Abū Abdallāh Al-Ḥusayn Ibn Aḥmad Al-Mughallis

Abū Abdallāh al-Ḥusayn ibn ʾAḥmad al-Mughallis al-Marāghī (; the epithet also appears as al-Mughallisī) was a tenth-century CE poet. He flourished around 381 AH/991 CE, being associated with the court of Bahāʾ al-Dawla. He is noted as one of the only known composers of Arabic riddles in the third century AH.

Epithets

A few sources refer to Ibn al-Mughallis instead as al-Muflis ('the bankrupt'), but this is due to scribal confusion of the Arabic letters غ and ف: in medial position these look similar, and short vowels are not written, so that 'al-Mughallis' was miscopied as 'al-muflis'.Bilāl Urfahʹlī,
The Anthologist's Art: Abu Mansur al-Tha'alibi and his Yatimat al-dahr
', Brill Studies in Middle Eastern Literatures, 37 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), . ''Mughallis'' has been glossed to mean 'the one who tarries'.

The epithet ''al-Marāghī'' has been thought to suggest that al-Mughallis originated in the Adharbayjani town of Maragheh.Ahmad Shawqi Radwan,
Thaʿālibī's “Tatimmat al-Yatīmah”: A Critical Edition and a Study of the Author as Anthologist and Literary Critic
(unpublished PhD thesis, University of Manchester, 1972).

Works

According to Bilal Orfali, the eleventh-century literary scholar ʻAbd al-Malik ibn Muḥammad Thaʻālibī quotes from al-Mughallis's poetry in many of his works. His poetry anthology ''Yatīma'' includes al-Mughallis's work in 'the third region of the ''Yatīma al-Dahr'': on the clever curiosities of the inhabitants of Jibāl, Fārs, Jurjān, and Ṭabaristān' ()', specifically the eighth chapter, 'mention of all the poets of al-Jabal and those who went there from Iraq and other places, and the clever curiosities of their accounts and poems' (). The collection quotes two riddles, on a touchstone () and banner (), and a little more poetry besides.

Thaʻālibī included more of al-Mughallis's poems in the sequel to the ''Yatīma'', his ''Tatimma al-Yatīma'', where al-Mughallis appears in the second region, entitled: 'completion of the second region on the beauties of the Iraqīs – rather, their best achievements and clever related curiosities' (). According to both the Beirut edition of 1983 and Radwan's critical edition of 1972, the ''Tatimma'' records eleven riddles by al-Mughallis along with a brief excerpt from a ''ghazal''. ʻAbd al-Malik ibn Muḥammad Thaʻālibī, ''Yatīmat al-dahr fī maḥāsin ahl al-ʻaṣr maʻ al-tatimma wa-l-fahāris'' (), ed. by Mufīd Muḥammad Qumayḥah, 6 vols (Bayrūt: Dār al-Kutub al-ʻIlmīyah (), 1983)
vol. 5 pp. 24-26
'al-Tatimma'' ch. 11

Primary sources

* , vol. 13 p. 202 o. 3555* ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Muḥammad Thaʿālibī, ''Yatīma'':
** ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Muḥammad Thaʿālibī, Yatīmat al-dahr fī shuʿarāʾ ahl al-ʿaṣr (يتيمة الدهر في شعراء أهلالعصر), 4 vols (Damascus: l-Maṭbaʿah al-Ḥifnīyahدمشق : المطبعة الحفنية, 1302 AH 885 CE
II
228.
** Yatīmat al-dahr fī shuʿarāʾ ahl al-ʿaṣr , ed. by Muḥammad Muḥyī al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd , 4 vols (Cairo 1956)
vol. 3
pp. 415–16.
** ''Yatīmat al-dahr fī maḥāsin ahl al-ʿaṣr maʿ al-tatimma wa-l-fahāris'' (), ed. by Mufīd Muḥammad Qumayḥah, 6 vols (Bayrūt: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīyah (), 1983), vol.
p. 463 (ch 34)p. 468 (ch 34)p. 481 (ch 42)
* ʻAbd al-Malik ibn Muḥammad Thaʻālibī, ''Tatimma'':
** Ahmad Shawqi Radwan (ed.),
Thaʿālibī's “Tatimmat al-Yatīmah”: A Critical Edition and a Study of the Author as Anthologist and Literary Critic
(unpublished PhD thesis, University of Manchester, 1972), pp. 67–69 h. 66
** ''Yatīmat al-dahr fī maḥāsin ahl al-ʿaṣr maʿ al-tatimma wa-l-fahāris'' (), ed. by Mufīd Muḥammad Qumayḥah, 6 vols (Bayrūt: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīyah (), 1983)
vol. 5 pp. 24-26
'al-Tatimma'' ch. 11

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Abu Abdallah al-Husayn ibn Ahmad al-Mughallis
Year of birth unknown
Year of death unknown
10th-century Arabic-language writers
10th-century Arabic-language poets
Buyid-period poets
People from Maragheh