Abu ‘Abd ar-Raḥmān al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad ibn ‘Amr ibn Tammām al-Farāhīdī al-Azdī al-Yaḥmadī (; 718 – 786 CE), known as al-Farāhīdī, or al-Khalīl, was an Arab philologist, lexicographer and leading grammarian of Basra in Iraq. He made the first dictionary of the Arabic language – and the oldest extant dictionary – Kitab al-'Ayn ( "The Source")Introduction to Early Medieval Arabic: Studies on Al-Khalīl Ibn Ahmad, pg. 3. Ed. Karin C. Ryding. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1998. – introduced the now standard harakat (vowel marks in Arabic script) system, and was instrumental in the early development of ʿArūḍ (study of prosody),al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad at the Encyclopædia Britannica Online. ©2013, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.Abit Yaşar Koçak, Handbook of Arabic Dictionaries, pg. 19. Berlin: Verlag Hans Schiler, 2002. Hamid Dabashi, The World of Persian Literary Humanism, pg. 64. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2012. musicology and poetic metre.Kees Versteegh, Arabic Linguistic Tradition, pg. 23.Muhammad Hasan Bakalla, "Ancient Arab and Muslim Phoneticians: An Appraisal of Their Contrubition to Phonetics." Taken from Current Issues in the Phonetic Sciences: Proceedings of the IPS-77 Congress, Miami Beach, Florida, 17–19 December 1977, Part 1, pg. 4. Eds. Harry Francis Hollien and Patricia Hollien. Volume 9 of Current Issues in Linguistic Theory Series. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing, 1979. His linguistic theories influenced the development of Persian, Turkish, Kurdish, and Urdu prosody.John A. Haywood, Arabic Lexicography: Its History, and Its Place in the General History of, pg. 21. Leiden: Brill Publishers, 1960. The "Shining Star" of the Basran school of Arabic grammar, a polymath and scholar, was a man of genuinely original thought.John A. Haywood, Arabic, pg. 20.Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimah, vol. 2, pg. 435. Trns. Franz Rosenthal. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969.

Al-Farahidi was the first scholar to subject the prosody of Classical Arabic poetry to a detailed phonological analysis. The primary data he listed and categorized in meticulous detail was extremely complex to master and utilize, and later theorists developed simpler formulations with greater coherence and general utility. He was also a pioneer in the field of cryptography and influenced the work of al-Kindi.

Life Born in 718 in Oman, southern Arabia, to Azdi parents of modest means, al-Farahidi became a leading grammarian of Basra in Iraq.Paula Casey-Vine, Oman in History, pg. 261. London: Immel Publishing, 1995. In Basra, he studied Islamic traditions and philology under Abu 'Amr ibn al-'Ala' with Aiyūb al-Sakhtiyāni, ‘Āṣm al-Aḥwal, al-‘Awwām b. Ḥawshab, etc. His teacher Ayyub persuaded him to renounce the Ibāḍi doctrine and convert to Sunni orthodoxy; Among his pupils were Sibawayh, al-Naḍr b. Shumail, and al-Layth b. al-Muẓaffar b. Naṣr. Known for his piety and frugality, he was a companion of Jābir ibn Zayd, the founder of ibadism.Introduction to Early Medieval Arabic, pg. 2. It was said that his parents were converts to Islam and that his father was the first to be named "Ahmad" after the time of Muhammad.Ibn Khallikan, Deaths, pg. 497. His nickname, "Farahidi", differed from his tribal name and derived from an ancestor named Furhud (Young Lion); plural . He refused lavish gifts from rulers or to indulge in the slander and gossip his fellow Arab and Persian rival scholars were wont to, and he performed an annual pilgrimage to Mecca. He lived in a small reed house in Basra and once remarked that when his door was shut, his mind did not go beyond it.Ibn Khallikan, Deaths, pg. 494. He taught linguistics,John A. Haywood, Arabic, pg. 22. and some of his students became wealthy teachers. Al-Farahidi's main income was falconry and a garden inherited from his father.Aujourd'hui L'Egypte, iss. #18–20, pg. 114. Egypt: Hayʾah al-ʻĀmmah lil-Istiʻlāmāt, 1992. Digitized by AbeBooks 16 July 2010. Two dates of death are cited, 786 and 791 CE.Kees Versteegh, Arabic Linguistic Tradition, pg. 7. The story goes that a theoretical contemplation brought about his death. On the particular day, while he was deeply absorbed in contemplation of a system of accounting to save his maidservant from being cheated by the green grocer, he wandered into a mosque, and there he absent-mindedly bumped into a pillar and was fatally injured.

Views Al-Farahidi's eschewing of material wealth has been noted by several biographers. In his old age, the son of Habib ibn al-Muhallab and reigning governor of the Muhallabids offered al-Farahidi a pension and requested that the latter tutor the former's son. Al-Farahidi declined, stating that he was wealthy though possessing no money, as true poverty lay not in a lack of money, but in the soul.Ibn Khallikan, Deaths, pg. 495. The governor reacted by rescinding the pension, an act to which al-Farahidi responded with the following lines of poetry:

"He, who formed me with a mouth, engaged to give me nourishment till such a time as He takes me to Himself. Thou hast refused me a trifling sum, but that refusal will not increase thy wealth."

Embarrassed, the governor responded with an offer to renew the pension and double the rate, which al-Farahidi still greeted with a lukewarm reception. Al-Farahidi's apathy about material wealth was demonstrated in his habit of quoting Akhtal's famous stanza: "If thou wantest treasures, thou wilt find none equal to a virtuous conduct."

Al-Farahidi distinguished himself via his philosophical views as well. He reasoned that a man's intelligence peaked at the age of forty – the age when the Islamic prophet Muhammad began his call – and began to diminish after sixty, the point at which Muhammad died. He also believed that a person was at their peak intelligence at the clearest part of dawn.

Regarding the field of grammar, al-Farahidi held the realist views common among early Arab linguists, yet rare among both later and modern times. Rather than holding the rules of grammar as he and his students described them to be absolute rules, al-Farahidi saw the Arabic language as the natural, instinctual speaking habits of the Bedouin; if the descriptions of scholars such as himself differed from how the Arabs of the desert naturally spoke, then the cause was a lack of knowledge on the scholar's part as the unspoken, unwritten natural speech of pure Arabs was the final determiner.Yasir Suleiman, "Ideology, grammar-making and standardization." Taken from In the Shadow of Arabic: The Centrality of Language to Arabic Culture, pgs. 13–14. Ed. Bilal Orfali. Leiden: Brill Publishers, 2011. Al-Farahidi was distinguished, however, in his view that the Arabic alphabet included 29 letters rather than 28 and that each letter represented a fundamental characteristic of people or animals. His classification of 29 letters was due to his consideration of combining Lām and Alif as a separate third letter from the two individual parts.Gerhard Bowering, "Sulami's treatise on the science of the letters." Taken from In the Shadow of Arabic, pg. 349.

Legacy In the Arab world, al-Farahidi had become a household name by the time he died and became the only protégé of Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali in Arabic philology. He was the first to codify the complex metres of Arabic poetry and an outstanding genius of the Muslim world. Sibawayh and al-Asma'i were among his students, with the former having been more indebted to al-Farahidi than to any other teacher.Khalil I. Semaan, Linguistics in the Middle Ages: Phonetic Studies in Early Islam, pg. 39. Leiden: Brill Publishers, 1968.Kees Versteegh, Arabic Linguistic Tradition, pg. 39. Ibn al-Nadim, the 10th-century bibliophile biographer from Basra, reports that in fact Sibawayh's "Kitab" (Book) was a collaborative work of forty-two authors, but also that the principles and subjects in the "Kitab" were based on those of al-Farahidi. He is quoted by Sibawayh 608 times, more than any other authority.M.G. Carter, Sibawayh, pg. 21. Part of the Makers of Islamic Civilization series. London: I.B. Tauris, 2004. Throughout the Kitab, Sibawayh says "I asked him" or "he said", without naming the person referred to by the pronoun; however, it is clear that he refers to al-Farahidi. Both the latter and the former are historically the earliest and most significant figures in the formal recording of the Arabic language.Toufic Fahd, "Botany and agriculture." Taken from Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, Volume 3: Technology, Alchemy and Life Sciences, pg. 814. Ed. Roshdi Rasheed. London: Routledge, 1996.

Al-Farahidi was also well versed in astronomy, mathematics, Islamic law, music theory, and Muslim prophetic tradition.Monique Bernards, "Pioneers of Arabic Linguistic Studies." Taken from In the Shadow of Arabic: The Centrality of Language to Arabic Culture, pg. 213. Ed. Bilal Orfali. Leiden: Brill Publishers, 2011. His prowess in Arabic was said to be drawn, first and foremost, from his vast knowledge of Muslim prophetic tradition and exegesis of the Qur'an. The Al Khalil Bin Ahmed Al Farahidi School of Basic Education in Rustaq, Oman, is named after him.Abdullah Al Liwaihi , , Oman Tribune.

Works Kitab al-'Ayn

Kitab al-Ayn ("The Book of Ayn") was the first dictionary written for the Arabic language.Introduction to Arabesques: Selections of Biography and Poetry from Classical Arabic Literature, pg. 13. Ed. Ibrahim A. Mumayiz. Volume 2 of WATA-publications: World Arab Translators Association. Philadelphia: Garant Publishers, 2006. Bernard K. Freamon, "Definitions and Concepts of Slave Ownership in Islamic Law." Taken from The Legal Understanding of Slavery: From the Historical to the Contemporary, pg. 46. Ed. Jean Allain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. A. Cilardo, "Preliminary Notes on the Meaning of the Qur'anic Term Kalala." Taken from Law, Christianity and Modernism in Islamic Society: Proceedings of the Eighteenth Congress of the Union Européenne Des Arabisants Et Islamisants Held at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, pg. 3. Peeters Publishers, 1998. Kees Versteegh, The Arabic Linguistic Tradition, pg. 4. Part of the Landmarks in Linguistic Thought series, vol. 3. London: Routledge, 1997. Instead of following the order of the alphabet, al-Farahidi sorted letters according to where the consonants are pronounced in the mouth, from back to front, beginning with the letter ع "ayn", representing the [ʕ] sound formed in the throat.Kees Versteegh, The Arabic Linguistic Tradition, pg. 23. Part of the Landmarks in Linguistic Thought series, vol. 3. London: Routledge, 1997. The word ayn may also mean a water source in the desert, perhaps reflecting its author's goal to derive the etymological origins of Arabic vocabulary and lexicography.

Isnad of Kitab al-'Ayn In his (Catalogue), Ibn al-Nadim recounts the various names attached to the transmission of Kitab al-'Ayn, i.e., the isnad (chain of authorities). He begins with Durustuyah's account that al-Kasrawi said that al-Zaj al-Muhaddath had said that al-Khalil had explained the concept and structure of his dictionary to al-Layth b. al-Muzaffar b. Nasr b. Sayyar had dictated edited portions to al-Layth, and they had reviewed their preparation together. Ibn al-Nadim writes that a manuscript in the possession of Da'laj had probably belonged originally to Ibn al-'Ala al-Sijistani, who, according to Durustuyah, had been a member of a circle of scholars who critiqued the book. In this group were Abu Talib al-Mufaddal ibn Slamah, 'Abd Allah ibn Muhammad al-Karmani, Abu Bakr ibn Durayd, and al-Huna'i al-Dawsi.Dodge, vol.1 pp.95–96

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