Ibrāhīm ibn Wahb al-Kātib


Abu ’l-Ḥusayn Isḥāq ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Sulaymān ibn Wahb al-Kātib is noted as the author of the rhetorical treatise Kitāb al-Burhān fī wujūh al-bayān.

Life

Ibn Wahb al-Kātib came from a distinguished family of scribes and secretaries. His grandfather Sulaymān had been a minister to al-Muhtadī and al-Muʿtamid, but had been imprisoned during the reign of al-Muwaffaq, dying in prison in 905. Little is known of ibn Wahb's own life, but his Kitāb al-Burhān fī wujūh al-bayān was composed after the death of ʿAlī ibn ʿĪsā ibn dāʾūd ibn al-jarrāḥ.

Work

According to his surviving writing, ibn Wahb was author of works entitled Kitāb al-Ḥujja, Kitāb al-Īḍāḥ, Kitāb al-Taʿabbud and Kitāb Asrār al-Ḳurʾān. It appears that these are lost. However, ibn Wahb's Kitāb al-Burhān fī wujūh al-bayān, also known as Naqd al-nathr, survives; it is a study of Arabic style, rhetoric, and the art of the secretary composed from a Shīʿī perspective, and attempts to deploy Greek, Muʿtazilī and Imāmī ideas in examining Arabic writing. This work was in the early twentieth century misattributed to ibn Wahb's contemporary Qudama ibn Ja'far, until a more complete manuscript was discovered in the Chester Beatty Collection by ʿAlī Ḥasan ʿAbd al-Qādir, showing the correct attribution.

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