Thinkers Timeline

Abu Bishr Amr ibn Uthman, known as Sībawayh (c. 760-796), was a Persian-born Arab grammarian whose book Al-Kitāb is the first comprehensive description of the Arabic language and one of the most important works in the history of linguistics. He was born in Hamadan or Shiraz, in what is now Iran, into a Persian family. Arabic was not his first language. He moved to Basra, in what is now Iraq, as a young man. Basra was then one of the great centres of Islamic learning, with mosques, schools, and scholarly circles that drew students from across the expanding Muslim world. Sībawayh studied with the leading Arabic grammarians of his time, including the great al-Khalīl ibn Ahmad, who had developed systematic approaches to Arabic phonology and had produced the first Arabic dictionary. Sībawayh was especially devoted to al-Khalīl and quotes him extensively in his own work. Sībawayh's nickname in Persian means little apple, and may have come from the apple-like freshness of his complexion. He lived a short life of about thirty-six years but produced a single enormous book that remains the foundation of Arabic grammatical science. The book is simply called Al-Kitāb, which means The Book — as if it were the only book that needed saying much about. This was not arrogance but recognition by the tradition that followed: for over twelve centuries Arabic grammarians have treated Al-Kitāb as the definitive starting point for their field. Sībawayh died young, possibly around 796. The details of his death are uncertain. One traditional story holds that he died shortly after losing a famous grammatical debate in Baghdad against a rival scholar. This story may not be historically reliable. What is certain is that his book survived him and became the foundation of Arabic linguistics, studied continuously from his own time until today.