al-Mubarrad

al-Mubarrad (born March 25, 826, Basra, Iraq—died October 898, Baghdad) was an Arab grammarian and literary scholar whose Al-Kāmil (“The Perfect One”) is a storehouse of linguistic knowledge.

After studying grammar in Basra, al-Mubarrad was called to the court of the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Mutawakkil at Sāmarrāʾ in 860. When the caliph was killed in 861, al-Mubarrad went to Baghdad, remaining there most of his life as a teacher. In Al-Kāmil, al-Mubarrad gives excerpts from Arab poetry and proverbs and from Arab history and the Ḥadīth (traditions of the prophet Muḥammad) and subjects them to grammatical and literary scrutiny.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Encyclopaedia Britannica.