Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati
1256 CE–1344 CE · Granada
Athir al-Din Muhammad ibn Yusuf ibn Hayyan al-Gharnati al-Andalusi (654/1256-745/1344) was among the foremost Arabic grammarians and Qur'an commentators of the Mamluk era. He was born in the territory of Nasrid Granada in al-Andalus; sources differ on whether his exact birthplace was Granada itself or Jaén, the appellation "al-Gharnati" pointing to the former. He is reported to have been of Berber descent, from the Nifza tribe.
After studying in al-Andalus, he left around his twenties and travelled east in pursuit of knowledge, passing through North Africa before settling in Mamluk Egypt. Tradition credits him with study under several hundred teachers across Andalusia, the Maghrib, Egypt, Syria, the Hijaz, and Iraq; he also performed the Hajj. In Cairo he taught Qur'anic exegesis, including at the Ibn Tulun mosque, and earned a reputation as the leading grammarian of his age — sometimes called "the Sibawayh of his time," after the great early grammarian.
His best-known work, Tafsir al-Bahr al-Muhit ("The Encompassing Ocean"), composed late in his life, is a vast commentary on the Qur'an built around grammar, morphology, lexicon, and the variant readings (qira'at). It is widely regarded as one of the most important linguistic commentaries on the Qur'an. He is also reported, unusually for his time, to have studied and written on non-Arabic languages, including Turkic, Ethiopic, and Berber. He died in Cairo in 745/1344 and was buried in the Bab al-Nasr cemetery.
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GranadaגרנדהAl-Andalus, Spain
What they did here
Born in 654/1256 in the territory of Nasrid Granada; his nisba 'al-Gharnati' (the Granadan) reflects this. Sources disagree whether his exact birthplace was the city of Granada or Jaén. He began his education in al-Andalus.
About Granada
Granada is a city in Andalusia, southern Spain, at the foot of the Sierra Nevada. It became a major city of al-Andalus in the 11th century as capital of the Zirid taifa kingdom, where the Jewish statesman and poet Samuel ibn Naghrillah served as grand vizier; a massacre of the city's Jews followed in 1066. From the 13th century Granada was capital of the Nasrid emirate, the last Muslim-ruled state in Iberia, whose rulers built the Alhambra and whose court attracted Muslim scholars. The Catholic Monarchs took the city in 1492, and it became Christian over the 16th century; the Carmelite John of the Cross was prior of a monastery there and wrote major works in Granada.
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