Abu Amr Ishaq ibn Mirar al-Shaybani

Abū ‘Amr Isḥaq ibn Mirār al-Shaybānī (d. 206/821, or 210/825, or 213/828, or 216/831) was a famous lexicographer and collector-transmitter of Arabic poetry of the Kufan School 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 biographer Ibn Khallikan quotes a claim by Ibn al-Sikkit'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]

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, al-Kasim ibn Sallām, and Ibn al-Sikkit, the author of the Islāh al-Mantik, learned from him.

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

Works^[2] 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-Ḥuṭay’ah
• Labīd ibn Rabī’ah
• Tamīm ibn Ubayy ibn Muqbil
• Durayd ibn al-Ṣimmah
• ‘Amrj ibn Ma’dī Karib
• Al-A’shā al-Kabīr (Maymūn ibn Qays)
• Mutamminm ibn Nuwayrah
• Al-Zibraqān ibn Badr
• Ḥumayd ibn Thawr al-Rājiz
• Ḥumayd al-Arqaṭ
• Abū al-Aswad al-Du’alī
• Abū al-Najm al-‘Ijlī
• Al-‘Ajjāj al-Rājaz

Jarīr

Sources

• Versteegh, K. (1997). "al-S̲h̲aybānī". In Bosworth, C. E.; van Donzel, E.; Heinrichs, W. P.; Lecomte, G. The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, Volume IX: San–Sze. Leiden: E. J. Brill. pp. 394–395. ISBN 90-04-10422-4.

References