Ibn Abd Rabbih

Ibn `Abd Rabbih or Ibn `Abd Rabbihi (Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn `Abd Rabbih) (860-940) was an Moorish writer and poet. He was born in Cordova, now in Spain, and descended from a freed slave of Hisham I, the second Spanish Umayyad emir. He enjoyed a great reputation for learning and eloquence. [Ibn Khallikan's Biographical Dictionary] Not much is known about his life. He was a friend of many Umayyad princes and was employed as an official panegyrist at the Umayyad court. [L. Alvarez. (1998). Ibn `Abd Rabbih. In "Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature" (Vol. 1, pp. 302-303). Taylor & Francis.] No collection of his poems is extant, but many selections are given in the Yatima al-Dahr and Nafh al-Tip. [The Unique Necklace: Al-'iqd Al-farid. (2007). Trans. Issa J Boullata. p. XIV. ISBN: 1859641849.]

More widely known than his poetry is his great anthology, the "`Iqd al-Farid" (The Unique Necklace), a work divided into 25 sections. The 13th section is named the middle jewel of the necklace, and the chapters on either side are named after other jewels. It is an adab book resembling Ibn Qutaybah's "`Uyun al-akhbar" (The Fountains of Story) and the writings of al-Jahiz from which it borrows largely. [L. Alvarez, 1998.] [William Montgomery Watt, Pierre Cachia. (1996)"A History of Islamic Spain". p. 73. Edinburgh University Press.] Although he spent all his life in al-Andalus and did not travel to the East like some other Andalusian scholars, most of the his book's material is drawn from the East Islamic world. Also, Ibn Abd Rabbih quoted no Andalusian compositions other than his own. He included in his book his 445-line "Urjuza", a poem in the meter of the "rajaz" in which he narrate the warlike exploits of Abd al-Rahman al-Nasir, along with some of his eulogies of the Ummayads of al-Andalus. [Boullata ,2007]

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External links

(Fr) Ibn Abd Rabbih and music [http://www.musicologie.org/Biographies/a/abd_rabbih.html musicologie.org]