“I want to fly,” he declared. They laughed at him; then he sprang up, soared briefly, and came crashing down, smashed to pieces (1).
He studied Arabic under Abū Saʿīd al-Sīrāfī, Abū ʿAlī al-Fārisī, and his maternal uncle—the author of Dīwān al-Adab—Abū Ibrāhīm al-Fārābī.
It is said that a section of al-Ṣiḥāḥ was left in draft form and was later fair-copied by his student Ibrāhīm b. Ṣāliḥ al-Warrāq, who made a number of mistakes. He even wrote, under the entry Saqar, that the word takes the definite article, a slip that betrays his ignorance of Sūrah al-Muddaththir; and he wrote al-ḥaraʾḍal (2), “the mountain,” misreading and merging two words, for the correct expression is al-jarr: the foot of a mountain (3).
Al-Jawharī also composed tasteful verse (4) and an introductory treatise on grammar.
Jamal al-Dīn ʿAlī b. Yūsuf al-Qifṭī (5) said: “Al-Jawharī died after falling from the roof of his house in Nishapur in 393 AH.” He then added: “Some say he died around 400 AH.”
- Ibn Ḥamma ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿUmar b. Aḥmad al-Khallāl
The shaykh, reliable: Abū al-Ḥusayn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿUmar b. Aḥmad b. Ḥamma al-Khallāl, a Baghdadi.