Ali ibn al-Husayn al-Iṣfahānī (), also known as Abul-Faraj, (full form: Abū al-Faraj ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn ibn Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥaytham al-Umawī al-Marwānī al-Iṣfahānī) (897–967CE / 284–356AH) was a writer, historian, genealogist, poet, musicologist and scribe. He was of Arab-Quraysh origin and mainly based in Baghdad. He is best known as the author of Kitab al-Aghani ("The Book of Songs"), which includes information about the earliest attested periods of Arabic music (from the seventh to the ninth centuries) and the lives of poets and musicians from the pre-Islamic period to al-Isfahani's time. Given his contribution to the documentation of the history of Arabic music, al-Isfahani is characterised by George Sawa as "a true prophet of modern ethnomusicology".
Dates The commonly accepted dates of al-Isfahani's birth and death are 897–898 and 967, based on the dates given by al-Khatib al-Baghdadi which itself based its information on the testimony of al-Isfahani's student, Muhammad ibn Abi al-Fawaris. However, the credibility of these dates is to be treated with caution. No source places his death earlier than 967, but several place it later. These dates are at odds with a reference in the Kitab Adab al-ghuraba ("The Book of the Etiquettes of Strangers"), attributed to al-Isfahani, to his being in the prime of youth (fi ayyam al-shabiba wa-l-siba) in 967. Calculation of the approximate dates of his birth and death through the life spans of his students and his direct informants suggests that he was born before 902 and died after 960. Text was copied from this source, which is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.
Biography Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani was born in Isfahan, Persia (present-day Iran) but spent his youth and undertook his early studies in Baghdad (present-day Iraq). He was a direct descendant of the last of the Umayyad caliphs, Marwan II, and was thus connected with the Umayyad rulers in al-Andalus, and seems to have kept up a correspondence with them and to have sent them some of his works. He became famous for his knowledge of early Arabian antiquities.
His later life was spent in various parts of the Islamic world, including in Aleppo with its Hamdanid governor Sayf ad-Dawlah (to whom he dedicated the Book of Songs), and in Ray with the Buwayhid vizier Ibn 'Abbad.
Family The epithet, al-Isfahani, refers to the city, Isfahan, on the Iranian plateau. Instead of indicating al-Isfahani's birthplace, this epithet seems to be common to al-Isfahani's family. Every reference al-Isfahani makes to his paternal relatives includes the attributive, al-Isfahani. According to Ibn Hazm (994–1064), some descendants of the last Umayyad caliph, Marwan b. Muhammad (691–750), al-Isfahani's ancestor, settled in Isfahan. However, it has to be borne in mind that the earliest information available regarding al-Isfahani's family history only dates to the generation of his great-grandfather, Ahmad b. al-Ḥaytham, who settled in Samarra sometime between 835–6 and 847.
Based on al-Isfahani's references in the Kitab al-Aghani (hereafter, the Aghani), Ahmad b. al-Haytham seems to have led a privileged life in Sāmarrāʾ, while his sons were well-connected with the elite of the Abbasid capital at that time. His son, Abd al-Aziz b. Ahmad, was "one of the high ranking scribes in the days of al-Mutawakkil (r. 847–861) (min kibār al-kuttāb fī ayyām al-Mutawakkil)". Another son, Muhammad b. Ahmad (viz. al-Isfahani's grandfather), was associated with Abbasid officials, the vizier Ibn al-Zayyāt (d. 847), the scribe Ibrahim b. al-Abbas al-Ṣūlī (792–857), and the vizier Ubaydallah b. Sulayman (d. 901), along with the Ṭālibid notables, including al-Husayn b. al-Husayn b. Zayd, who was the leader of the Banu Hashim. The close ties with the Abbasid court continued with Muhammad's sons, al-Hasan and al-Husayn (al-Isfahani's father).
In various places in the Aghani, al-Isfahani refers to Yahya b. Muhammad b. Thawaba (from the Al Thawaba) as his grandfather on his mother's side. It is often suggested that the family of Thawaba, being Shi'i, bequeathed their sectarian inclination to al-Isfahani. However, the identification of the Thawaba family as Shi'is is only found in a late source, Yaqut's (1178–1225) work. While many elite families working under the Abbasid caliphate were Shi'i-inclined, indeed allied with Alids or their partisans, there is no evidence that members of the Thawaba family embraced an extreme form of Shi'ism.
In summary, al-Isfahani came from a family well-entrenched in the networks of the Abbasid elite, which included the officials and the Alids. Despite the epithet, al-Isfahani, it does not seem that the Isfahani family had a strong connection with the city of Isfahan. Rather, the family was mainly based in Sāmarrāʾ, from the generation of Ahmad b. al-Ḥaytham, and then Baghdad.
In the seats of the caliphate, a few members of the al-Isfahani family worked as scribes, while maintaining friendship or alliance with other scribes, viziers and notables. Like many of the court elite, al-Isfahani's family maintained an amicable relationship with the offspring of Ali and allied with families, such as the Thawaba family, sharing their veneration of Ali and Alids. However, it is hard to pinpoint such a reverential attitude towards Alids in terms of sectarian alignment, given the scanty information about al-Isfahani's family and the fluidity of sectarian identities at the time.
Education and career The Isfahani family's extensive network of contacts is reflected in al-Isfahani's sources. Among the direct informants whom al-Isfahani cites in his works, are members of his own family, who were further connected to other notable families, the Al Thawaba, the Banū Munajjim, the Yazīdīs, the Ṣūlīs, the Banū Ḥamdūn, the Ṭāhirids, the Banū al-Marzubān and the Ṭālibids.
Given that al-Isfahani and his family very likely settled in Baghdad around the beginning of the tenth century, he interacted with a considerable number of the inhabitants of or visitors to that city, including: Jaḥẓa (d. 936), al-Khaffāf, Ali b. Sulaymān al-Akhfash (d. 927/8), and Muhammad b. Jarir al-Ṭabari (d. 922). Like other scholars of his time, al-Isfahani travelled in pursuit of knowledge. Although the details are insufficient to establish the dates of his journeys, based on the chains of transmission (asānīd, sing. isnād) al-Isfahani cites consistently and meticulously in every report, it is certain that he transmitted from ʿAbd al-Malik b. Maslama and ʿĀṣim b. Muhammad in Antakya; ʿAbdallāh b. Muhammad b. Ishaq in Ahwaz; and Yahya b. Aḥmad b. al-Jawn in Raqqa. If we accept the attribution of the Kitab Adab al-ghuraba to al-Isfahani, he once visited Baṣra as well as Ḥiṣn Mahdī, Mattūth, and Bājistrā. Yet, none of these cities seems to have left as much of an impact on al-Isfahani as Kūfa and Baghdad did. While al-Isfahani's Baghdadi informants were wide-ranging in their expertise as well as sectarian and theological tendencies, his Kūfan sources can be characterised as either Shi'i or keen on preserving and disseminating memories that favoured Ali and his family. For example, Ibn ʿUqda (d. 944), mentioned in both the Aghānī and the Maqātil, was invariably cited for the reports about the Alids and their merits.
The journey in search for knowledge taken by al-Isfahani may not be particularly outstanding by the standard of his time, but the diversity of his sources' occupations and expertise is impressive. His informants can be assigned into one or more of the following categories: philologists and grammarians; singers and musicians; booksellers and copyists (sahhafun or warraqun, sing. sahhaf or Warraq); friends; tutors (muʾaddibūn, sing. muʾaddib); scribes (kuttāb, sing. kātib); imams or preachers (khuṭabāʾ, sing. khaṭīb); religious scholars (of the ḥadīth, the Qurʾānic recitations and exegeses, or jurisprudence) and judges; poets; and akhbārīs (transmitters of reports of all sorts, including genealogical, historical, and anecdotal reports). The variety of the narrators and their narrations enriched al-Iṣfahānī's literary output, which covers a wide range of topics from amusing tales to the accounts of the Alids' martyrdom. His erudition is best illustrated by Abu Ali al-Muhassin al-Tanukhi's (941–994) comment: "With his encyclopaedic knowledge of music, musicians, poetry, poets, genealogy, history, and other subjects, al-Iṣfahānī established himself as a learned scholar and teacher."
He was also a scribe and this is not surprising, given his families’ scribal connections, but the details of his kātib activities are rather opaque. Although both al-Tanūkhī and al-Baghdādī refer to al-Isfahani with the attribute, kātib, they mention nothing of where he worked or for whom. The details of his occupation as a scribe only came later, with Yaqut, many of whose reports about al-Isfahani prove problematic. For instance, a report from Yaqut claims that al-Isfahani was the scribe of Rukn al-Dawla (d. 976) and mentions his resentment towards Abū al-Faḍl b. al-ʿAmīd (d. 970). However, the very same report was mentioned by Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī (active tenth century) in his Akhlāq al-wazīrayn, where the scribe of Rukn al-Dawla is identified as Abū al-Faraj Ḥamd b. Muhammad, not Abū al-Faraj al-Isfahani. Thus, it is hard to know with certainty how and where al-Isfahani was engaged in his capacity as a kātib. Nevertheless, al-Isfahani's association with the vizier, Abū Muḥammad al-Muhallabī (903–963), is well-documented. The friendship between the two began before al-Muhallabī's became vizier in 950. The firm relationship between them is supported by al-Isfahani's poetry collected by al-Thaʿālibī (961–1038): half of the fourteen poems are panegyrics dedicated to al-Muhallabī. In addition, al-Isfahani's own work, al-Imāʾ al-shawāʿir (“Enslaved Women Who Composed Poetry”), is dedicated to the vizier, presumably, al-Muhallabī. His no longer surviving Manājīb al-khiṣyān (“The Noble Eunuchs”), which addresses two castrated male singers owned by al-Muhallabī, was composed for him. His magnum opus, the Aghānī, was very likely intended for al-Muhallabī, as well. In return for his literary efforts, according to al-Tanūkhī, al-Isfahani frequently received rewards from the vizier. Furthermore, for the sake of their long-term friendship and out of his respect for al-Isfahani's genius, al-Muhallabī exceptionally tolerated al-Isfahani's uncouth manners and poor personal hygiene. The sources say nothing about al-Isfahani's fate after al-Muhallabī's death. In his last years, according to his student, Muhammad b. Abī al-Fawāris, he suffered from senility (khallaṭa).
Personality, preferences, and beliefs As a friend, al-Isfahani was unconventional in the sense that he did not seem to have been bothered to observe the social decorum of his time, as noted by a late biographical source: with his uncleanliness and gluttony, he presented a counterexample to elegance (ẓarf), as defined by one of his teachers, Abu al-Ṭayyib al-Washshāʾ (d. 937). His unconformity to the social norms did not hinder him from being part of al-Muhallabī's entourage or participation in the literary assemblies, but, inevitably, it resulted in frictions with other scholars and detraction by his enemies. Although al-Isfahani appeared eccentric to his human associates, he was a caring owner of his cat, named Yaqaq (white): he treated Yaqaq's colic (qulanj) with an enema (al-ḥuqna).