His full name is Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdullāh b. Muslim ibn Qutaybah ad-Dīnawarī. He was born in
Kufa in what is now
Iraq.[15][16] He was of
Persian descent; his father was from
Merv,
Khorasan. Having studied tradition and
philology he became
qadi in
Dinawar during the reign of
Al-Mutawakkil,[10] and afterwards a teacher in
Baghdad.[15][16] He was the first representative of the school of Baghdad
philologists that succeeded the schools of Kufa and
Basra.[17] He was known as a vocal opponent of "gentile" or shu'ubi Islam, i.e. openness to non-Islamic wisdom and values.[18]
Legacy
He was viewed by
Sunni Muslims as a hadith Master, foremost philologist, linguist, and man of letters. In addition to his literary criticism and anthologies, he was also known for his work in the problems of
Tafsir or Qur'anic interpretation.[9] He also authored works on astronomy and legal theory.[16][19] His book Uyun al-Akhbar, along with the romantic literature of
Muhammad bin Dawud al-Zahiri and
Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur, were considered by lexicographer
Ibn Duraid to be the three most important works for those who wished to speak and write eloquently.[20][21]
There can be no government without an army,
No army without money,
No money without prosperity,
And no prosperity without justice and good administration.
His work Taʾwīl mukhtalif al-ḥadīth was an influential early
Atharite treatise that rebuked rationalists on the nature of Tradition. In his treatise, Ibn Qutayba censures the mutakallimūn (scholastic theologians) for holding contradictory and differing views on the principles of religion.[23]
Ibn Muṭarrif al-Ṭarafī (d. 1062 CE) gathered passages from Ibn Qutayba's Kitāb mushkil al-Qurʾān and Kitāb ghafīb al-Qurʾān and arranged them to be in the same order as the relevant Qurʾān chapters in a work called Kitāb al-Qurṭayn.[24]: 135
Kitāb al-Ma’ārif, short universal history, from Creation to the
Jāhiliyya (pre-Islamic); with index of the Companions, famous jurists and masters of
hadīth („Ibn Coteiba’s Handbuch de Geschichte“, ed.,
Ferdinand Wüstenfeld, Gottingen, 1850); (ed., Tharwat ‘Ukāshah, Cairo, 1960).
Kitāb al-Shi‘r wa-al-Shu‘arā’ (“Liber Poësie et Poëtarum,” ed.,
M. J de Goeje, Leiden, 1904)
Kitab ‘Uyūn al-Akhbār. 4 vols. (Cairo, 1925-30); biographic history of eminent figures.[28][29]
Kitāb al-Amwāl
Kitāb al-‘Arab wa ‘Ulūmuhā; history of Arab scholars
Kitāb al-Ashriba; alcoholic beverages.
Kitāb Dalā’il al-Nubuwwa, or A‘lām al-Nubuwwa on the Proofs of the Prophets.
Kitāb Fad.l al-‘Arab ‘alā al-‘Ajam, in praise of the Arabs over the Persians.
Kitāb I‘rāb al-Qur’ān, a philological commentary on the Qur'ān.
Kitāb al-Ikhtilāf fī al-Lafz wa al-Radd ‘alā al-Jahmiyya wal-Mushabbiha, a refutation of the Allegorizers and Anthropomorphists. (Egypt,several editions)
Kitāb al-Ishtiqāq
Kitāb Is.lāh. Ghalat, corrections of Gharīb al-H.adīth by al-Qāsim ibn Salām.
Kitāb Jāmi‘ al-Fiqh, jurisprudence, dispraised as unreliable by al-T.abarī and Ibn Surayj, as was Ibn Qutayba’s al-Amwāl.
Kitāb Jāmi‘ al-Nah.w al-Kabīr and Jāmi‘ al-Nah.w al-S.aghīr
Kitāb al-Jarāthīm, linguistics.
Kitāb al-Jawābāt al-H.ād.ira.
Kitāb al-Ma‘ānī al-Kabīr
Kitāb al-Masā’il wal-Ajwiba.
Kitāb al-Maysar wal-Qidāh, ('Dice and Lots').
Kitāb al-Na‘m wal-Bahā’im, cattle and livestock.
Kitāb al-Nabāt, botany.
Kitāb al-Qirā’āt, ('The Canonical Readings').
Kitāb al-Radd ‘alā al-Qā’il bi Khalq al-Qur’ān, ('Against the creationist claims about the Qur’an').
Kitāb al-Radd ‘alā al-Shu‘aybiyya, ('Refutation of a sub-sect of the ‘Ajārida ‘At.awiyya, itself a sub-sect of the Khawārij).
Kitāb al-Rah.l wal-Manzil.
Kitāb Ta‘bīr al-Ru’yā, ('Interpretation of Dreams').
Kitāb Talqīn al-Muta‘allim min al-Nah.w on grammar.
^Schmidtke, Sabine; Abrahamov, Binyamim (2014). "Scripturalist and Traditionalist Theology". The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Theology. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 276.
ISBN978-0-19-969670-3.
^Schmidtke, Sabine; Abrahamov, Binyamim (2014). "Scripturalist and Traditionalist Theology". The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Theology. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 276.
ISBN978-0-19-969670-3.
^
abcJohn C. Lamoreaux, "Sources on Ibn Bahlul's Chapter on Dream Interpretation." Taken from Augustine and His Opponents, Jerome, Other Latin Fathers After Nicaea, Orientalia, pg. 555. Ed. Elizabeth A. Livingstone. Volume 33 of Studia patristica. Peeters Publishers, 1997.
ISBN9789068318685
^One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
public domain: Thatcher, Griffithes Wheeler (1911). "
Ibn Qutaiba". In
Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 14 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 222.
^Introduction to The Unity of Science in the Arabic Tradition: Science, Logic, Epistemology , pg. 22. Eds. Shahid Rahman, Tony Street and Hassan Tahiri. Volume 11 of Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science Series
The Unity of Science in the Arabic Tradition: Science, Logic, Epistemology and Their Interactions.
New York:
Springer Publishing, 2008.
ISBN9781402084058
^Shawkat M. Toorawa, "Defing Adab by re-defining the Adib: Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur and storytelling." Taken from On Fiction and Adab in Medieval Arabic Literature, pg. 303. Ed. Philip F. Kennedy. Volume 6 of Studies in Arabic language and literature.
Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz Verlag, 2005.
ISBN9783447051828
^Shawkat M. Toorawa, "Ibn Abi Tayfur versus al-Jahiz." Taken from ʻAbbasid Studies: Occasional Papers of the School of ʻAbbasid Studies, pg. 250. Ed. James Edward Montgomery. Volume 135 of Orientalia Lovaniensia analecta. Peeters Publishers, 2004.
ISBN9789042914339
^Schmidtke, Sabine; Abrahamov, Binyamim (2014). "Scripturalist and Traditionalist Theology". The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Theology. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 276.
ISBN978-0-19-969670-3.
^Roberto Tottoli, 'The Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ of Ibn Muṭarrif al-Ṭarafī (d. 454/1062): Stories of the Prophets from al-Andalus', Al-Qantara, 19.1 (1998), 131–60.
^Nabi Bakhsh Khan Baloch, Great books of Islamic civilization, Pakistan Hijra Council, 1989, p. 136
^See:
Luisa Arvide, Relatos, University of Almeria Press, Almeria 2004 (in Arabic and Spanish).
^Arvide Cambra, L.M. (2014), "Kitab 'Uyun al-Akhbar of Ibn Qutayba (828-889)", Advances in Education Research (Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Applied Social Science, ICASS 2014), vol. 51, pp. 650-653.
A. Guellati, La notion d'adab chez Ibn Qutayba : étude générique et éclairage comparatiste (= Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Sciences Religieuses 169), Turnhout: Brepols, 2015,
ISBN978-2-503-56648-1