| Sahib ibn Abbad | |
| Office: | Grand Vizier of the Buyid emirate of Ray |
| Term Start: | 976 |
| Term End: | 995 |
| Predecessor: | Abu'l-Fath Ali ibn Muhammad |
| Successor: | Unknown |
| Module: | |
Abu’l-Qāsim Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAbbād ibn al-ʿAbbās (Persian: ابوالقاسم اسماعیل بن عباد بن عباس; born 938 - died 30 March 995), better known as Ṣāḥib ibn ʿAbbād (Persian: صاحب بن عباد), also known as al-Ṣāḥib (Persian: الصاحب), was a Persian scholar and statesman, who served as the grand vizier of the Buyid rulers of Ray from 976 to 995.[1]
A native of the suburbs of Isfahan, he was greatly interested in Arab culture, and wrote on dogmatic theology, history, grammar, lexicography, scholarly criticism and wrote poetry and belles-lettres.[2]
Sahib was born on 14 September 938 in Talaqancha, a village roughly 20 miles south of the major Buyid city of Isfahan. His father was Abu'l-Hasan Abbad ibn Abbas (d. 946), a renowned and well-educated administrator, who composed works on the Mu'tazili doctrine. Sahib spent his childhood at Talakan, a town in Daylam near Qazvin. He later settled in Isfahan, and served for some time as an official of the Buyid ruler of Jibal, Rukn al-Dawla (r. 935–976). After the death of his father, Sahib became the pupil of the scholar and philosopher, Ibn 'al-Amid, who had recently replaced Sahib's deceased father as the vizier of Rukn al-Dawla.
The story is told that to keep company with his collection of 117,000 books while travelling, Sahib had them "borne by a caravan of four hundred camels trained to walk in alphabetical order".[3]