Sahib ibn Abbad

Abu’l-Qāsim Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAbbād ibn al-ʿAbbās (; born 938 - died 30 March 995), better known as Ṣāḥib ibn ʿAbbād , also known as al-Ṣāḥib , was a Persian scholar and statesman, who served as the grand vizier of the Buyid rulers of Ray from 976 to 995.

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.

Life

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. 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.

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". His large section on theology (kalam) was burned by the staunch Sunni Mahmud of Ghazni who opposed the Mu'tazili.