdallāh b. al-Sadīd al-Qibṭī (for his Coptic ancestry), was a judge and a secretary of the Mamlūk sultanate. His entire career was tied to his special relationship with his patron, the powerful secretary Ibrāhīm Ibn Ghurāb (d. 808/1406), who effectively ruled the sultanate in 808/1405–6, during the reign of Sulṭān al-Nāṣir Faraj (r. 801–8/1399–1405, 808–15/1405–12). Ibn al-Muzawwiq is first mentioned when he succeeded Ibn Ghurāb, on 29 Rabīʿ …

Abū l-Faḍl Muḥammad b. Abī l-Ḥusayn Ṭāhir b. ʿAlī b. Aḥmad al-Maqdisī al-Shaybānī (448–507/1056–1113), known by his contemporaries as Ibn al-Qaysarānī or Ibn Ṭāhir, was a renowned transmitter of Prophetic traditions and the author of many works, including Ṣūfī treatises. Born in Jerusalem in Shawwāl 448/December 1056 to a family from Caesarea, in Palestine (whence his nisbas al-Maqdisī and Ibn al-Qaysarānī), he first heard ḥadīth recited in his native town at the age of twelve. After his first pilgrimage to Mecca and his visit to Baghdad on his way back in 4…

Abū Muslim al-Khawlānī was a Successor (a member of the generation that comes after the Companions) from the Yemeni tribe of Khawlān, who, like many Yemeni converts at that time, resettled in Dārayyā, about eight kilometres southeast of Damascus. Islamic tradition records him as a reputed ascetic (zāhid) and Qurʾān reciter, a wise man (ḥakīm), and someone who appealed to Caliph Muʿāwiya’s (r. 41–60/661–80) sense of justice and magnanimity. He is commonly included in the list of the eight greatest ascetics of the Successor generation (Ibn ʿAbd Rabbihi; GAS, 1:179). The sources are con…

Abū Idrīs ʿĀʾidh (ʿAyyidh) Allāh b. ʿAbdallāh al-Khawlānī was a Damascene storyteller, preacher, jurisprudent, and judge of the generation of Successors to the Prophet. He was born in the year of the battle of Ḥunayn (8/630) and died in 80/699–700. He is described as a man of noble spirit but not of wealth (al-Dhahabī, 273), who enjoyed reciting the Qurʾān, spending time in the mosque, and engaging with students of religion. He was a professional qāṣṣ, a teller of stories about the Prophet, and a wāʿiẓ, a preacher who specialised in admonitory narratives. Although he never met t…

Khālid b. ʿAbdallāh al-Qasrī (d. 126/743) served as the Umayyad governor of Mecca either during the reign of ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 65–86/685–705), al-Walīd b. ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 86–96/705–15), or Sulaymān b. ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 96–9/715–7). He later served as governor of Iraq, and viceroy over the entire eastern portion of the Umayyad empire for most of the reign of Hishām b. ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 105–25/724–43). Details of his service in both of these important posts are poorly preserved and, in many cases, …

Abū Ayyūb Maymūn b. Mihrān (40–117/660–735) was an early Islamic religious scholar who resided most of his life in Raqqa, in al-Jazīra (Upper Mesopotamia). He was born in Kufa in 40/660–1 to parents who were mawālī (clients to patrons; sing. mawlā). His mother was reportedly a freedwoman from either the Banū Naṣr b. Muʿāwiya or the Azd, and his father was probably a mawlā of the Banū Naṣr. Little information is preserved about Maymūn’s youth or early education. He seems at some point to have travelled to Baṣra to meet al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (d. 110/728), but, wi…

Ibrāhīm b. al-Walīd was one of nineteen sons of the Umayyad caliph al-Walīd b. ʿAbd al-Malik (al-Walīd I, r. 86–96/705–15). Neither his birth year nor the identity of his mother, an umm walad (slave who gave birth to her master’s child) who may have been a Berber, is known. The sources are silent about him until his participation in the revolt led by his half-brother Yazīd b. al-Walīd (d. 126/744) that overthrew the caliph al-Walīd b. Yazīd (al-Walīd II, r. 125–6/743–4), whose murder precipitated the disintegration of the Umay…

Abū ʿUrwa Maʿmar b. Rāshid (96–153/714–70) was a Persian client (mawlā) of the Ḥuddān clan of the Azd tribe who became a major early traditionist of Basra and, later, Ṣanʿāʾ. He appears as an important authority for the transmission of Prophetic traditions in all of the six canonical ḥadīth works of the Sunnīs. A widely travelled scholar, Maʿmar resided at various points in his life in southern Iraq, the Levant, the Ḥijāz, and (finally) Yemen. Maʿmar thus transmitted from a large number of early authorities who were based in these localities …

Al-Nābigha al-Shaybānī or Nābighat Banī Shaybān (lit., the poetic genius of the Banū Shaybān) was the honorific name of ʿAbdallāh b. al-Mukhāriq b. Sulaym (d. c.126/744), a Bedouin poet who belonged to the Banū Dhuhl b. Shaybān, a subtribe of the Bakr b. Wāʾil (for his complete genealogy, see his Dīwān, ed. Yaʿqūb, 51, and Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī, 7:106). He lived in what is today lower Iraq and travelled frequently to Damascus, where he met Umayyad caliphs, such as ʿAbd al-Malik b. Marwān (r. 65–86/685–705), al-Walīd b. ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 86–96…

Abū l-Simṭ Marwān b. Sulaymān b. Abī Ḥafṣa (b. c.105/723, d. 182/798), called Marwān al-Akbar (the older Marwān), was one of the most influential poets of the late Umayyad and early ʿAbbāsid periods. Much of his poetic work was devoted to praising the ʿAbbāsids and supporting their claim to the caliphate. Marwān was born in al-Yamāma (eastern Arabia), to a non-Arab family that was, depending on the view one finds credible, either originally Jewish or originally Persian (Ibn Khallikān, 5:189). His grandfather, Abū Ḥafṣa, was a client (mawlā) of the caliph Marwān b. al-Ḥakam (r. 64–…

Kulthūm b. ʿIyāḍ al-Qushayrī (d. 123/741) was an Umayyad notable and government official who served as amīr (governor) of Damascus during the reign of the caliph Hishām b. ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 105–25/724–43). He also led a large Syrian army on an expedition to suppress an Amzigh (Berber) revolt in the Maghrib (122–5/740–3). He is occasionally labelled al-Qasrī rather than al-Qushayrī, which is likely a scribal error, but could suggest confusion about his tribal affiliation. As a Qushayrī, he would have been part o…

ʿUmar b. Hubayra (d. between 105/724 and 107/726) was an Umayyad military leader who served as governor of Iraq during the reign of the Umayyad caliph Yazīd b. ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 101–5/720–24). He is generally described as a fierce partisan of the Qays tribal bloc, though his initial success as a military leader came during the reign of ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (r. 99–101/717–20), whom modern historians consider to be pro-Yemeni. Feuds between these two vaguely-defined tribal blocs often serve as explanations for conflicts in early Islamic history. He first appears in the sources as l…