Abu’l-Qāsim Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAbbād ibn al-ʿAbbās (Persian: ابوالقاسم اسماعیل بن عباد بن عباس; born 938 - died 30 March 995), better known as Ṣāḥib ibn ʿAbbād (صاحب بن عباد), also known as al-Ṣāḥib (الصاحب), was a Persian scholar and statesman, who served as the grand vizier of the Buyid rulers of Ray from 976 to 995.[1][2]
A native of the suburbs of Isfahan, he was greatly interested in Arab culture, and wrote on dogmatic theology, history, grammar, lexicography, scholarly criticism and wrote poetry and belles-lettres.[3]
Life
Map of northern Iran
Sahib was born on 14 September 938 in Talaqancha, a village roughly 20 miles south of the major Buyid city of Isfahan. His father was Abu'l-Hasan Abbad ibn Abbas (d. 946), a renowned and well-educated administrator, who composed works on the Mu'tazili doctrine. Sahib spent his childhood at Talakan, a town in Daylam near Qazvin.[4] He later settled in Isfahan, and served for some time as an official of the Buyid ruler of Jibal, Rukn al-Dawla (r. 935–976). After the death of his father, Sahib became the pupil of the scholar and philosopher, Ibn 'al-Amid, who had recently replaced Sahib's deceased father as the vizier of Rukn al-Dawla.[5]
The story is told that to keep company with his collection of 117,000 books while travelling, Sahib had them "borne by a caravan of four hundred camels trained to walk in alphabetical order".[6]
^Cook, Michael (2001). Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought. Cambridge University Press. p. 201. ISBN9781139431606.
^Donzel, E. J. van (1 January 1994). Islamic Desk Reference. BRILL. p. 142. ISBN978-90-04-09738-4. Ibn Abbad*, Abu l-Qasim* (al-Sahib): vizier and man of letters of the Buyid period; 938995. Of Persian origin, he was an arabophile and wrote on dogmatic theology, history, grammar, lexicography, literary criticism and composed poetry and belles-lettres.
^Burke, Edmund (2009). "Islam at the Center: Technological Complexes and the Roots of Modernity". Journal of World History. 20 (2): 181. JSTOR40542756.
