Career
In his later years he acted as imam to the caliph Moqtafi. His chief work is the Kitab al-Mu'Arab, or Explanation of Foreign Words used in Arabic. The text was edited from an incomplete manuscript by Eduard Sachau (Leipzig, 1867).
Many of the lacunae in this have been supplied from another manuscript by W. Spitta in the Journal of the German Oriental Society, xxxiii. 208 sqq. Another work, written as a supplement to the Durrat ul-Ghawwas of Al-Hariri of Basra, has been published as Le Livre des locutions vicieuses, by H. Derenbourg in Morgenländische Forschungen (Leipzig, 1875).
