Man nusiba ila Ummihi min al-Shuara - dimna Nawadir al-Makhtutat
- Author died
- 245 AH
- Editions
- Sharikat Maktabat wa-Maṭba‘at Muṣṭafá al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī wa-Awlāduh
Man nusiba ila Ummihi min al-Shuara (Poets Attributed to Their Mothers) is a short biographical treatise on Arab poets who were identified by matronymics, authored by the Baghdadi philologist and genealogist Muhammad ibn Habib (d. 245 AH / 859–860 CE) . The text was published as part of the rare manuscript series Nawadir al-Makhtutat .
Subject and Content
The treatise compiles and documents Arab poets from the pre-Islamic and early Islamic periods who were known by attribution to their mothers rather than their fathers . Ibn Habib himself was identified through his mother, Habib, a freedwoman of the Abbasids, which editors note as relevant to his specialized interest in this topic .
The work contains entries for thirty-nine poets, arranged sequentially without formal chapter divisions . It opens with Ibn Shu'ub and concludes with Amr ibn al-Itnaba . For each figure, Ibn Habib generally provides:
- The poet's matronymic and the mother's name or tribal origin .
- The poet's full paternal lineage and tribal affiliation .
- Anecdotal context explaining the matronymic designation, alongside illustrative verses of poetry .
- Occasional linguistic notes explaining specific vocabulary items appearing in the cited poetry .
Transmission and Publication
The surviving transmission (riwaya) of the text is preserved through a chain going back to the grammarian Uthman ibn Jinni, who received it through his brother from Abu Abd Allah Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn Arafa (Niftawayh, d. 323 AH), who transmitted it from Ahmad ibn Yahya Tha'lab (d. 291 AH) from Ibn Habib . Colophons on surviving manuscript copies indicate they were transcribed from an exemplar in Ibn Jinni's handwriting and corrected by Radi al-Din al-Shatibi .
The text was first edited and published in the West by the Orientalist Giorgio Levi Della Vida in the Journal of the American Oriental Society (1942) . In the Arab world, it was published by Abd al-Salam Harun in the journal al-Muqtataf in May 1945, and subsequently reissued within the first collection of his anthology Nawadir al-Makhtutat . Harun based his edition on two manuscripts preserved at Dar al-Kutub al-Misriyya (MS 6 Majami' Shin and MS 75 Shin Adab, the latter transcribed in Medina in 1300 AH) . A later edition was published in Beirut in 1410 AH (1990 CE), edited by Muhammad Salih al-Shinawi .
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