Grammarians of Kufa

Al-Kūfah began as a military base ca. 670 near Ḥīrah on the western branch of the Euphrates river and grew, as had its counterpart at Al-Basrah thirty years earlier also grown, from an encampment into a town that attracted the great intellectual elites from across the region.[1] The first grammarian of al-Kūfah was Al-Ru'āsī who lived in the eighth century, whereas the earliest scholars of the School at Baṣrah, lived during the seventh century.[2] The great intellectual project that developed out of both schools of philology, created the sciences of Arabic grammar and lexicography. What emerged from an impetus to interpret the sacred texts of the Qu’rān and Ḥadīth, by humanists of al-Baṣrah and al-Kūfah, led to a communal quest for the purest, least corrupt, Arabic source material, for which they turned to the Pre-Islamic oral poetry as recited by the rāwī. The compositions of famous poets were collected, arranged, and committed to writing. [3] The grammarians of al-Baṣrah and al-Kūfah collected the ancient Arabian poetry and arranged the material into “Dīwān” (pl. Dawāwan) according to certain principles; either by classes of individuals, tribal groupings, selected qaṣīdas, or by themes of fragments, and edited into anthologies. Examples of their works are the Mu’allaqāt, and the Mufaḍḍaliyāt by al-Mufaḍḍal al-Ḍabbī.[4]