Seerah al-Mubarrad — Abu al-'Abbas Muhammad ibn Yazid al-Mubarrad (826-898 CE): The Basran Grammarian Whose al-Kamil fi al-Lugha wal-Adab (The Complete Work on Language and Literature — an Encyclopaedia of Arabic Grammar, Poetry, and Literary Criticism) Defined the Classical Arabic Literary Canon, Whose Rivalry With Tha'lab (the Kufan Grammarian) Defined the Basran-Kufan Grammar Wars, and His Role in Transmitting Pre-Islamic Poetry and Abbasid Prose

Seerah al-Mubarrad (سِيرَةُ المُبَرِّد; full name: Abu al-'Abbas Muhammad ibn Yazid al-Azdi al-Mubarrad; born 211 AH / 826 CE in Basra; died 285 AH / 898 CE in Baghdad; the *mubarrad* [cool, refreshing] nickname: reportedly given because his face was handsome; his training: studied under the great Basran grammarians al-Mazini and al-Zajjaj; became the leading Basran grammarian of his generation; moved from Basra to Baghdad where he served at the Abbasid court; the Basran-Kufan grammar war: the two great schools of Arabic grammar developed in parallel in the early Islamic centuries: [1] the Basran school: associated with Sibawayh [the author of the foundational grammar *al-Kitab*]; more formal, more attentive to analogy [qiyas] in grammatical reasoning; the Basran grammarians held that deviations from the norms must be explained or treated as errors; [2] the Kufan school: associated with al-Kisa'i and al-Farra'; more attentive to actual usage and transmission of pre-Islamic poetry; more tolerant of variation; the rivalry: in al-Mubarrad's generation, the Basran-Kufan debate reached its peak in the rivalry between al-Mubarrad [Basran] and Tha'lab [Abu al-'Abbas Ahmad ibn Yahya, 815-904 CE, the Kufan leader]; the two schools debated in the Abbasid court; both were patronized; their students preserved the arguments; this debate shaped the development of Arabic grammar as a discipline; major works: [1] al-Kamil fi al-Lugha wal-Adab [الكَامِلُ فِي اللُّغَةِ وَالأَدَب — The Complete Work on Language and Literature]: al-Mubarrad's masterpiece; an encyclopaedia of Arabic language and literature organized thematically; contents: [a] Arabic grammar with extensive illustration from pre-Islamic poetry; [b] Quranic readings and their grammatical implications; [c] literary criticism; [d] anecdotes about famous Arabic poets; [e] proverbs and their origins; [f] discussions of rare vocabulary; the Kamil became a standard text in the Arabic grammatical tradition; [2] al-Muqtadab [المُقتَضَب — The Abridged/The Selective]: a systematic Arabic grammar in 4 volumes; one of the classical Arabic grammatical reference works; [3] al-Kami's historical anecdotes: the Kamil preserves an enormous amount of material on pre-Islamic Arab life, Umayyad and early Abbasid court culture, and literary biography that is not preserved elsewhere; al-Mubarrad's role in the Arabic literary canon: by choosing which poems and prose passages to illustrate his grammatical and literary points, al-Mubarrad effectively helped define the Arabic literary canon; the texts he quoted became canonical examples; the texts he ignored faded; this selection power is one of the major ways grammarians shaped literary history; al-Mubarrad and religious knowledge: al-Mubarrad was not a theologian or jurist; his concern was linguistic and literary; but his grammatical work has significant theological implications: [1] Quranic readings [qira'at] depend on grammatical analysis; al-Mubarrad's grammatical positions affected how certain Quranic passages were analyzed; [2] his transmission of pre-Islamic poetry preserved the linguistic material that Islamic jurists used as evidence for understanding Quranic vocabulary; al-Mubarrad and Ismaili intellectual culture: al-Mubarrad was not Ismaili; but the Arabic grammatical tradition he represents was fundamental to the Ismaili da'wa's literary production; the Ismaili da'is who wrote in Arabic — including al-Qadi al-Nu'man, al-Kirmani, and Nasir Khusraw — were educated in the classical Arabic grammatical tradition that al-Mubarrad helped define) is classical Arabic grammar's defining figure.