Ibn Mada'

ابن مضاء القرطبي

1116 CE · 510 AH† – 1196 CE · 592 AH †

† Hijri date derived by computation from the Gregorian/Julian date; it may differ from the transmitted date by a day or two.

Cordoba → Seville

Abu al-Abbas Ahmad ibn Abd al-Rahman ibn Mada' al-Lakhmi of Cordoba (1116–1196), a grammarian and Zahiri jurist who held judgeships at Fes and Béjaïa and rose to chief judge (qadi al-jama'a) of the Almohad caliphate, an office he kept until his death. He is famous for his revolt against the theory of grammatical governance ('amil) in his Refutation of the Grammarians (al-Radd 'ala al-Nuhat), calling for the abolition of implied elements and grammatical causes and for a grammar built on the manifest surface of Arabic speech — the linguistic extension of his Zahiri legal method, which denies analogy and causal reasoning in the law.