Abu Ubayd al-Qasim ibn Sallam

Abu Ubayd al-Qasim ibn Sallam is a transmitter whose name appears in al-Baladhuri's "Futuh al-Buldan." ²

In the chapter on the truce with Nubia, al-Baladhuri reports: "Abu Ubayd al-Qasim ibn Sallam related to us from Abd Allah ibn Salih from Ibn Lahi'a from Yazid ibn Abi Habib." He also relates from him, from al-Layth ibn Sa'd, concerning the peace and the purchase of their slaves. ²

Al-Shirazi says he died in Mecca in 224 AH at the age of sixty-seven. ³ His birth year (157 AH) is reckoned from that and is not stated in the source. The museum's data attribute to him Al-Amthal al-Sa'ira, on the authority of ⁴.

Al-Khatib says that he was born in Herat, and that his father Sallam was a Roman slave of a man from there who served the Azd. He sought knowledge, heard hadith, studied literature, and looked into jurisprudence. He heard from Isma'il ibn Ja'far, Shurayk, Isma'il ibn Ayyash, Hushaym ibn Bashir, Sufyan ibn Uyayna, Isma'il ibn Ulayya, Yazid ibn Harun, Yahya ibn Sa'id al-Qattan, Hajjaj ibn Muhammad, Abd al-Rahman ibn Mahdi, Abu Bakr ibn Ayyash, Ishaq al-Azraq and others. Al-Saghani, Abu Bakr ibn Abi al-Dunya, al-Harith ibn Abi Usama, al-Baghawi and others transmitted from him ⁵.

He stayed in Baghdad for a time, serving as tutor to the family of Harun, and later moved into the circle of Abd Allah ibn Tahir. He held the judgeship of Tartus, went out to Mecca in 224 AH, and lived there until he died. The grammarian Abd Allah ibn Ja'far ibn Darustawayh said that among those who had gathered many branches of knowledge and written books on every field of learning and literature, the most prolific and renowned was Abu Ubayd al-Qasim ibn Sallam. People transmitted some twenty-odd of his works, on the Qur'an, jurisprudence, strange hadith, the classified strange words, proverbs, the meanings of poetry and more. Whenever he wrote a book he dedicated it to Abd Allah ibn Tahir, who would send him a considerable sum of money in appreciation ¹.