Khurāsāniyyāt (9) A Precious Work from the Lost Legacy of al-Ṣāḥib ibn ‛Abbād in Fourth/Tenth-Century Nishapur
Document Type : pajoohesh
Author
PhD Candidate, University of Tehran
10.22081/jap.2026.80492
Abstract
Al-Ṣāḥib ibn ‛Abbād (326–385/938–995), a poet, man of letters, and learned Shiite vizier of the Buyid dynasty in the fourth/tenth century, played an important role in the spread of Shiism among the people of Isfahan. During his vizierate, Ibn ‛Abbād devoted considerable effort to administering justice, protecting people from oppression, promoting development and prosperity, and advancing scholarship. He was an authority in numerous fields of learning and authored such valuable works as al-Ibāna ‛an madhhab ahl al-‛adl and al-Tadhkira fī al-uṣūl al-khamsa. Al-Ṣāḥib ibn ‛Abbād’s Rūznāmajah is one of his valuable treatises and contains an account of his journey to Baghdad in 347/958–959. Al-Tha‛ālibī al-Naysābūrī and Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī preserved excerpts from this treatise in their works, with al-Tha‛ālibī being the first author known to quote directly from it. The treatise itself, however, remained lost for approximately seven centuries, and its whereabouts were unknown to manuscript scholars and researchers. While recently examining early manuscripts held in the Library of Āstān-i Quds-i Raḍavī, I happened upon an early collection of valuable treatises. Catalogued under no. 12502, the codex contains Tadbīr al-ṣiḥḥa bi-l-maṭ‛am wa-l-mashrab by Abū Zayd Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq al-‛Ibādī (d. 261–264/875–878), Iẓhār masāwiʾ shi‛r Abī l-Ṭayyib al-Mutanabbī by al-Ṣāḥib ibn ‛Abbād, and his Rūznāmajah. All three treatises were copied by the same scribe in Nishapur on Saturday, 13 Jumādā II 396/1006, only eleven years after al-Ṣāḥib ibn ‛Abbād’s death.
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