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Abu Amr al-Basri
8th-century Qur'anic Scholar and Arab linguist From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Abu ʻAmr bin al-ʻAlāʼ al-Basri (Arabic: أبو عمرو بن العلاء; (689/90-770/71; c.70-154 AH[1]) was the Qur'an reciter of Basra, Iraq and an Arab linguist.[1]
He was born in Mecca.[2] Descended from a branch of the Banu Tamim,[3] Ibn al-ʻAlāʼ is one of the seven primary transmitters of the chain of narration for the Qur'an.[4] He founded the Basran philology school of Arabic grammar.[5] He was as well known as a grammarian as he was a reader, though his reading style was influenced by those of Nafi‘ al-Madani and Ibn Kathir al-Makki.[6] In between his study of Qur'an reading in his hometown of Mecca and in Basra, he also travelled to learn more about the practice in the Kufan school and in Medina.[6]
Ibn al-ʻAlāʼ studied under Ibn Abi Ishaq and among his own pupils were Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi,[7][8] Yunus ibn Habib,[1][9] Al-Asma'i[5] and Harun ibn Musa.[10] Al-Asma'i related that Ibn al-ʻAlāʼ was asked a thousand grammatical questions, and answered each with an example.[4] Another student of his was Abu ʿUbaidah, who called Ibn al-ʻAlāʼ the most learned of all men in philology, grammar, Arabic poetry and the Qur'an.[11] Although he never met Sibawayhi, the ethnic Persian , Sibawayhi quotes from Abu Amr 57 times in his Kitab, mostly by transmission from Ibn Habib and al-Farahidi.[12]
The Qur'an reciter Al-Duri was the student of al-Yazīdī, who was Ibn al-ʻAlāʼs student, and preserved his recitation, passing on his method to Niftawayh and Muhammad bin Dawud al-Zahiri.[13] Ibn al-ʻAlāʼ was a contemporary of many early Muslim notables; he remarked that in his experience, Hasan al-Basri and Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf were the first and second most eloquent and pure speakers of the Arabic language.[14] On his return from a visit to the governor of Syria, Ibn al-ʻAlāʼ experienced a series of fainting fits and died in Kufa in 770CE (154AH).[1] He was buried in that city.[2]
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