Name

al-Kisā'ī

Original name

al-Kisā'ī, Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Ḥamza b. ʿAbd Allah al-Asadī

Main activity

Muqri': iqrā'

Secondary activity

Grammarian

Title

Name variations

Bahman b. Fayrūz; surnamed: Abū ʿAbd Allah; and: Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Ḥamza of al-Kūfa"

Education place

Education institution

Activity place

Kufa

Activity institution

Activity start date

Activity end date

Place of birth

Kufa

Date of birth

737

Place of death

Ranbuya

Date of death

805

Bibliographical references

Descriptive card

He was _mawlā_ of the Banū Asad, well known Arab philologist and Qur'ān-reader. Descendant of an Iranian family from the Sawād, he was born in Bāḥamshā, Dujayl, north of Baghdād and when still a boy came to al-Kūfa. We find in relations about him that he was not good in _ʿarabiyya_ and therefore wanted to attach himself to the grammarian Muʿādh al-Ḥarrā'. Besides, he spent some time among the Bedouins in order to become fully conversant with the secrets of the _ʿarabiyya_ by direct association with them, under advice of his teacher al-Khalīl. This was also probably the reason which made him diverge from other grammarians who sought and treated learned systematisation. al-Kisā'ī attributed more importance to linguistic usage, as aspired by Sībawayhī (also al-Khalīl's pupil) in his famous "al-Kitāb". He followed a method based on analogy (_qiyās_) which was generally accepted and presented with it a wide range of anomalous colloquial speeches and dialects. Therefore, he paid attention not to mix these colloquial forms with the general rule and gave a fundamental contribution in letting these dialectal expressions survive till nowadays for us to be read. al-Kisā'ī's methodological approach and that of his followers (i.e. al-Farrā', his pupil) became the most independent among Kūfans during the controversies between al-Mubarrad and Thaʿlab in Baghdād; thus, _ex-eventu_, to him and to his teacher, al-Ruʾāsī, is attributed the foundation of the grammatical school of Kūfa. None of his long list of works enumerated in the "Fihrist", by Ibn al-Nadīm, arrived to us. Nevertheless, we find a good account of his linguistic positions in works by al-Zajjājī and Ibn al-Anbārī and others. The latter, reported systematically al-Kisā'ī's positions in grammatical and linguistic arguments in his "Kitāb al-Inṣāf fī Masā'il al-Khilāf bayna al-Naḥwiyyīna al-Baṣriyyīna wa-l-Kūfiyyīna". He was the seventh of the Qur'ān transmitters whose reading was accepted. He received the reading from Ḥamza al-Zayyāt but eventually adapted it to his own way of reading. This allowed him also to entertain good relations with the ʿAbbāsid caliphal court: al-Mahdī entrusted to him the education of his young son al-Rashīd, who in his turn later caused his sons al-Amīn and al-Ma'mūn to be taught by al-Kisā'ī.

Entry author

Olivier Salem