Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn ʿAbd Rabbih (; 860–940) was an Arab writer and poet widely known as the author of ''

al-ʿIqd al-Farīd ''al-ʿIqd al-Farīd'' (''The Unique Necklace'', ) is an anthology attempting to encompass 'all that a well-informed person had to know in order to pass in society as a cultured and refined individual' (or ''Adab (literature), adab''), composed b ...

'' (''The Unique Necklace'').

Biography

He was born in Cordova, now in

Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...

, and descended from a freed slave of

Hisham I Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (; 6 February 743) was the tenth Umayyad caliph, ruling from 724 until his death in 743. Early life Hisham was born in Damascus, the administrative capital of the Umayyad Caliphate, in AH 72 (691–692 CE). Hi ...

, the second Spanish

Umayyad The Umayyad Caliphate or Umayyad Empire (, ; ) was the second caliphate established after the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and was ruled by the Umayyad dynasty. Uthman ibn Affan, the third of the Rashidun caliphs, was also a membe ...

emir. He enjoyed a great reputation for learning and eloquence. Not much is known about his life. According to Isabel Toral-Niehoff,

He came from a local family whose members had been clients (mawālī) of the Umayyads since the emir Hishām I (788–796). His teachers were Mālikī ''fuqahāʼ'' and ''
muḥaddithūn Hadith studies is the academic study of hadith, a literature typically thought in Islamic religion to be a record of the words, actions, and the silent approval of the Muhammad as transmitted through chains of narrators. A major area of interes ...
'' who had travelled to the East in search of knowledge: Baqī b. Makhlad (816–889),
Muḥammad b. Waḍḍāḥ Muhammad (8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Islam, he was a prophet who was divinely inspired to preach and confirm the monotheistic teachings of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, ...
(815–899), and a scholar named Muḥammad b. ʻAbd al-Salām al-Khushanī (833–899), who is said to have introduced much poetry, ''akhbār'' and ''adab'' from the Islamic East to Andalusia. Ibn ʻAbd Rabbih himself is said to have never left the Peninsula. In spite of his education as ''faqīh'', he became more a man of letters than a jurist, and functioned as a court poet since the start of the emir ʻAbdallāh’s (888–912) reign. He reached the apogee of his career at the court of caliph ʻAbd al-Raḥmān III (912–961).

Works

Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih was a friend of many Umayyad princes and was employed as an official panegyrist at the Umayyad court. No complete collection of his poems is extant, but many selections are given in the Yatima al-Dahr and Nafh al-Tip. More widely known than his poetry is his great anthology, the ''

'' (The Unique Necklace), a work divided into 25 sections. The 13th section is named the middle jewel of the necklace, and the chapters on either side are named after other jewels. It is an adab book resembling

Ibn Qutaybah Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muslim ibn Qutayba al-Dīnawarī al-Marwazī better known simply as Ibn Qutaybah (; c. 828 – 13 November 889 CE/213 – 15 Rajab 276 AH) was an Islamic scholar of Persian people, Persian descent. He served as a q ...

's ''`Uyun al-akhbar'' (The Fountains of Story) and the writings of

al-Jahiz Abu Uthman Amr ibn Bahr al-Kinani al-Basri (; ), commonly known as al-Jahiz (), was an Arab polymath and author of works of literature (including theory and criticism), theology, zoology, philosophy, grammar, dialectics, rhetoric, philology, lin ...

from which it borrows largely. Although he spent all his life in al-Andalus and did not travel to the East like some other Andalusian scholars, most of his book's material is drawn from the East Islamic world. Also, Ibn Abd Rabbih quoted no Andalusian compositions other than his own. He included in his book his 445-line ''Urjuza'', a poem in the meter of the ''

rajaz Rajaz (, literally 'tremor, spasm, convulsion as may occur in the behind of a camel when it wants to rise') is a metre used in classical Arabic poetry. A poem composed in this metre is an ''urjūza''. The metre accounts for about 3% of surviving ...

'' in which he narrates the warlike exploits of

Abd al-Rahman al-Nasir ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Ḥakam al-Rabdī ibn Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Dākhil (; 890–961), or simply ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III, was the Umayyad Emir of Córdoba fro ...

, along with some of his eulogies of the Umayyads of al-Andalus.Boullata , 2007

Books

Ibn Abd Rabbih’s book, Al-Iqd Al-Fareed, is one of the best known of such literary selections. The title means, The Unique Necklace. Ibn Abd Rabbih’s conception of his book is that it is a necklace made of 25 fine jewels, 12 pairs and a larger middle one. Under each one of these jewels he includes poetry, proverbs, anecdotes, fine prose, etc. speaking about the same topic. Yet the two topics of a pair of jewels need not have anything in common. Thus the first pearl speaks about government and governors, while the second pearl is devoted to anecdotes and funny incidents.

References

External links

Ibn Abd Rabbih and music
musicologie.org
Ibn ‘Abd Rabbihi (860-940)
muslimheritage.com {{DEFAULTSORT:Ibn Abd Rabbih 860 births 940 deaths 9th-century Arabic-language writers 10th-century Arabic-language writers 10th-century writers from al-Andalus Writers from Córdoba, Spain Poets from al-Andalus Panegyrists