Sahib ibn Abbad

Training under Aḥmad Ibn-Fāris is recorded. Badi' al-Zaman al-Hamadani is recorded as having studied under Sahib ibn Abbad. The recorded working language is Persian and Arabic. Positions recorded include vizier. Works named in the authority record are al-Amthāl al-sāʼirah min shiʻr al-Mutanabbī and al-Muḥīṭ fī al-lughah.

• Name — Sahib ibn Abbad • Office — Grand Vizier of the Buyid emirate of Ray • Term Start — 976 • Term End — 995 • Monarch — Mu'ayyad al-Dawla Fakhr al-Dawla • Predecessor — Abu'l-Fath Ali ibn Muhammad • Successor — Unknown

• Illustration — Map of northern Iran Sahib was born on 14 September 938 in Talaqancha, a village roughly 20 miles south of the major Buyid city of Isfahan. His father was Abu'l-Hasan Abbad ibn Abbas (d. 946), a renowned and well-educated administrator, who composed works on the Mu'tazili doctrine. Sahib spent his childhood at Talakan, a town in Daylam near Qazvin. He later settled in Isfahan, and served for some time as an official of the Buyid ruler of Jibal, Rukn al-Dawla (r. 935–976). After the death of his father, Sahib became the pupil of the scholar and philosopher, Ibn 'al-Amid, who had recently replaced Sahib's deceased father as the vizier of Rukn al-Dawla. The story is told that to keep company with his collection of 117,000 books while travelling, Sahib had them "borne by a caravan of four hundred camels trained to walk in alphabetical order". His large section on theology (kalam) was burned by the staunch Sunni Mahmud of Ghazni who opposed the Mu'tazili.