- Abu 'Ubaida
Abu ’Ubaida or Ubayda (Ma’mar ibn ul-Muthanna) (728–825) was a
Muslim scholar.Born in
Basra , he was a "mawla" (“client”) of a family from the Arab tribe ofQuraish , and “was said, on dubious authority, to have been Jewish.” [Gibb, H.A.R. “Abū ʿUbayda Maʿmar b. al-Mut̲h̲annā.” Encyclopaedia of Islam. Edited by: P. Bearman , Th. Bianquis , C.E. Bosworth , E. van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs. Brill, 2007. Brill Online. 11 April 2007 [http://www.brillonline.nl/subscriber/entry?entry=islam_SIM-0268] ] In his youth, he was a pupil of Abu ’Amr ibn al-’Ala, and in 803 he was called toBaghdad by theCaliph Harun al-Rashid . He died in Basra.He was one of the most learned and authoritative scholars of his time in all matters pertaining to the
Arabic language , antiquities and stories, and is constantly cited by later authors and compilers.Al-Jahiz held him to be the most learned scholar in all branches of human knowledge, andIbn Hisham accepted his interpretation even of passages in the "Qur’an". The titles of 105 of his works are mentioned in the "Fihrist " ofIbn al-Nadim , and his "Book of Days" is the basis of parts of the history ofIbn al-Athir and of the "Kitab al-Aghani " ofAbu al-Faraj al-Isfahani , but nothing of his (except a song) seems to exist now in an independent form.He is often described as a
Kharijite . This, however, is true only insofar as he denied the privileged position of the Arab people beforeGod . He was, however, a strong supporter of the Shu’ubiyah movement, i.e., the movement which protested against the idea of the superiority of the Arab race over all others. This is especially seen in hissatire s on Arabs (which made him so hated that no man followed hisbier when he died). He delighted in showing that words, fables, customs, etc., which the Arabs believed to be peculiarly their own, were derived from the Persians. In these matters he was the great rival of al-Asma’i.References
**1911
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