Abu Bakr az-Zubaydi

Abū Bakr az-Zubaydī (أبو بكر الزبيدي), also known as Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan ibn ‘Abd Allāh ibn Madḥīj al-Faqīh and Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan az-Zubaydī al-Ishbīlī (محمد بن الحسن الزبيدي الإشبيلي), held the title Akhbār al-fuquhā and wrote books on topics including philology, biography, history, philosophy, law, lexicology, and hadith.

Life
Az-Zubaydī was a native of Seville, al-Andalus (present-day Spain), whose ancestor, Bishr ad-Dākhil ibn Ḥazm of Yemeni origin, had come with the Umayyads to al-Andalus from Ḥimṣ in the Levant (Syria). Az-Zubaydī moved to Córdoba, the seat of the Umayyad Caliphate, to study under Abū ‘Alī al-Qālī. His scholarship on the philologist Sībawayh’s grammar, Al-Kitāb, led to his appointment as tutor to the son of the humanist caliph Ḥakam II, the crown prince Hishām II. At the Caliph’s encouragement, az-Zubaydī composed many books on philology, and biographies of philologists and lexicographers. He became qāḍī of Seville, where he died in 989.

Works

 * Al-Istidrāk ‘alā Sībawayh fī Kitāb al-abniya wa’z-ziyāda ‘alā mā awradahu fīhi muhadhdhab (Rome, 1890) (Baghdād, 1970), (Riyad, 1987)
 * Ṭabaqāt an-Naḥwīyīn wa-al-Lughawīyīn (طبقات النحويين واللغويين) ‘Categories of Grammarians and Linguists’; (973–6) Biographical dictionary of the early philologists and lexicographers of the Basran, Kufan and Baghdād schools; almost contemporaneous with Ibn an-Nadim's Al-Fihrist. Both works bear witness to the emergence of the science of Arabic philology, and to the close intellectual contact between the Abbāsid and Umayyad seats of power at Baghdād and Cordoba, respectively. (Cairo, 1954)
 * Akhbār al-fuquhā; al-muta’akhkhirīn min ahl Qurṭuba; History of the jurisconsults of Córdoba
 * Amthilat al-abniya fī Kitāb Sībawayh Tafsīr Abī Bakr al-Zubaydī
 * Basṭ al-Bāri’
 * Al-ghāya fi ‘l-arūḍ
 * Ikhtiṣār; Selections from Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ in Francisco Pons y Boigues
 * Istidrāk al-ghalaṭ al-wāqi’ fī Kitāb al-‘Ayn (استدراك الغلط الواقع في كتاب العين)
 * Laḥn al-‘awāmm (لحن العوام); dialectical speech errors; ed., R. 'Abd al-Tawwāb, Cairo 1964.
 * Mukhtaṣar al-Ayn (مختصر العين) ‘Selections from Al-Ayn of Khalīl ibn Aḥmad’ (before 976)
 * Al-Mustadrak min az-ziyāda fī Kitab al-Bāri’ alā Kitāb al-‘Ayn
 * Ar-radd ‘alā Ibn Masarra, or Hatk sutūr al-mulḥidīn
 * Risālat al-intiṣār li ‘l-Khalīl
 * At-Tahdhīb bi-muḥkam at-tartīb (التهذيب بمحكم الترتيب) from the Laḥn al-ʻāmmah
 * At-Taqrīz
 * Al-wāḍīḥ fī ‘ilm al-‘arabiyya (الواضح في علم العربية); grammar after Sībawayh (Cairo, 1975), ('Ammān, 1976)
 * Az-ziyadat ‘alā kitāb 'iṣlaḥ laḥn al-ʻaāmmah bi-al-Andalus (الزيادات على كتاب إصلاح لحن العامة بالأندلس)