'Abd Allah al-Fakihi, the grammarian

The scholar Abd Allah ibn Ahmad al-Fakihi al-Makki al-Shafi'i, a grammarian. His mother was an Abyssinian umm walad. He was born in 899 AH and was among the great scholars, with a share in all the sciences. ².

He wrote useful works, among them a commentary on the Ajurrumiyya and a commentary on its supplement by al-Khitab, which he mastered fully. He also wrote a very fine commentary on Qatr al-Nada by Ibn Hisham, composed in 916 AH when he was eighteen years old. When he travelled to Egypt, he found a group reading it who were puzzled by a passage. He answered their difficulty, but they did not trust the answer, since they did not know that he was its author, until he told them he was the commentator and called on the Meccans present there to confirm it. ¹.

He commented on the Mulha and derived rules of grammar in a booklet of about that size, and then commented on them again in another work. No one had been first to do the like of this. In sum, he had no equal in his age in the science of grammar; he was a sign of God in it. He died in 972 AH. ³.