1. The terms kataba and kitāba (“to write” and “writing”), often used with reference to the quality of Ibn al-‘Adīm's handwriting, also emphasize the fact that he was a prolific author, another possible interpretation of his teacher's statement: “If this child lives, no one will be able to compete with his writing” (la yakūn fī al-‘ālam aktab minhu). Other terms used in the text in reference to his writing are khaṭṭ (tracing, inscribing) and tajwīd (perfecting, beautifying). [BACK]

2. In fact, no other member of the family is known by this name, whether in Yāqūt's biographical compendium or elsewhere. This suggests that the name was even more recent than Ibn al-‘Adīm implies and that it was attached primarily to him because of his father who had suffered great losses in his life and career. This explains why Ibn al-‘Adīm could not find any explanation for it. It also explains why the issue was considered important enough to be raised and included in the account. From the outset, Yāqūt allows his subject to rationalize a name that is the antithesis of ni‘ma, the blessings that autobiographers often cite as a reason for writing accounts of their lives. [BACK]

3. Ibn al-‘Adīm's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. [BACK]

5. Ibid., 35–36. [BACK]

6. Bism means “in the name of” and is the first word of the basmalah [bism Allāh al-raḥmān al-raḥīm], “In the name of God the All-Merciful, the All-Compassionate,” a favorite subject for calligraphic art and commonly placed at the top of the opening page of any piece of writing. [BACK]

7. Ibn Bawwāb (d. 1022) is the copyist of the first known cursive-script Qur’ān manuscript (Chester Beatty Library, 1431, dated [A.H. 391/1000–1 C.E.). His achievement, according to the medieval commentators, was to refine the methods invented by Ibn Muqla, investing the script with “elegance and splendor.” Ibn Muqla (d. 940), who also appears in Yāqūt's entry on Ibn al-‘Adīm, is the ‘Abbāsid minister who reformed Qur’ānic scripts through the invention of the “six pens,” or types of writing. This reform replaced the older Qur’ānic scripts with new ones whose primary qualities were clarity and precision. An important study of these reforms, which places them within the context of ‘Abbāsid-Fatimid polemics, is Yasser Tabbaa, “The Transformation of Arabic Writing: Part I, Qur’ānic Calligraphy,” Ars Orientalis 21 (1991): 119–48. Nuha N. N. Khoury is currently preparing a study on the implications of the text for the aesthetics and meaning of Ibn al-‘Adīm's writing. [BACK]

8. Al-Qudūrī (d. 1037) is the author of al-Mukhtaṣar, one of two foundational texts on Ḥanafī jurisprudence (the other being the Mabsūṭ of Sarakhsī, d. 1090). The Luma‘, the author of which is not mentioned, is probably Ibn Jinnī's work on Arabic language and grammar or another short treatise on law. This “curriculum” implies that Ibn al‘Adīm was being groomed by his father for a career in law. [BACK]

9. The letters cited in the poem (q-r-y-b) spell out the Arabic word “relative,” qarīb. [BACK]

10. The early appearance of gray hair plays a similarly prominent role in the autobiography of Ibn al-‘Adīm's contemporary, Abū Shāma (translated in this volume). [BACK]