Sibawayh (Arabic: سِيبَوَيْه; Persian: سیبُویه Sēbūya, Persian pronunciation: [seːbuːˈja]; c. 760–796; full name Abu Bishr Amr ibn Uthman ibn Qanbar al-Basri (أَبُو بِشْر عَمْرو بْن عُثْمَان بْن قَنْبَر ٱلْبَصْرِيّ), also Abu Bishr Abu Uthman Abu'l-Hasan Abu'l-Husayn) was the leading Persian grammarian of Basra and the author of the third book on Arabic grammar. His famous, unnamed work, referred to as al-Kitab or "The Book," is a fundamental five-volume treatise of the Arabic language.
The earliest extant source, Ibn Qutayba, in his biographical entry on Sibawayh, wrote briefly the following:
He is Amr ibn Uthman and was essentially a linguist. He came to Baghdad, fell out with the local linguists, was humiliated, returned to a town in Persia, and died there while still young.
The tenth-century biographers Ibn al-Nadim and Abu Bakr al-Zubaydi, and in the 13th century Ibn Khallikan, attributed to Sibawayh contributions to the Arabic language and linguistics of a level incomparable with the contributions of earlier and later periods. He has been called the greatest of all Arab linguists and one of the greatest linguists of all time in any language.
Sources
- Turkish Wikipedia: tr.wikipedia.org
- TDV Encyclopedia of Islam: islamansiklopedisi.org.tr
- English Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org