Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Isḥāq ibn Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq ibn al-Ḥasan ibn Manṣūr ibn Muʿāwiya ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿUthmān ibn ʿAnbasa ibn ʿUtba ibn ʿUthmān ibn ʿAnbasa ibn Abū Sufyān ibn Ḥarb ibn Umayya—the Umayyad, known as al-ʿAnbasī, al-Muʿāwī, and al-Abiwardī (1), a noted linguist, the leading poet of his age, and a prolific author. Between him and Abū Sufyān there stand fifteen forefathers.

He studied under Ismāʿīl ibn Masʿada, Abū Bakr ibn Khalaf al-Shīrāzī, and Mālik ibn Aḥmad al-Bāniyāsī, and he learned Arabic from ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī.

Those who transmitted from him include Ibn Ṭāhir al-Maqdisī, Abū al-Futūḥ al-Ṭāʾī, Abū Ṭāhir al-Silafī, and several others.

Yaḥyā ibn Manda said: “The litterateur Abū al-Muẓaffar was asked about the hadiths dealing with the divine attributes, and he replied, ‘They are to be affirmed and left as they are.’”

Al-Samʿānī remarked: “He compiled the book al-Mukhtalif, the book Ṭabaqāt al-ʿIlm, and the book Ansāb al-ʿArab; in linguistics he produced works to which no one had preceded him.”

I say: His collected poems form a large Dīwān (2), arranged in sections—the ʿIrāqiyyāt, the Najdiyyāt, and the Wajdiyyāt—and he also composed a History of Abiward.