Thaʽlab (ثعلب), whose kunya was Abū al-ʽAbbās Aḥmad ibn Yaḥyā (ابو العباس احمد بن يحيى) (815 – 904) was a renowned authority on grammar, a muhaddith (traditionist), a reciter of poetry, and first scholar of the school of al-Kūfah, and later at Baghdād.
'[4] Thaʽlab was adopted by the military-leader-come-poet Maʽn ibn Zāʽidah,[n 4][7][8] of the Banū Shaybān, and became a grammarian, philologist, and traditionist of the Kūfah school.
Thaʽlab describes an occasion being at the home of Aḥmad ibn Saʽīd with a group of scholars, amongst whom were al-Sukkarī[n 5] and Abū al-ʽĀliyah[n 6].
Abū Abd Allāh al-Rūdbāri interpreted this to mean that the study of oral language is above all the other sciences – tafsir (exegesis), Ḥadīth (tradition), fiqh (Law) – as it perfects and connects these to discourse.
Thaʽlab, was invited but declined to take a commission by the vizier al-Qāsim to write a commentary on the book Compendium of Speech by Maḥbarah al-Nadīm,[n 7] which the caliph Al-Muʽtaḍid had ordered.