Abu al-ʽAbbās Thaʽlab explained

Abū al-Abbās Thalab (Arabic: ابو العباس ثعلب)
Honorific Suffix:The Grammarian (Arabic: النحوي)
Native Name:Abū al-Abbās Aḥmad ibn Yaḥyā ibn Zayd ibn Zaiyar Thalab
Birth Date:815 October
Birth Place:Baghdād, Abbasid Caliphate
Death Place:Baghdād, Abbasid Caliphate (now Irāq)
Nationality:Caliphate
Other Names:Aḥmad ibn Yaḥyā ibn Zayd ibn Sayyar Abū al-Abbās Thalab (Arabic: احمد بن يحيى بن زيد بن سيار ابو العباس ثعلب) and
Abū al-Abbās Aḥmad ibn Yaḥyā Thalab
Occupation:Scholar of philology and educator
Period:Abbāsid Era
School Tradition:Grammarians of Kufa
Influences:Al-Farra, Al-Kisāī and Ibn al-Arābī.
Main Interests:Philology, Grammar, Lexicography, etc.
Influenced:Al-Akhfash al-Aṣghar, Abū Bakr ibn al-Anbārī and Ghulām Thalab

Thalab (Arabic: ثعلب), whose kunya was Abū al-Abbās Aḥmad ibn Yaḥyā (Arabic: ابو العباس احمد بن يحيى) (815 – 904) was a renowned authority on grammar, a muhaddith (traditionist), a reciter of poetry, and first scholar of the school of al-Kūfah, and later at Baghdād. He was a keen rival of Al-Mubarrad, the head of the school of al-Baṣrah. Thalab supplied much biographic detail about his contemporary philologists found in the biographical dictionaries produced by later biographers.

Life

Abū al-Abbās Thalab was born in Baghdād and Ibn al-Karāb in his Tarīkh ('History') gives his date of birth as October 815 [third month, 200 AH], others give 816 or 819 [201 AH or 204 AH]. Thalab recalled seeing, as a child of four years, the caliph al-Mamūn arriving back to the city from Khurāsān in 819/20 (204 AH). The Caliph processed from the Iron gate towards the Palace of al-Ruṣāfah, and the crowds were lined up as far as al-Muṣalla. Thalab remembered clearly the occasion when the caliph raised him up from his father's arms and said, 'This is al-Mamūn.'

Thalab was adopted by the military-leader-come-poet Man ibn Zāidah, of the Banū Shaybān, and became a grammarian, philologist, and traditionist of the Kūfah school.

Thalab recalled his interest in Arabic studies, poetry, and language had begun in 831 (216 AH) at age sixteen and that he had memorised to the letter all of al-Farrās works, including Al-Hudūd, by the age of twenty-five. His primary focus was on grammar, poetry, rhetoric, and Al-Nawadir (Strange Forms). He associated with, and counselled, Ibn al-Arābī for about ten years.

Thalab describes an occasion being at the home of Aḥmad ibn Saīd with a group of scholars, amongst whom were al-Sukkarī and Abū al-Āliyah. Critiquing the meaning of a poem by al-Shammākh, Ibn al-A'rābī and Aḥmad ibn Saīd showed surprise at Thalab's confidence.

In another anecdote, related by Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn Mūsā ibn Mujāhid al-Mukri, Thalab once expressed concern for his soul as a disciple of Abū Zayd Said ibn Aws al-Anṣārī (d.830) and Abū Amr ibn al-Alā (d.770), over the exegetes, traditionists and fuqaha (jurists). Ibn Mujahid then told him of his dream in which Muhammad had sent a message to Thalab that his was the superior science. Abū Abd Allāh al-Rūdbāri interpreted this to mean that the study of oral language is above all the other sciences – tafsir (exegesis), Ḥadīth (tradition), fiqh (Law) – as it perfects and connects these to discourse.

Thalab, was invited but declined to take a commission by the vizier al-Qāsim to write a commentary on the book Compendium of Speech by Maḥbarah al-Nadīm, which the caliph Al-Mutaḍid had ordered. He offered instead to work on the Kitāb al-Ayn of al-Khalīl, and the commission went to Al-Zajjaj.

On 30 March or 6 April 904 (17 or 10 Jumada al-Awwal 291 AH), being quite deaf, he was knocked down by a horse while walking in the street and died the next day. He was buried in the vicinity of his house near the Damascus Gate in Baghdād.

Thalab's teachers

Works

Among his books there were:

Legacy

Thalab is cited as a source for biographies of the following

Grammarians of Baṣrah - Yūnus ibn Ḥabīb, Sībawayh Abū Ubaydah, al-Aṣmaī, Al-Athram,

Grammarians of Kufa - al-Ruāsī, Al-Zajjāj who wrote the commentary of the Compendium of Speech.

Thalab's disciples

Abū al-Abbās Thalab dictated his discourses on grammar, language, historical traditions, the tafsir (Qurānic exegesis), and poetry to his pupils who transmitted his works. Among these were:

Pupils

Poets edited by Thalab

Further reading

worldcat.org.

References

Bibliography

p. 648
IV, 127-8; VI, 146-51; IX, 154-62; XIV, 85-8.

Notes and References

  1. David Larsen, 'Towards a Reconstruction of Abū Naṣr al-Bāhilī’s K. Abyāt al-maʿānī,' in Approaches to the Study of Pre-modern Arabic Anthologies, ed. by Bilal Orfali and Nadia Maria El Cheikh, Islamic History and Civilization: Studies and Texts, 180 (Leiden: Brill, 2021), pp. 37-83, .

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