Abū Bakr az-Zubaydī (أبو بكر الزبيدي), also known as Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan ibn ‘Abd Allāh ibn Madḥīj al-Faqīh and Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan az-Zubaydī al-Ishbīlī (محمد بن الحسن الزبيدي الإشبيلي), held the title Akhbār al-fuquhā[1] and wrote books on topics including philology, biography, history, philosophy, law, lexicology, and hadith.
Az-Zubaydī was a native of Seville, al-Andalus (present-day Spain), whose ancestor, Bishr ad-Dākhil ibn Ḥazm of Yemeni origin, had come with the Umayyads to al-Andalus from Ḥimṣ in the Levant (Syria).
[citation needed] Az-Zubaydī moved to Córdoba, the seat of the Umayyad Caliphate, to study under Abū ‘Alī al-Qālī.
His scholarship on the philologist Sībawayh’s grammar, Al-Kitāb, led to his appointment as tutor to the son of the humanist caliph Ḥakam II, the crown prince Hishām II.
[citation needed] At the Caliph’s encouragement, az-Zubaydī composed many books on philology, and biographies of philologists and lexicographers.