Awn al-Din Abu'l-Muzzafar Yahya ibn Hubayra al-Shaybani al-Duri al-Baghdadi (Arabic: أبو المظفر عون الدين يحيي بن هبيرة الشيباني; 1105-1165), commonly referred to as Ibn Hubayra, was a 12th-century Iraqi Arab official and a Hanbali jurist, who served for sixteen years as vizier of the Abbasid Caliphate under Caliph al-Muqtafi, and his successor al-Mustanjid.

Biography

Ibn Hubayra was born on Rabi II 499 A.H. (December 1105 / January 1106 CE) in Dur, a village northwest of Baghdad. As a youth, he went to Baghdad where he received a classical Arabic education under several masters, studying the Qur'an, Arabic linguistics, and the Hanbali school of Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh).^[1] He was appointed as the chief of the treasury by caliph al-Muqtafi,^{[citation needed]} and in 1149, he was appointed as the vizier (chief minister) of the Caliphate, a post he kept for sixteen years until his death on 27 March 1165, commonly attributed to poisoning through his physician, who was in the pay of his rivals.^[1]

His vizierate marked the final decline of the Seljuq influence in the Abbasid court (cf. Siege of Baghdad (1157)), and saw a flowering of Hanbali learning in Baghdad. Ibn Hubayra was also involved in the conquest of Fatimid Egypt by Nur ad-Din Zangi.^[1]

Works

Ibn Hubayra was also an accomplished scholar. He published a multi-volume commentary on the Sahih al-Bukhari and the Sahih Muslim collections of hadith, entitled al-Ifṣāḥ ‘an ma‘ānĩ'l Ṣiḥāḥ or al-Ishrāf. He also wrote a grammar called al-Muqtaṣaḍ, an abridgment of Ibn al-Sikkit's Iṣlāḥ al-manṭiq, the al-‘Ibādāt al-khams, the Urjūza fi‘l-maqsūr wa‘l-mamdūd, and Urjūza fi ‘ilm al-khaṭṭ.^[1] A collection of his sayings was compiled by his contemporary Abu'l-Faraj ibn al-Jawzi (al-Muqtabas min al-fawā‘id al-‘Awniyya), who also published an anthology from the al-Ifṣāḥ. Ibn al-Jawzi's works are the main source on Ibn Hubayra's life, along with a biography by the Hanbali scholar Ibn al-Maristaniyya^[1]