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EBN ELYĀS, MANṢŪR b. Moḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Faqīh Yūsof (fl. late 14th-early 15th cent.), a descendent of a Shirazi family of jurists and physicians, is the author of two extant Persian works: a medical compilation entitled the Kefāya-ye mojāhedīya and an illustrated anatomy text known as the Tašrīḥ-e manṣūrī….

EBN ESFANDĪĀR, BAHĀʾ-AL-DĪN MOḤAMMAD b. Ḥasan, historian, probably from Āmol, who flourished around the turn of the 7th/13th century. He is the author of the earliest surviving history of Ṭabarestān, on which he was engaged around 603/1206 (400 years after the martyrdom of Imam ʿAlī al-Reżā; Ebn Esfandīār, I, p….

EBN FAHD ḤELLĪ, ABU’L-ʿABBĀS JAMĀL-AL-DĪN AḤMAD b. Šams-al-Dīn Moḥammad (756 or 757-841/1355-1437), Imami scholar and jurist. A native of Ḥella, he spent most of his life there, where he taught at the Zaynīya school, and in Karbalāʾ, where he died and was buried. His teachers included ʿAlī b. Ḵāzen Ḥāʾerī,…

EBN FŪLĀD (or Ebn Pūlād), military adventurer, probably of Daylamī origin, active in northern Persia during the Buyid period (early 5th/11th century) and typical of the soldiers of fortune characterizing the “Daylamī intermezzo” of medieval Persian history. In 407/1016, he revolted against the Buyids (Ebn al-Aṯīr, IX, pp. 268-69). He…

EBN ḤAWQAL, ABU’L-QĀSEM MOḤAMMAD b. ʿAlī Naṣībī, traveler and geographer of the 4th/10th century. Biographical data on him are exclusively derived from his single extant work on geography, which bears the title Ṣūrat al-arż (Configurations of the earth) in the oldest manuscript, dated 479/1086, of its last version. Years of…

EBN ḤAWŠAB, ABU’L-QĀSEM ḤASAN b. Faraj (or Faraḥ) b. Ḥawšab b. Zāḏān Najjār Kūfī, known also as Manṣūr al-Yaman (d. 302/914), Ismaʿili dāʿī and founder of the Ismaʿili community in northern Yemen. He came from the neighborhood of the Narses canal (Nahr Nars) in the countryside (sawād) of Kūfa south of…

EBN HENDŪ, ABU’L-FARAJ ʿALĪ b. Ḥosayn, also known as Ostāḏ (b. in Ṭabarestān, no later than the early 350s/960s; d. in or after 422/1031), author of, inter alia, propaedeutic epistles on philosophy and medicine and of a gnomology of Greek wisdom, and generally renowned as a litterateur. Of Qomī origin…

EBN ḤOSĀM ḴᵛĀFĪ (or Ḵūsfī), MOḤAMMAD, a poet of the 9th/15th century. Living in the village of Ḵūsf, near Bīrjand, Ebn Ḥosām was a farmer by trade and remained unattached to any of the rulers and powerful men of his time. It appears from his works that he was a…

EBN ḴAFĪF. See Supplement.  

EBN ḴĀLAWAYH (Ḵālūya), ABŪ ʿABD-ALLĀH ḤOSAYN b. Aḥmad b. Ḥamdān Hamaḏānī, philologist and Koran scholar. He was born in Hamadān and traveled in 314/926 to Baghdad while still a young man, where he studied the linguistic sciences under both Basran and Kufan masters, principally the Basrans Ebn Dorayd and Abū…

EBN ḴALDŪN, ABŪ ZAYD ʿABD-AL-RAḤMĀN b. Moḥammad (b. 1 Ramażān 732/27 May 1332; d. 26 Ramażān 808/17 March 1406), the historian famous for the general theory of history and civilization brilliantly expounded in his Moqaddema. His life. He was born in Tunis into a family that claimed South Arabian roots…