In that same year there also died: Zakariyya ibn Abi Zāʾidah; Kahmas ibn al-Ḥasan; al-Muthannā ibn al-Ṣabbāḥ; and ʿĪsā ibn ʿUmar Abū ʿAmr al-Thaqafī al-Baṣrī, the grammarian (1). He was the teacher of Sībawayh and is said to have been one of the freedmen of Khālid ibn al-Walīd; he merely settled among the tribe of Thaqīf and was therefore ascribed to them. An eminent, venerable authority in language, grammar, and Qurʾān recitation, he studied under ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Kathīr, Ibn al-Muḥayṣin, and ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Isḥāq, and he heard ḥadith from al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and others.

Al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad, al-Aṣmaʿī, and Sībawayh transmitted from him. Sībawayh remained constantly in his company, was identified with him, benefited from him, and took his book—which he had titled al-Jāmiʿ (“The Comprehensive”)—added to it and expanded it. The work now known as “Sībawayh’s Book” is in fact the book of his teacher. Whenever something therein proved difficult, Sībawayh would ask his own teacher, al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad, about it.

Al-Khalīl in turn asked him about what ʿĪsā ibn ʿUmar had composed. He replied, “He gathered some seventy-odd treatises, all of which have perished except the book al-Ikmāl (‘The Perfection’), which is in the land of Fārs, and his book al-Jāmiʿ, which is the one I am working on and about whose obscurities I question you.” Al-Khalīl lowered his head for a moment and then recited:

“All of grammar has vanished, every bit of it,
Save what ʿĪsā ibn ʿUmar has produced:
That is the Ikmāl, and this the Jāmiʿ—
For people they are a sun and a moon.”

ʿĪsā was, however, prone to far-fetched and highly affected turns of phrase (2). Al-Jawharī reports in al-Ṣiḥāḥ that he once fell from his donkey; when the people crowded around him he exclaimed, “Mā lakum takākaʾtum ʿalā takākuʾikum ʿalā dhī jinnah? Ifranqiʿū ʿannī!”—meaning: “Why have you gathered around me as you gather around a madman? Disperse from me.”

Others said he suffered from shortness of breath and fell because of it; the people assumed he was epileptic and began to recite incantations over him. When he recovered from his swoon he uttered those words. Some of them remarked, “His jinn speaks Persian.”

Ibn Khallikān records that he was a companion of Abū ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAlāʾ, and that ʿĪsā ibn ʿUmar once said to Abū ʿAmr ibn