ʿAbd al-Wahhāb ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan, descendant of the minister al-Qāsim ibn ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Sulaymān al-Ḥārithī, al-Baghdādī—known as Ibn al-Dabbās the poet, surnamed al-Bāriʿ—hailing from a household of distinction and vizierate (1).

Abū Muḥammad Ibn al-Khashshāb records his lineage exactly in this manner.

He was born in 443 AH.

He recited the Qur’an in its various readings before Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Khayyāṭ, Abū ʿAlī ibn al-Bannāʾ, Yūsuf al-Ghūrī, Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Liḥyānī, Abū al-Khaṭṭāb al-Ṣūfī, al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Ḥasan al-Iskāf, and Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Baṣīr.

He also heard hadith from al-Ḥasan ibn Ghālib, Abū Jaʿfar ibn al-Muslima, the judge Abū Yaʿlā, Abū al-Ḥusayn ibn al-Narsī, ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Burhān al-Asadī, and others.

Gifted in lexicography and grammar, he composed panegyrics for the caliphs al-Muqtadī and al-Mustazhir as well as for a number of viziers and grandees. He traveled through Khurasan, Yemen, and Syria, indulged in worldly amusements and social circles (2), and then repented.