Ibn al- Aʿrābī became a scholar of the Arab tribes and of the poets of the Jahiliya (pre-Islamic) and Islamic era, up to the beginning of the rule of the Banū al-ʿAbbās.
[4] Conversely, he had a running feud with his uncle Abū Naṣr Aḥmad b. Ḥātim al-Bāhilī, who destested him.
[n 15] As a leading philologist, Ibn al- Aʿrābī was critical of rival scholars of rare linguistic expressions (al-kalām al-gharīb), and in particular of Abū Ubaydah[n 16] and al-Aṣma’ī.
[1] Al-Nadīm read Ibn al-Kūfī ʿs[n 21] account that Thaʿlab had heard him say he was born the night Abū Ḥanīfah died.
[3][1] Ibn al-Aʿrābī died in 846 (231 AH), in Surra Man Ra’ā, (i.e. the ancient name of Sāmarrā), Iraq, aged eighty years, four months and three days.
Among his books there were: Al-A'rābī's importance as a philologist, or linguistic scientist, of the Arab language, and his milieu, can be estimated by the account given by the tenth-century bibliophile Al-Nadim, who writing about a hundred and fifty years after the death of Ibn al-A'rābī, describes visiting the library in the city of al-Ḥadīthah of Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn, known as ʿIbn Abī Baʿrah’, who had received a collection of ancient writings from a Shī’ī book-collector of al-Kūfah.
Among the material on the sciences of Arabs and other nations, there were documents written on double parchment, deeds, taʿlīqāt,[n 27] poems, papers on grammar, anecdotes, historical traditions, names, genealogies, etc., on adam[n 28] skins and on paper from Egypt, China, Tihāmah, and Khurāsān; notes written in an ancient calligraphy by ʿAllān the Grammarian and al-Naḍr ibn Shumayl; and Ḥadīth authorities, such as Sufyān ibn ʿUyaynah, Sufyān al-Thawri, al-Awzāʿī.