Abu Tayyib al-Khuqandi

Biography

Abu Tayyib al-Khuqandi (full name Abu Tayyib Tahir ibn Muhammad al-Makhzumi al-Khuqandi) was a scholar born in Kokand in the first half of the 11th century. In that era Baghdad was the greatest scholarly centre of the East, and Eastern savants pursued their research at the House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikma) founded by the Arab caliphs. As a madrasa student, Abu Tayyib met repeatedly with the scholars of his day in Baghdad and deepened his learning; in particular he worked in the city's famous library, which greatly shaped his scholarship. After completing the madrasa he served as a librarian, judge (qadi) and teacher (mudarris). He rose to become a major encyclopaedic scholar of his time, writing more than thirty works on jurisprudence, morphology, syntax, theology (kalam), the science of inheritance, Qur'anic exegesis, hadith, Sufi theory, grammar, philosophy, mathematics and the natural sciences. A list of these works is given in Yaqut al-Hamawi's “Mu'jam al-Udaba” (Dictionary of Men of Letters).