al-Asma'i

Abd al-Malik ibn Qurayb al-Asma'i, a scholar of language and reports. Al-Mas'udi relates that he told al-Rashid about the gluttony of Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik, and how he took chicken from the dishes with his sleeve. Al-Rashid said that he had seen in the sleeves of Sulayman's robes a mark like that of grease, and gave him a robe of them. Al-Asma'i used to say that it was Sulayman's robe that al-Rashid had given him. ²

Abu Sa'id Kurayb al-Asma'i was an Arabic philologist who died in 213 AH (828); other dates are given by Yaqut, al-Irshad and later writers. The entry says that his birth date, often stated as 123 in the printed pair "123/828", was not known to himself; the printed figures are not consistent and are not used here. The nisba al-Asma'i derives from one of his ancestors, Asma'; al-Bahili from the Kaysite tribe of Bahila, a relationship that a satirical poem of a contemporary alludes to. In one anecdote he presents himself as descended from the Banu A'sur ibn Sa'd ibn Kays 'Aylan. ³

He is one of a triumvirate with Abu 'Ubayda and Abu Zayd al-Ansari, to whom later philologists owed most of their knowledge of Arabic lexicography and poetry. All three were disciples of the leading Basran philologist Abu 'Amr ibn al-'Ala'. The littérateur al-Jahiz, among his many pupils, left a monument of their learning in his works. Al-Asma'i was distinguished by an astonishing memory and an unusually critical mind, and from his teacher he took a precise sense of the limits of philological knowledge. Like his teacher, he sought information from the Bedouin on grammar and lexicography; Basran common people knew his interests and could point him to a shaykh with perfect knowledge of the lugha, and anecdotes tell of his rides into the desert to collect poetry from Bedouin lips. Lexicography was his strength; Abu Zayd is said to have surpassed him in grammar, and al-Khalil to have despaired of him in metrics. ³

Traditions differ on how he reached Baghdad and the court of Harun al-Rashid. According to al-Marzubani, he had met the caliph at Basra, and when Muhammad al-Amin was crown prince he was summoned and introduced to the caliph by the vizier al-Fadl ibn al-Rabi'. According to al-Jahshiyari, Ja'far ibn Yahya al-Barmaki introduced him. The Barmakids gave him substantial benefits, yet he satirised them after their fall; as Ja'far's intimate he feared for his life when Ja'far fell in 187 AH (803). His rival at the court, the poet Ishaq al-Mawsili, was in his own view more successful in winning ready money from the caliph. The 'Iqd of Ibn 'Abd Rabbih preserves the nawadir and the entertaining stories with which he amused Harun. After Harun's death he seems to have returned to Basra; one isolated report says he died in Marw. ³

Stories told by his disciples show him living as a poor man at the height of his career, though he then had considerable property; the plain living ascribed in tradition to 'Umar ibn al-Khattab (may God be pleased with him) and al-Hasan al-Basri stood for him against Persian luxury. His taste ran to the sentimental and pathetic elegy, and he is said never to have transmitted satirical poetry. Ibn al-'Arabi relates, as does the Egyptian mystic Dhu '1-Nun, that the philologist met poor Bedouins and young girls who showed him insight into the mysteries of divine love. Contemporaries and later writers agree that he was an orthodox Sunni: al-Harbi counted him among the four definite Sunni adherents among the Basran philologists. ³

To avoid sin, he answered with strict silence any philological question that bore on the reading of the Qur'an or the wording of tradition. He abstained from tafsir, in line with his teacher Nafi' and the readers of Medina, and opposed those of Mu'tazili and Qadari outlook who commented on the Qur'an by their own opinion (ra'y), as Abu 'Ubayda did in his Majaz. He separated in himself the reader, the grammarian and the transmitter of poetry. ³

As a transmitter of poetry al-Asma'i and his generation were shaped by the transmitters Hammad al-Rawiya and Khalaf al-Ahmar, whose unreliability he recognised. To collect the odes of the great pre-Islamic poets in a complete and definite form he sought persons with a reliable knowledge of tradition, and he developed a critical method remarkable for his time. His anthology al-Asma'iyyat, of 72 pieces of pre-Islamic and early Islamic poets, shows his taste. He also composed monographs on lexical topics, among them his Gharib al-Hadith, said to fill 200 folios; his al-Nabat wa'l-Shajar survives, and his lost Jazirat al-'Arab is quoted in Yaqut's Mu'jam for its first-hand topography. ³

Abu Nasr Ahmad ibn Hatim al-Bahili transmitted his books to Tha'lab, and Abu 'Ubayd al-Qasim divided the books into chapters and added material on the authority of Abu Zayd and the Kufan philologists. Abu Hatim al-Sijistani recorded in his Fuhulat al-Shu'ara' his teacher's answers on which poets were to be counted as fuhul. For later lexicographers the main source of al-Asma'i's material was the Tahdhib al-lugha of al-Azhari, who names his direct and indirect sources. ³