Virtues of the Imm Amad ibn anbal
by Cooperson, Michael, Ibn al-Jawz
fromLibrary of arabic literature
Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 241 H/855 AD), renowned for his profound knowledge of hadith--the reports of the Prophet's sayings and deeds--is a major figure in the history of Islam. Ibn Hanbal was famous for living according to his own strict interpretation of the Prophetic model and fo…
Book one : Arab preeminence -- Book two : The excellence of Arab learning -- Horse husbandry -- Stars -- Somatomancy -- Physiognomancy -- Augury, cleromancy, geomancy, and soothsaying -- Oratory -- Poetry -- Wisdom poetry -- Wisdom in the prose and rhyming aphorisms of the Arabs.
Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad al-Amīn b. Hārūn al-Rashīd, the sixth ʿAbbāsid caliph (r. 193–8/809–13), was born in the al-Ruṣāfa quarter of Baghdad in 170/787 to Hārūn al-Rashīd, the fifth caliph (r. 170–93/786–809), and Zubayda bt. Jaʿfar bt. Abī Jaʿfar al-Manṣūr, also known in the so…
Abū l-Ṣalt ʿAbd al-Salām b. Ṣāliḥ al-Harawī (d. 24 Shawwāl 236/30 April 851) was an ascetic ḥadīth scholar and associate of ʿAlī b. Mūsā al-Riḍā, who later became the eighth imām of the Twelver Shīʿa. Twelver sources say that Abū l-Ṣalt met al-Riḍā in Nīshāpūr and …
ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn ʿAlī b. ʿAbdallāh al-Bahāʾī al-Ghuzūlī (d. 815/1411–2) was a literary figure of the Mamlūk period. Born possibly in the 770s/1370s, he was a mamlūk turkī, that is, a slave brought from Central Asia or some indeterminate region of Europe, “afflicted with a non-Arab m…