al-Hamdānī
Abū Muhammad al-Hasan ibn Ahmad al-Arhabī al-Bakīlī al-Hamdānī ( Arabic أبو محمد الحسن بن أحمد الأرحبي البكيلي الهمداني, DMG Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥasan ibn Aḥmad al-Arḥabī al-Bakīlī al-Hamdānī ; * May 10, 893 in Sanaa ; † 947 or later, ibid) was one of the most important Muslim scholars of Yemen in the Middle Ages .
Life
Al-Hamdānī came from a family in the area of al-Bakīl and was born in Sanaa. After extensive training, he traveled to Iraq, lived for a time in Mecca and had contacts with various other scholars. In addition, he wrote books as a historian , poet and philologist and was also versed in mining . There are known testimonies of him that have the ancient mine of ar-Raḍrāḍ as their subject. The life of al-Hamdani was marked by the fighting between the Yuʿfirids , Ziyadids and Zaidites . He was drawn into their arguments several times and is believed to have died while incarcerated in Sanaa in 947 or later.
Works
- “Description of the Arabian Peninsula” ( Ṣifat Ǧazīrat al-ʿArab ). The work was edited by David Heinrich Müller under the title "Al-Hamdânî's Geography of the Arabian Peninsula" at Brill in Leiden. Volume I (1884) Volume II (1891)
- "The Diadem" ( al-Iklīl ), encyclopedia about ancient South Arabia.
literature
- Nabih Amin Faris: The Antiquities of South Arabia being a Translation from the Arabic with Linguistic, Geographic and Historic Notes of the Eight Book of al-Hamdānī's al-Iklīl , Princeton, 1938
- Yūsuf Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh (Ed.): Al-Hamdani. A great Yemeni Scholar. Studies on the Occasion of his Millennial Anniversary. Sanaa, 1986
- Yūsuf Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh: al-Ḥasan b. Aḥmad al-Hamdānī , In: Al-Mausūʿa al-Yamanīya, Sanaa, 2003, Vol. 4, pp. 3097ff.
- Yūsuf Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh: The personal names in al-Hamdānī's al-Iklīl and their parallel in the old South Arabic inscriptions , dissertation, University of Tübingen, 1975.
- Jörn Heise: The founding of Sana'a - an oriental-Islamic myth? Berlin, Klaus Schwarz Verlag, May 2010, ISBN 978-3-87997-373-6 (the fifth chapter is dedicated to al-Hamdani's biography)
- O. Löfgren: Art. "Al-Hamdānī" in The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition Vol. III, pp. 124a-125a.
Web links
- Literature by and about Al-Hamdānī in the catalog of the German National Library
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hamdānī, al- |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Hamdānī, Abū Muhammad al-Hasan ibn Ahmad al-Arhabī al-Bakīlī al-; أبو محمد الحسن بن أحمد الأرحبي البكيلي الهمداني (Arabic) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Muslim scholar and author |
| DATE OF BIRTH | May 10, 893 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Sanaa |
| DATE OF DEATH | 947 |
| Place of death | Sanaa |