al-Dani
981 CE–1053 CE · Cordoba
Abu Amr Uthman ibn Sa'id al-Dani (371-444 AH / 981-1053 CE), also known as Ibn al-Sayrafi, was one of the foremost scholars of qira'at (the canonical variant readings of the Qur'an) and rasm (Qur'anic orthography, the conventions for writing the consonantal text) in the Islamic West. He was born in or near Cordoba, then under Umayyad rule, and biographers report that he came from a family connected to the ruling Umayyad line; he is said to have begun formal study at about fourteen.
In 1006 he travelled east to pursue knowledge, studying hadith (Prophetic reports) at Kairouan, then continuing to Egypt, performing the Hajj at Mecca, and visiting Medina, before returning to Cordoba around 1009 amid the civil strife that was tearing apart the Umayyad state. He later moved through al-Andalus and eventually settled in Denia on the eastern coast, under the Taifa ruler Mujahid al-Amiri; his nisba "al-Dani" derives from that city, where he taught, wrote, and died.
Al-Dani was extraordinarily prolific; the later biographer al-Dhahabi credits him with some 120 works. His best-known are al-Taysir fi al-qira'at al-sab' ("The Facilitation of the Seven Readings"), a concise teaching manual that, traditionally about a century later, the poet al-Shatibi recast into the celebrated verse poem Hirz al-Amani (the Shatibiyya), and al-Muqni' fi rasm masahif al-amsar, a foundational treatise on Qur'anic orthography. He was a Maliki by legal school.
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CordobaקורדובהAl-Andalus, Spain
What they did here
Born in 981 (AH 371) in or near Cordoba, then capital of the Umayyad caliphate of al-Andalus; sources place his birth in the suburb/village of Quta Rasha. He is reported to have begun formal study in the city's schools around age fourteen.
About Cordoba
Córdoba, on the Guadalquivir in Andalusia, southern Spain, came under Roman rule in the 3rd century BCE and, as Colonia Patricia, became capital of the province of Baetica; Seneca was a native. Taken by Muslim forces in 711 or 712, it became the seat of the Umayyad emirate founded by Abd al-Rahman I in 756 and of the caliphate proclaimed in 929, which ended in 1031. Its Great Mosque was begun in the 780s. The city was the birthplace of the Islamic scholars Ibn Hazm, Ibn Rushd (Averroes), later its chief judge, and the Quran commentator al-Qurtubi, and of the Jewish philosopher Maimonides (usually dated 1138). Ferdinand III of Castile captured Córdoba in 1236, and the mosque became a cathedral.
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