Career
Abu Ubaida was a controversial figure. Later scholar Ibn Qutaybah remarked that Abu Ubaida "hated Arabs," though his contemporaries still considered him perhaps the most well-rounded scholar of his age. Whether or not Abu Ubaida was truly a supporter of the Shu'ubiyya is a matter of debate.
Abu Ubaida was said to have originally been Jewish. In his youth, he was a pupil of Abu 'Amr ibn al-'Ala', Yunus ibn Habib and Al-Akhfash al-Akbar, was later a contemporary of Al-Asma'i, and in 803 he was called to Baghdad by the Caliph Harun al-Rashid. In one incident recounted by numerous historians, the Caliph al-Rashid brought forth a horse and asked both al-Asma'i and Abu 'Ubaida (who had also written extensively about zoology) to identify the correct terms for each part of the horse's anatomy.
Abu 'Ubaida excused himself from the challenge, saying that he was a linguist and anthologist rather than a veterinarian. Al-Asma'i then leaped onto the horse, identified every part of its body and gave examples from Bedouin Arab poetry establishing the terms as proper Arabic vocabulary. He was one of the most learned and authoritative scholars of his time in all matters pertaining to the Arabic language, antiquities and stories, and is constantly cited by later authors and compilers.
Al-Jahiz held him to be the most learned scholar in all branches of human knowledge, and Ibn Hisham accepted his interpretation even of passages in the Qur'an. Although Abu 'Ubaida couldn't recite a single verse of the Qur'an without committing errors in pronunciation, he was considered an expert on the linguistic meanings of the verses, especially in regard to rarely used vocabulary. He died in Basra in 825.
The exact nature of Abu Ubaida's religious and ethnocentric views is a matter of debate. In Chisolm's description, he delighted in showing that words, fables, customs, etc., which the Arabs believed to be peculiarly their own, were derived from the Persians. In these matters he was the great rival of al-Asma’i.
Abu Ubaida's views differed sharply in regard to Arabic and the Qur'an. He denied that the Qur'an contained any non-Arabic vocabulary, a position to which later commentators such as Al-Suyuti were opposed. Regardless of any controversy, Abu Ubaida's influence is well known.
