Extract from the Encyclopaedia of Islam CD-ROM Edition v.1.

ABD - AMD . Ya y . Sa d
, the founder of Arabic epistolary style, mawl of the ura clan of mir b. Lu ayy. He was probably a
native of al-Anbr, and is said to have been a travelling pedagogue before he was employed in the
Umayyad secretariat under Hi m's chief secretary, the mawl Slim; he was then attached to Marwn b.
Mu ammad, whom he continued to serve as chief secretary after Marwn's accession to the Caliphate. He
refused to desert his master in misfortune and is generally said to have shared his fate at B r on 26
u
'l- i ! !a 132/5 August 750. According to another account he took refuge in the house of his disciple Ibn
al-Mu"affa , but was traced and seized. His descendants continued to live in Egypt under the name of Banu
'l-Muh !ir and furnished secretaries to A mad b. %ln.
The surviving compositions of Abd al- amd, comprising six formal ras il and a few chancery pieces
and private letters, exhibit a remarkable divergence of styles. His most elaborate risla, a long epistle
addressed to Marwn's son and heir Abd Allh, with advice on personal conduct, ceremonial, and the
conduct of war, is composed in a language and style based on the idioms, rhythms, and vivid metaphors of
Arabic poetry and rhetoric, but elaborated by the addition of often lengthy sequences of qualifying clauses.
Since the same style appears in most of his other official ras il, it can only be conjectured (in the absence of
earlier secretarial documents) that this featureunusual in both earlier and later Arabic styleis to be
traced to Greek influences in the Umayyad secretariat. [I 66a]
His most famous risla, on the other hand, that addressed to the Secretaries (kuttb), setting forth the
dignity of their office and their responsabilities, is fluent, simple and straightforward. A comparison of its
contents with the writings of Ibn al-Mu"affa and later quotations from Persian works shows clearly that it is
inspired by the tradition of the Ssnid secretariat, and largely reproduces with an Islamic gloss the maxims
of the Iranian dibhrs (see A. Christensen, L'Iran sous les Sassanides2, Copenhagen, 1944, 132 ff.). Also of
Persian inspiration, and quite distinct from the traditional Arabic presentation of the subject, is his risla
describing the incidents of a hunt, evidently written for the entertainment of the court. A large proportion
of the maxims addressed to the prince in the first risla mentioned above are also derived from Ssnid
court ceremonial and usages, although the military instructions are more probably influenced by Greek
tactics, either through literary channels or from actual experience in the Byzantine wars.
It would appear, therefore, that both views expressed by later Arabic critics in regard to Abd al- amd
are justified, in spite of their apparent incompatibility. On the one hand is the statement (e.g. al- Askar,
Dwn al-Ma n, ii, 89) that " Abd al- amd extracted from the Persian tongue the modes of secretarial
composition which he illustrated, and transposed them into the Arabic tongue". On the other hand there is
the description of him (e.g. Ibn Abd Rabbih, al- I d al-Fard, ii, 169 (1321) = iv, 165 (1944/1363) as having
been "the first to open up the buds of rhetoric, to smooth out its ways, and to loosen poetry from its bonds".
He was also a master of pithy epigram, several examples of which are recorded in the adab works.
(H.A.R. Gibb*)
!ah iyr, Wuzar (Mzik), 68-83 (Cairo 1938, 45-54)
Ista* r, 145
Ibn + allikn, no. 378 (trad. de Slane, ii, 173-5)
amharat Ras il al- Arab, ed. A. Z. ,afwat, Cairo 1937, ii, 433-8, 473-556 (edition of the ras il from the
MS. of A mad b. Ab %hir %ayfr)
M. Kurd Al, Ras il al-Bula ! 2, Cairo 1946, 173-226
idem. in MMIA, ix, 513-31, 557-600 ( = Umar al-Bayn, Cairo 1937, i, 38-98)
%h usayn, Min $ad%! al-&!i r wa 'l-Na%!r2, Cairo 1948, 34-52
Brockelmann, S I, 105.

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