Muntaqa min Akhbar al-Asmai lil-Rabai
- Author died
- 329 AH
- Editions
- Dār Ṭalās
Muntaqa min Akhbar al-Asmai (A Selection from the Reports of al-Asma'i) is an Arabic literary and biographical work attributed to the judge Abu Muhammad Abd Allah ibn Ahmad ibn Zabr al-Rub'i (d. 329 AH / 941 CE), abridged by the traditionist Diya al-Din al-Maqdisi (d. 643 AH / 1245 CE) . The text brings together narratives, anecdotes, and transmissions concerning the prominent early philologist and lexicographer al-Asmai .
Authorship and Transmission
The original compilation of Akhbar al-Asma'i was composed by the judge Abu Muhammad Abd Allah ibn Ahmad ibn Rabi'a ibn Sulayman ibn Zabr al-Rub'i al-Samarra'i al-Dimashqi . The surviving abridgment was selected by Diya' al-Din Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahid al-Maqdisi . The transmitted surviving portion consists of material selected from the seventh part and sections of the eighth part of al-Rub'i's original multi-part work .
The chain of transmission preserved on the manuscript traces the text from al-Rub'i through Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Uthman al-Sulami, through Ibn Abi al-Hadid (Abu al-Hasan Ahmad ibn Abd al-Wahid) from his grandfather al-Sulami, and through Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Ahmad ibn Mansur al-Ghassani al-Maliki and Abu Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Hamza ibn Muhammad ibn Abi Jamil al-Qurashi .
Manuscripts and Editions
A surviving manuscript of the work is preserved in Damascus at the Zahiriyya Library under call number general 11060, comprising 14 folios according to one catalog description and 16 folios according to another .
The work was first edited by Izz al-Din al-Tanukhi and published in the thirteenth volume of the Journal of the Arab Scientific Academy in Damascus in 1935, and was subsequently issued separately . It was later edited by Muhammad Muti' al-Hafiz and published by Dar Talas in Damascus in 1987 .
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