Abu Hatim al-Sijistani

Abu Hatim al-Sijistani was a philologist of Basra whose nisba comes from Sijistan, a village in the district of Basra. He studied with Abu Zayd al-Ansari, Abu 'Ubayda Ma'mar b. al-Muthanna and al-Asma'i. His pupils included Ibn Duraid and al-Mubarrad. He died in Rajab 255/869. The encyclopaedia's entry is unsigned, and its printed heading is garbled in the OCR; the identification rests on the works and pupils it names. ¹

The bibliographers list thirty-seven titles, of which the article identifies the surviving ones: al-Addad (on words with opposite meanings), which was edited by Haffner; al-Nakhl; al-Tadhkir wa'l-Ta'nith; and al-Mu'ammarun, a book on men said to have lived very long, edited by Goldziher. The article says he was not highly regarded as a grammarian; his field was the ancient poets, their vocabulary and their prosody. ¹