Ibn Duraid

Ibn Duraid was born in Baṣrah, on "Sālih Street", (233H / c. 837CE) in the reign of the Abbasid caliph Al-Mu'tasim; Among his teachers were Abū Hātim as-Sijistāni, ar-Riāshi (Abū al-Faḍl al-'Abbās ibn al-Faraj al-Riyāshī)), Abd ar-Rahmān Ibn Abd Allah, surnamed nephew of al-Asmāi (Ibn Akhī’l Asmāi), Abū Othmān Saīd Ibn Hārūn al-Ushnāndāni, author of Kitāb al-Maāni, Ibn Duraid himself identified with the Qahtanite Arabs, Ibn al-Nadim writing two centuries earlier gives a slightly curtailed genealogy with some variation: :Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan ibn Durayd bin 'Atāhiyah ibn Ḥantam ibn Ḥasan, son of Ḥamāmī, whose name came from a village in the region of 'Umān called Ḥamāmā and who was the son of Jarw ibn Wāsi' ibn Wahb bin Salamah ibn Jusham ibn Ḥādir ibn Asad bin 'Adī ibn 'Amr ibn Mālik ibn Naṣr ibn Azd ibn al-Ghawth. After twelve years Khallikan says he returned to Basra for a time and then moved to Persia Illness and death Ibn Khallikan reports many tales of Ibn Duraid's fondness of wine and alcohol so when towards the age of ninety Ibn Duraid suffered partial paralysis following a stroke, he managed to cure himself by drinking theriac , he resumed his old habits and continued to teach. However the palsy returned the next year much more severe so he could only move his hands. He would cry out in pain when anyone entered his room. His student Abū Alī Isma’il al-Kāli al-Baghdādi remarked: The Almighty has punished him for saying in his Maksūraī: :"Oh Time! You have met someone who, were the heavenly spheres to fall upon him, would not utter complaint". He remained paralysed and in pain for two more years, although his mind remained sharp and he answered, as quick as thought, questions from students on points of philology. To one such, Abū Hātim, he responded: :Had the light of my eyes been extinguished, you would not have found one as able to quench your thirst for knowledge". His last words were in reply to Abū Alī: :"Hāl al-jarīd dūn al-karīd" (the choking stops the verse). (These were the proverbial words of the jahiliyya poet ʿAbīd ibn al-Abraṣ uttered on the point of being put to death on the orders of the last king of Hīra, an-Nomān Ibn al-Mundir al-Lakhmi, and commanded to first recite some of his verse.) Ibn Duraid died in August of 933, on a Wednesday, He was buried on the east bank of the Tigris River in the Abbasiya cemetery, and his tomb was next to the old arms bazaar near the As-Shārī 'l Aazam. The celebrated muʿtazilite philosopher cleric Hāshim Abd as-Salām al-Jubbāi died the same day. Some of Baghdad cried "Philology and theology have died on this day!" ==Works==

He is said to have written over fifty books of language and literature. As a poet his versatility and range was proverbial and his output too prodigious to count. His collection of forty stories were much cited and quoted by later authors, though only fragments survive. Perhaps drawing on his Omani ancestry, his poetry contains some distinctly Omani themes. Descriptions of etymological ties of Arabian tribal names and the earliest polemic against the "šu‘ūbīya" populist movement. ===Jamhara fi 'l-Lughat=== • ''Jamhara fi 'l-Lughat'' () (The Main Part, The Collection) on the science of language, or Arabic language dictionary, Owing to the fragmented process of the text's dictation, the early parts made in Persia and later parts from memory in Baghdad, with frequent additions and deletions evolved from a diversity of transcriptions, additions and deletion, led to inconsistencies. The grammarian Abū al-Fatḥ 'Ubayd Allāh ibn Aḥmad collected several of the various manuscripts and produced a corrected copy which ibn Duraid read and approved. Originally in three manuscript volumes, the third largely comprised an extensive index. The historian Al-Masudi praised Ibn Duraid as the intellectual heir of Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi, the compiler of the first Arabic dictionary, the Kitab al-'Ayn (), i.e. "The Source Book". in his Kitāb al-Fihrist Al-Nadīm reports a written account by Abū al-Fatḥ ibn al-Naḥwī that Ibn Duraid examined the manuscript of Kitāb al-'Ayn at Baṣrah in 248H/ 862CE. – Ibn Duraid departs from the system which had been followed previously, of a phonetic progression of letter production that began with the 'deepest' letter, the glottal pharyngeal letter "ع" (), i.e. ʿayn meaning "source". Instead he adopted the abjad, or Arabic alphabetic ordering system that is the universal standard of dictionary format today. • ''as-Sahab wa'l-Ghith'' (Clouds and Rain) () • Taqwim al-Lisan (Eloqution) () • Adaba al-Katib (Literary Writer) () • al-Wishah (The Ornamental Belt) () didactic treatise • Zuwwar al-Arab (Arab Pilgrims) () • al-Lughat (Languages) (); dialects and idiomatic expressions. • ''Fa'altu wa-Af'altu'' (Verb and Active Participle) () • al-Mufradat fi Gharib al-Qurān (Rare Terms in the Qurān) () ==Commentaries on his work==

• Abū Bakr Ibn al-Sarrāj; Commentary on the Maqṣūrah called Kitāb al-Maqṣūr wa-al-Mamdūd (The Shortened and the Lengthened) • Abū Sa’īd al-Sirāfī, (a judge of Persian origin); Commentary on the Maqṣūrah • Abu 'Umar al-Zahid; Falsity of "Al-Jamharah" and a Refutation of Ibn Duraid • Al-'Umari (a judge of Tikrīt); Commentary on the "Maqṣūrah" of Abū Bakr Ibn Durayd ==See also==