Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Ḍabbī ( ar, أَبو العبَّاس الضَّبِّي, fl. c. 1000) was a protege of
Ṣāḥib ibn ʿAbbād (a Persian scholar and statesman, grand vizier to the Buyid rulers of Ray 976–95 CE). Al-Ḍabbī is noted today for his poetry. ''Inter alia'', he composed the book ''Kitāb al-Armāz fī l-alġāz''. Although it is now lost, it may have been the first book of riddles in Arabic; nine poems survive from it in the ''Kitāb al-iʿjāz fī l-aḥājī wa-l-alghāz bi-rasm al-amīr Qaymāz'' (Inimitable Book on Quizzes and Riddles, Composed for the Emir Qaymāz) composed during the reign of
Caliph al-Muqtafī (1136–60CE) by
Abū al-Maʿālī Saʿd ibn ʿAlī al-Ḥaẓīrī. Al-Ḥaẓīrī himself did not think highly of al-Ḍabbī's riddles, however, finding them too obscure.
[Nefeli Papoutsakis, 'Abū l-Maʿālī al-Ḥaẓīrī (d. 568/1172) and his ''Inimitable Book on Quizzes and Riddles''', ''Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes'', 109 (2019), 251–69.]
One example of al-Ḍabbī's poetry, as translated by Mansour Ajami, is as follows:
[Mansour Ajami, ''Pouring Water on Time: A Bilingual Topical Anthology of Classical Arabic Poetry'' (Gerlach Press, 2016).]
References
10th-century Arabic-language writers
11th-century Arabic-language writers
Riddles
{{Islamic-scholar-stub