Abu Hanifa Dinawari


Abū Ḥanīfa Aḥmad ibn Dāwūd Dīnawarī was an Islamic Golden Age polymath: astronomer, agriculturist, botanist, metallurgist, geographer, mathematician, and historian.

Life

Of Persian stock, Dinawari was born in the town of Dinawar in modern-day western Iran. It had some importance due to its geographical location, serving as the entrance to the region of Jibal as well as a crossroad between the culture of Iran and that of the inhabitants on the other side of the Zagros Mountains. The birth date of Dinawari is uncertain; it is likely that he was born during the first or second decade of the 9th century. He was instructed in the two main traditions of the Abbasid-era grammarians of al-Baṣrah and of al-Kūfah. His principal teachers were Ibn al-Sikkīt and his own father. He studied grammar, philology, geometry, arithmetic, and astronomy and was known to be a reliable traditionalist. His most renowned contribution is the Book of Plants, for which he is considered the founder of Arabic botany.
Dinawari's Kitāb al-akhbār al-ṭiwāl , written from a Persian point of view, is possibly the earliest apparent effort to combine Iranian and Islamic history. While historians such as al-Tabari and Bal'ami devoted the introduction of their work to long discourses on the duration of the world, Dinawari attempted to establish the importance of Iranshahr as the centre of the world. In his work, Dinawari notably devoted much less space to the Islamic prophet Muhammad compared to that of Iran. Regardless, Dinawari was a devoted Muslim, as indicated by his commentary on the Qur'an. He concluded the history with the suppression of Babak Khorramdin's rebellion in 837, and the subsequent execution of the Iranian general Khaydhar ibn Kawus al-Afshin.
Besides having access to early Arabic sources, Dinawari also made use of Persian sources, including pre-Islamic epic romances. Fully acquainted with the Persian language, Dinawari occasionally inserted phrases from the language into his work.
Dinawari's spiritual successor was Hamza al-Isfahani.

Works

The tenth century biographical encyclopaedia, al-Fihrist written by Al-Nadim, lists sixteen book titles by Dinawari:

Mathematics and natural sciences

  1. Kitâb al-kusuf
  2. Kitāb an-nabāt yufadiluh al-‘ulamā' fī ta’līfih, ‘Plants, valued by scholars for its composition'
  3. Kitāb Al-Anwā 'Tempest'
  4. Kitāb Al-qiblah wa'z-zawāl "Book of Astral Orientations"
  5. Kitāb ḥisāb ad-dūr, "Arithmetic/Calculation of Cycles"
  6. Kitāb ar-rud ‘alā raṣd al-Iṣbhānī Refutation of Lughdah al-Iṣbhānī
  7. Kitāb al-baḥth fī ḥusā al-Hind, "Analysis of Indian Arithmetic"
  8. Kitāb al-jam’ wa'l-tafrīq ; "Book of Arithmetic/Summation and Differentiation"
  9. Kitāb al-jabr wa-l-muqabila, "Algebra and Equation"
  10. Kitāb nuwādr al-jabr, "Rare Forms of Algebra"

    Social sciences and humanities

  11. Ansâb al-Akrâd.
  12. Kitāb Kabīr "Great Book"
  13. Kitāb al-faṣāha, "Book of Rhetoric"
  14. Kitāb al-buldān, "Book of Cities "
  15. Kitāb ash-sh’ir wa-shu’arā’, "Poetry and the Poets"
  16. Kitāb al-Waṣāyā, Commandments ;
  17. Kitāb ma yulahan fīh al’āmma, How the Populace Errs in Speaking;
  18. Islâh al-mantiq
  19. Kitāb al-akhbār al-ṭiwāl, "General History"

    Editions & translations

Dinawari's General History has been edited and published numerous times, but has not been translated in its entirety into a European language. Jackson Bonner has recently prepared an English translation of the pre-Islamic passages of al-Akhbar al-Tiwal.

''Book of Plants''

Al-Dinawari is considered the founder of Arabic botany for his Kitab al-Nabat, which consisted of six volumes. Only the third and fifth volumes have survived, though the sixth volume has partly been reconstructed based on citations from later works. In the surviving portions of his works, 637 plants are described from the letters sin to ya. He describes the phases of plant growth and the production of flowers and fruit.
The first part of the Book of Plants describes astronomical and meteorological concepts as they relate to plants, including the planets and constellations, the sun and moon, the lunar phases indicating seasons and rain, anwa, and atmospheric phenomena such as winds, thunder, lightning, snow, and floods. The book also describes different types of ground, indicating which types are more convenient for plants and the qualities and properties of good ground.
Al-Dinawari quoted from other early Muslim botanical works that are now lost, such as those of al-Shaybani, Ibn al-Arabi, al-Bahili, and Ibn as-Sikkit.