Ya’qub Ibn Al-Laith Al-Saffar was the founder of the Saffarid Dynasty of Sistan. He lived from A.D. 840 to 879, and rose from humble origins in Afghanistan to conquer an immense area comprising parts of Iran, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
Continue reading
Ibn Khallikan’s Biographical Dictionary contains an entry (III.68) for one Abu Bakr Al Suli, who is described as an accomplished scholar, biographer, and enthusiast of the game of chess. He was so good at this game, we are told, that his name entered the roll of Arabic proverbs in the saying, “He plays chess like Al Suli.”
Continue reading
The noted jurisprudent, polymath, political scientist, and theologian Ali Ibn Muhammad Ibn Habib (علي إبن محمد إبن حبيب) was a native of Basra, Iraq, and lived from about A.D. 974 to 1058. He is more commonly known by the name Al-Mawardi (الماوردي).
Continue reading
An enigmatic story is contained in Ibn Khallikan’s biographical summary of the life of the seventh century Basran poet Ibn Mufarrigh. The story is one of the few times that the biographer, speaking of himself in the first person, relates an incident connected with his own life.
Continue reading
Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Man That Was Used Up” was first published in 1839. The plot line of the story is as follows.
Continue reading
Wise sayings can soothe life’s hardships by reminding us that past travelers on the road have met with similar trials. Adages are distillations of lived wisdom, condensed for mental retention and seasoned, in many cases, with pathos and humor. We will first consider a saying by Ibrahim Ibn Al Abbas Al Suli, a poet who “belonged to a highly respected Turkish family,” according to our trusted biographer Ibn Khallikan, whose earnest pages have brightened many a gloomy day.
Continue reading
Al Fadl Ibn Al Rabi (الفضل بن الربيع), who lived from around A.D. 757 to 823, was a powerful minister of the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad. He served the caliphs Harun Al Rashid and Al Amin, the sixth Abbasid ruler. It was during his tenure in office that the caliphate descended into civil war.
Continue reading
We turn now to the wisdom of those who are able to extricate themselves from the ensnaring brambles of theological thickets. The scholar and theologian Abd Al Rahman Ibn Al Jawzi, or more commonly Ibn Al Jawzi (ابن الجوزي), was born in Baghdad around 1115, and died there in 1201.
Continue reading
The mystic Yunus Ibn Yusuf Ibn Musaed was born around 1132 into the Mukharik family, of the tribe of Shaiban (بنو شيبان). The subdivisions of this tribe occupied an area called the Jazira, a region covering what is now eastern Syria and upper Mesopotamia. He would later found an order of dervishes that came to be called, according to his biographer Ibn Khallikan, the Yunusiya.
In his short biography of the poet Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson makes the following comment:
Quintus Curtius 
You must be logged in to post a comment.