Abu Bakr al-Zubaydi


Abū Bakr al-Zubaydī, also known as Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan ibn ‘Abd Allāh ibn Madḥīj al-Faqīh and Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Zubaydī al-Ishbīlī, held the title Akhbār al-fuquhā and wrote books on topics including philology, biography, history, philosophy, law, lexicology, and hadith.

Life

Al-Zubaydī was a native of Seville, al-Andalus, whose ancestor, Bishr al-Dākhil ibn Ḥazm of Yemeni origin, had come with the Umayyads to al-Andalus from Ḥimṣ in the Levant. Al-Zubaydī moved to Córdoba, the seat of the Umayyad Caliphate, to study under Abū ‘Alī al-Qālī. His scholarship on the philologist Sībawayh’s grammar, Al-Kitāb, led to his appointment as tutor to the son of the humanist caliph Ḥakam II, the crown prince Hishām II. At the Caliph’s encouragement, al-Zubaydī composed many books on philology, and biographies of philologists and lexicographers. He became qāḍī of Seville, where he died in 989.

Works