At a glance
- Roles
- Scholar
- Counted among
- Sunni
- Era
- The Early Abbasid Caliphate
- Region
- Levant & Iraq
- Review
- Completeness 2/5 · Help complete it
Place in the story
- ScholarTradition
Roles are dated and sourced; the museum describes the act and attributes the judgement.
Overview
Abu al-Khattab Abd al-Hamid ibn Abd al-Majid al-Akhfash al-Akbar, a grammarian of Basra and one of the first grammarians. 1
Transmission
Sibawayh and others transmitted from him. 1
The data do not record his birth or death dates, which need an additional source.
Encyclopaedia of Islam account
The Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd ed.), in its index article on al-Akhfash ("nyctalope", or "devoid of eyelashes"), lists this as the cognomen of several grammarians. The first is Abu l-Khattab 'Abd al-Hamid b. 'Abd al-Majid, who died in 177/793. He was a pupil of Abu 'Amr b. al-'Ala'. He is said to have been the first to provide ancient poems with an interlinear commentary, and he collected many dialectal terms. His chief pupils were Sibawayh, Abu Zayd, Abu 'Ubayda and al-Asma'i. 2
People and things also explored
God teaches Adam the names· Amharic· Arabic· Bengali· Bosnian· Hausa· Indonesian· Kurdish
Sources
- Mawsu'at A'lam al-Ulama' wa-l-Adaba' al-Arab wa-l-Muslimin — Dar al-Jil / ALECSO
- Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition (Leiden: Brill, 1954–2008), 13 volumes , vol. 1 p. 343
Cite this page
islam.museum contributors. “al-Akhfash al-Akbar”. islam.museum, https://islam.museum/en/person/al-akhfash-al-akbar-abd-al-hamid/. CC BY-SA 4.0. Last updated 2026-10-25.