Abu Amr Ishaq ibn Mirar al-Shaybani

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Abū ‘Amr Isḥaq ibn Mirār al-Shaybānī (d. 206/821, or 210/825, or 213/828, or 216/831) was a famous lexicographer-encyclopedist and collector-transmitter of Arabic poetry of the of philology.

A native of Ramādat al-Kūfah, who lived in Baghdad, he was a mawla (client) under the protection of the Banū Shaybān, hence his nisba. Descended from an Iranian landowner (dihqān) on his paternal side, his mother was a Nabaṭī and he reportedly knew a little of the Nabataean language. The biographers al-Nadīm and Ibn Khallikān quote a claim by 's that he lived to the age of one hundred and eighteen and wrote in his own hand up to his death, in 213/828. However this is disputed by a claim that he died in 206/821 aged one hundred and ten, and this latter is deemed credible.[1][2]

Abū 'Amr's teachers were Rukayn b. Rabī' al-Shāmī, a transmitter of ḥadīth and al-Mufaddal al-Dabbi, who developed his love of poetry. His son ‘Amr relates that he collected and classed poems, diwans (collections), from the jahiliyya (pre-Islamic) period from more than eighty Arab tribes. He wrote more than eighty volumes in his own hand and deposited these in the mosque of Kūfah.

The eminent scholars Ibn Hanbal, , and , the author of the , learned from him.

Of his lexicographical works, often of a very specialized nature, only the Kitāb al-Jīm ('Kitab al-Lughat or Kitab al-Huruf), survives.

Works[3] by Abū ‘Amr al-Shaybānī[]

  • The Strange in the Ḥadīth
  • On Dialects, or Rare forms Known by the Jīm (the J); Kitāb al-Jīm, or Kitāb al-Hurūf, or Kitab al-Lughat
  • The Great Collection of Anecdotes, or Rare Forms, in three manuscript editions, large, small, and medium;
  • Treatise on Bees
  • The Palm
  • Treatise on The Camel
  • The Disposition of Man
  • Letters
  • Commentary on the book “Eloquent Style”
  • Treatise on the Horse

Poets edited by Abū ‘Amr al-Shaybānī[]

  • Al-A’shā al-Kabīr ()

Notes[]

  1. ^ Ibn Khallikān 1968.
  2. ^ Dodge 1970, p. 150, I.
  3. ^ Dodge 1970, p. 151, I,ch.2,§2.

References[]

  • Dodge, Bayard, ed. (1970). The Fihrist of al-Nadim, A Tenth-Century Survey of Muslim Culture. New York & London: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-02925-X.
  • Yāqūt (1993). Iḥsān ʿAbbās (ed.). Muʿjam al-udabāʾ. 2. Beirut. pp. 625–8.
  • al-Qifṭī (1973) [1950]. Muḥammad Abū l-Faḍl Ibrāhīm (ed.). Inbāh al-ruwāt. 1. Cairo. pp. 221–9.
  • Ibn Khallikān (1968). Iḥsān ʿAbbās (ed.). Wafayāt al-aʿyān. 1. Beirut. pp. 201–2.
  • al-Ṣafadī (1971). Muḥammad Yūsuf Najm (ed.). al-Wāfī bi-l-wafayāt. 8. Wiesbaden. pp. 425–6.
  • al-Suyūṭī (1964). Muḥammad Abū l-Faḍl Ibrāhīm (ed.). Bughyat al-wuʿāt. 1. Cairo. pp. 439–40.
  • al-Suyūṭī (2005). Ḥasan al-Malkh and Suhā Naʿja (ed.). Tuḥfat al-adīb fī nuḥāt Mughnī l-labīb. 2. Irbid. pp. 613–7.

Sources[]

  • Versteegh, K. (1997). "al-S̲h̲aybānī". In Bosworth, C. E.; van Donzel, E.; Heinrichs, W. P. & Lecomte, G. (eds.). The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, Volume IX: San–Sze. Leiden: E. J. Brill. pp. 394–395. ISBN 978-90-04-10422-8.
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