Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Sarī al-Zajjāj (Arabic: أبو إسحاق إبراهيم بن محمد بن السري الزجاج) was a grammarian of Basrah, a scholar of philology and theology and a favourite at the Abbāsid court.
[2][3][4] Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad al-Sarī (Surrī) al-Zajjāj had been a glass-grinder – al-Zajjāj means 'the glassman' – before abandoning this trade to study philology under the two leading grammarians, al-Mubarrad of the Baṣran school and Tha'lab of the Kufan school.
Al-Mubarrad proposed his friend and relative novice al-Zajjāj, who was commissioned to work on just two sections as a trial of his abilities.
[n 6] Winning the caliph's favour, he received a royal pension of three hundred gold dīnār from three official roles as court companion, jurist and scholar.
Abū Alī al-Fārisī wrote a treatise in refutation of al-Zajjāj, titled Kitāb al-masā’il al-maslahat yurwiha ‘an az-Zajjāj wa-tu’raf bi-al-Aghfāl (كتاب المسائل المصلحة يرويها عن الزجاج وتعرف بالاغفال); the Aghfāl ('Negligences', or 'Beneficial (Corrected) Questions'), in which he refutes al-Zajjāj in his book Maāni (Rhetoric).