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EBN ḴALLĀD, ABŪ ʿALĪ MOḤAMMAD BAṢRĪ, Muʿtazilite theologian (d. 2nd half of 3rd/10th century) of the so-called “school of Baṣra,” partisan of the ideas of Abū Hāšem Jobbāʾī. He had been Abū Hāšem’s first disciple at ʿAskar Mokram, then at Baghdad. His own followers included the two future teachers of…

EBN ḴAMMĀR, ABU’L-ḴAYR ḤASAN b. Savār (or Sovār)b. Bābā b. Bahrām (or Behnām) Ḵᵛārazmī, philosopher. He was born in 331/942, presumably in Baghdad; his father, a Nestorian Christian, was apparently a wineseller (ḵammār). He studied logic and other philosophical subjects under the noted philosopher Yaḥyā b. ʿAdī, and medicine under…

EBN ḴARMĪL, military commander of the Ghurids, and connected, according to Jūzjānī, with the district of Gorzevān on the headwaters of the Morḡāb in the province of Gūzgān in northern Afghanistan. He is first heard of as a prominent commander of the Ghurid raids into India. He was made governor…

EBN ḴORDĀḎBEH (or Ḵorradāḏbeh), ABU’L-QĀSEM ʿOBAYD-ALLĀH b. ʿAbd-Allāh (fl. 3rd/9th century), author of the earliest surviving Arabic book of administrative geography. He was not, apparently, the first geographer to write in Arabic, but he is the first whose book has survived in anything like its original form. His grandfather Ḵorradāḏbeh…

EBN MAFANA, Abu Manṣur Bahrām b. Māfana (< māh-panāh "under the moon’s protection,” Justi, Namenbuch, p. 187), called in the sources al-ʿĀdel "the Just One,” vizier to the Buyid ruler of Fars and Khuzestan, ʿEmād-al-Din Abu Kālijār Marzobān (r. in Shiraz 415-40/1024-48; see Buyids). Ebn Māfana was born at Kāzarun...

EBN MARDAWAYH (Mardūya), AHMAD b. Mūsā b. Mardawayh b. Fūrak Eṣfahānī, scholar of Isfahan in the Buyid period (323-410/935-1019), who wrote in the fields of tradition, tafsīr (Koranic exegsis), history, and geography. He studied Hadith in Iraq and in his native town and was the pupil of such leading traditionists…

EBN MARZOBĀN (Marzbān), ABŪ AḤMAD ʿABD-AL-RAḤMĀN. b. ʿAlī b. Marzbān Ṭabīb Marzbānī (d. Tostar, Jomādā I 396/February-March 1006), administrative official under the Buyids. Ebn al-Qefṭī and Ebn al-Aṯīr, the only two sources providing scanty information on Ebn Marzobān, consider him a descendent of a family originally based in Isfahan. He…

EBN MATTAWAYH (Mattūya), ABŪ MOḤAMMAD ḤASAN b. Aḥmad b. Mattawayh, Muʿtazilite theologian of the Basran school, a student of Qāżī ʿAbd-al-Jabbār (d. 415/1025). Where Ebn Mattawayh lived and the date of his death are not known. Wilferd Madelung has established that his Majmūʿ was written rather soon after ʿAbd-al-Jabbār’s death…