Abū Hilāl al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAbdallāh b. Sahl al-ʿAskarī (d. c. 400 AH/1010 CE), known also by the epithet al-adīb ('littérateur'), was an Arabic-language lexicographer and literatus of Persian origin, noted for composing a wide range of works enabling Persian-speakers like himself to develop refined and literary Arabic usage and so gain preferment under Arab rule. [1] He is best known for his Kitāb al-ṣināʽatayn, Dīwān al-maʽāni, and the Jamharat al-amthāl. However, he composed at least twenty-five works, many of which survive at least in part. [2]
Abū Hilāl's epithet al-ʿAskarī indicates that he came from ʿAskar Mukram in the Persian province of Khūzistān. He was taught by his father and the similarly named Abū Aḥmad al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn Saʿīd al-ʿAskarī (with whom later scholars sometimes confused him). He was a cloth merchant, and his journeying enabled him to develop a wide knowledge of Arabic-language culture. [1]
Among his poetry are works addressed to the Būyid wazīr al-Ṣāḥib ibn ʿAbbād (d. 385/995); he criticised al-Mutanabbī (d. 354/965). What seems to be his last work, Jamharat al-amthāl, indicates that his previous work, al-Awāʾil, was completed in 395 AH/1005 CE. Al-Suyūṭī reckoned that al-ʿAskarī died around 400 AH/1010 CE. [1]
The preface to al-ʿAskarī's Sharḥ Dīwān Abī Miḥjan al-Thaqafī indicates that this was the first of several planned commentaries on minor poets, but it seems that al-ʿAskarī completed no more of these. [1]
In some of his poetry, al-ʿAskarī complained that his scholarship was not shown the respect it deserved, but medieval biographers characterised his treatise Furūq as ḥasan ('good'), his al-Ṣināʿatayn as mufīd jiddan ('very useful') and badīʿ ('innovative'), and work as a whole fī ghāyat al-jawda ('totally excellent'). [1]
In the assessment of Beatrice Gruendler,
Writing in Khūzistān, partly for native speakers of Persian, Abū Hilāl impressed upon them the need to master elevated (ʿulwī), as opposed to colloquial (ʿāmmī), Arabic speech and Arabic writing, for use in poetry, sermons, and epistles ... With his manuals, which are structured systematically, with detailed tables of contents in the prefaces (a format adhered to throughout his books) so that any item can be easily located, he offers aspiring udabāʾ an opportunity to shine in literary and scholarly majālis. Abū Hilāl expected his books to be memorised and cited in learned conversation, with the purpose of social advancement in the reigning Arabic literary culture, fostered by the second generation of Būyid amīrs and their wazīrs. [1]
Al-ʿAskarī composed poetry of his own, which is partially preserved through citations in al-ʿAskarī's own works and by others in biographical literature; this has been gathered by Muḥsin Ghayyāḍ and George Kanazi. [1] [8]
Al-ʿAskarī also wrote a number of treatises on poetics:
Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā ibn al-‘Abbās al-Ṣūlī was a Turkic scholar and a court companion of three Abbāsid caliphs: al-Muktafī, his successor al-Muqtadir, and later, al-Rāḍī, whom he also tutored. He was a bibliophile, wrote letters, editor-poet, chronicler, and a shatranj player. His contemporary biographer Isḥāq al-Nadīm tells us he was “of manly bearing.” He wrote many books, the most famous of which are Kitāb Al-Awrāq and Kitāb al-Shiṭranj.
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Abū Bakr, ‘Abd al-Qāhir ibn ‘Abd ar-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad al-Jurjānī ; nicknamed "Al-Naḥawī", he was a renowned Persian grammarian of the Arabic language, literary theorist of the Muslim Shafi'i, and a follower of al-Ash'ari. He wrote several celebrated works on grammar and rhetoric, among these are Mi,ut Ạmil and Al-Jumal - introductions to Arabic syntax - and a commentary titled Al-Mughnī in three volumes.
Abū Muḥammad Sufyān ibn ʽUyaynah ibn Maymūn al-Hilālī al-Kūfī was a prominent eighth-century Islamic religious scholar from Mecca. He was from the third generation of Islam referred to as the Tābiʽu al-Tābiʻīn, "the followers of the followers". He specialized in the field of hadith and Qur'an exegesis and was described by al-Dhahabī as shaykh al-Islam—a preeminent Islamic authority. Some of his students achieved much renown in their own right, establishing schools of thought that have survived until the present.
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