He authored books on the sciences of the Qur’an, on lexical rarities and difficult expressions, and on the rules of pausal stops and resumptions (1).

Another scholar said, “He was among the most learned people and the foremost authority on the Kufan school of grammar, and no one surpassed him in his memorization of the Arabic language.”

He studied under Thaʿlab, and in turn others studied under him (2) while he was still a young man, around the year 300 AH (3).

Abū al-Ḥasan al-ʿArūḍī related: “I was with Ibn al-Anbārī in the presence of al-Rāḍī billāh (4). One day a maidservant asked him to interpret something she had seen in a dream. He replied, ‘I am withholding [urine],’ and left.

The following day he returned, now an interpreter of dreams. He had spent that very day studying the Book of al-Kirmānī on dream interpretation, and then he came back (5).”

I say: His writings include Kitāb al-Waqf wa al-Ibtidāʾ (Pausing and Resuming), Kitāb al-Mushkil (Ambiguous Passages), Gharīb al-Gharīb al-Nabawī (Rare Expressions in the Prophetic Tradition), Sharḥ al-Mufaḍḍaliyyāt, Sharḥ al-Sabʿ al-Ṭiwāl (Commentary on the Seven Long Poems), al-Zāhir, al-Kāfī in grammar, Kitāb al-Lāmāt, Sharḥ al-Kāfī, Kitāb al-Hāʾāt, Kitāb al-Aḍdād (Words with Opposite Meanings), Kitāb al-Mudhakkar wa al-Muʾannath (Masculine and Feminine Forms), and Risālat al-Mushkil, in which he refutes Ibn Qutaybah and Abū Ḥātim. He also produced al-Radd ʿalā man Khālafa Muṣḥaf ʿUthmān, introduced with the isnād formulas “akhbaranā” and “ḥaddathanā,” which shows that he was a ḥadith memorizer. He left behind numerous dictation sessions, and he was one of the unique scholars of his age (6).