Ibn Maymun
- Died
- 597 AH
- Born in
- -
Ibn Maymun (d. after 589 AH / 1193 CE) was a Baghdadi scholar of Arabic literature, best known as the compiler of the major classical poetry anthology Muntaha al-talab min ash'ar al-'Arab (The Ultimate Quest from the Poems of the Arabs) .
Biography and Scholarly Contribution
His full name was Muhammad ibn al-Mubarak ibn Muhammad ibn Maymun (also recorded in his work's prologue as Muhammad ibn al-Mubarak ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Maymun) . Based in Baghdad, he specialized in adab and the preservation of early Arabic poetic texts . Historical records note that he lived beyond 589 AH (1193 CE) .
Ibn Maymun compiled Muntaha al-talab min ash'ar al-'Arab as an exhaustive anthology of one thousand complete odes (qasidas) chosen from pre-Islamic and early Islamic poets whose usage served as authoritative normative evidence (hujjah) in Arabic lexicography and grammar . He arranged the compilation into ten parts, allocating one hundred poems to each section, and provided marginal annotations in the manuscripts to elucidate obscure vocabulary (gharib) .
In constructing the anthology, he drew upon major earlier corpora, integrating the poems of al-Mufaddaliyyat, the selections of al-Asma'i, the flytings (naqa'id) of Jarir and al-Farazdaq, the odes assembled by Ibn Durayd in al-Shawarid, the poetry of the Hudhayl tribe, and the poets categorized by Ibn Sallam al-Jumahi in Tabaqat fuhul al-shu'ara' . Ibn Maymun stated that he sought out the most eloquent and superior verses of every eligible early poet whose complete corpus he could access in endowment libraries (khaza'in al-waqf) or other collections . Bibliographical sources report that the total volume of verse in the collection reached around forty thousand lines, excluding brief poetic fragments (maqati'), though Hajji Khalifa erroneously attributed the title to the later North African scholar Ali ibn Maymun al-Fasi .
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List of Works
Muntaha al-Talab min Ash'ar al-Arab (The Ultimate Quest from the Poems of the Arabs) is an expansive anthology of classical Arabic poetry. Divided into ten parts, each comprising one hundred poems, the work aims to assemble one thousand complete odes from pre-Islamic and early Islamic poets whose linguistic usage serves as authoritative normative evidence, selecting their most eloquent compositions and pairing the verses with marginal glosses explaining difficult lexical items.