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  • Before 1400: The Ancient and Medieval Worlds (5)

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Article

Callimachus of Kyrene  

Duane W. Roller

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
30 September 2013

was a major poet and scholar of the third century BCE. He was born at the end of the previous century in Kyrene (also Cyrene), the important Greek city on the coast of Africa west of Egypt in present-day Libya. He was of distinguished background: his homonymous grandfather was a member of the ruling elite of the city. The younger Callimachus immigrated to Alexandria in Egypt at an early age and became an intimate at the court of Ptolemaios II (who came to the throne in early 282 BCE). Callimachus was part of the developing intellectual presence around the Ptolemies, which at that time included the mathematician Euclid and the poets Theokritos and Apollonios of Rhodes. He was especially close to the queen, Arsinoë II, and wrote her eulogy.

When Arsinoë died around 270 BCE Callimachus may have fallen out of favor since little is known about him for ...

Article

Gallus, Gaius Cornelius  

Eugenio Fantusati

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

Roman writer and prefect in Egypt, was born in Fréjus, in present-day France, in 69 BCE. Before devoting himself to a political career, he showed significant literary talent. He belonged to the neoteric school— a poetic society inspired by the Alexandrine traditions—of Valerius Cato and Catullus and composed four books of elegies, now almost entirely lost, entitled Amores, in which he mourned over his unlucky love for the young girl Lycoris.

A personal friend of Augustus and Virgil Gallus received his first political appointment at the age of thirty eight when immediately after the Battle of Actium he was named to the position of praefectum fabrum supervisor of the corps of engineers in Cyrenaica There with the cooperation of Pinarius Scarpa the commander of Antony s forces in Libya he had ensured the obedience of the rebellious countries thereby depriving Antony of the possibility of mounting a defense in ...

Article

Ibn Rashiq  

Russell Hopley

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

literary theorist, poet, anthologist, was born in Masila in the region of Constantine, a city in present-day Algeria, to a family of Arab origin. Hasan al-Qayrawani al-Azdi al-Masili Ibn Rashiq displayed an early interest in Arabic literature, and following his primary education in Masila he was sent to al-Qayrawan in 1015/1016 to pursue his secondary studies. There he was able to study under some of the most eminent literary figures of eleventh-century Ifriqiya (present-day Tunisia), among them the grammarian Abu ʿAbd Allah al-Qazzaz, and the poets Ibrahim al-Husri, Abu Muhammad al-Khushani, and Abu Muhammad ʿAbd al-Karim al-Nahshali. This latter was, like Ibn Rashiq, a native of Masila, and his principal work, al-Mumtiʿ fi ʿilm al-shʿir wa ʿamalih, served as Ibn Rashiq’s introduction to classical Arabic poetry, as it did for an entire generation of North African poets.

An accomplished poet by the age of nineteen Ibn Rashiq became a ...

Article

Ibn Sharaf, Abu ʿAbd Allah Muhammad ibn Abi Saʿid al-Jidhami al-Qayrawani  

Russell Hopley

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
30 September 2013

poet, litterateur, and historian, was born in the Tunisian city of al-Qayrawan to a family of Arab origin. Ibn Sharaf received his education in the Islamic sciences at the hand of several North African luminaries of the eleventh century, including the eminent jurists Abu al-Hasan al-Qabisi (d. 1012) and Abu ‘Imran al-Fasi (d. 1039), who provided the young pupil with a thorough training in Islamic jurisprudence. Ibn Sharaf also studied with Abu ‘Abd Allah al-Qazzaz (d. 1021–1022) in the fields of Arabic grammar and lexicography, and he was introduced to classical Arab literature by the poet and belle-lettrist Ibrahim al-Husri (d. 1022). It is likely that Ibn Sharaf received his initial exposure to Arab verse by studying the poetic selections found in the anthology al-Mumti‘ fi ‘ilm al-sh‘ir wa ‘amalih a work that served to initiate an entire ...

Article

‘Iyad, Musa ibn ‘Amrun al-Yahsubi al-Sabti  

Russell Hopley

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
30 September 2014

jurist, historian, and litterateur, was born in the city of Sabta (present-day Ceuta) to an Arab family with origins in the Yemen. ‘Iyad's training in the various branches of Islamic learning was remarkably thorough. He undertook his early education in Sabta at the hand of several scholars, including the jurist ‘Abd Allah ibn ‘Isa and the faqih ‘Ali Abu Ishaq al-Fasi. He then traveled to al-Andalus, and there exists notice that he studied there with no fewer than a hundred scholars, among them several leading figures of the age, including the traditionist Abu ‘Ali al-Sadafi of Murcia (d. 1120/21), the jurist Abu al-Walid ibn Rushd of Cordoba (d. 1126), and the religious scholar and jurist Abu Bakr ibn al-‘Arabi of Seville (d. 1148).

Unlike many of his fellow North Africans it appears that Iyad never made the journey to ...