Al-Dānī was born in 981 in the village of Qūta Rāsha, a suburb ofCórdoba.[6] His family was related to the reigningUmayyad dynasty.[4] The main source for al-Dānī's life is a short autobiography incorporated into the biographical dictionary ofYāqūt.[4] According to his own account, he began his formal education in the seminaries of Córdoba at the age of fourteen. On 29 September 1006, he set out forKairouan, where he studiedḥadīth (traditions). After four months, he moved toCairo.[4][7] The following year, he undertook theḤajj toMecca and also stayed inMedina.[8] In Mecca, he studiedḥadīth,fiqh (jurisprudence) andadab (etiquette).[4][5] It was there that Abū Muslim Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Kātib introduced him to the seven canonicalqiraʾāt (Qurʾānic readings) ofAbū Bakr Ibn Mujāhid'sKitāb al-sabʿa.[5]
From Mecca, al-Dānī returned to Córdoba, stopping in Egypt and Kairouan on the way.[4] He arrived back home in August 1009.[5][7] His return coincided with the start of theBerber uprising andfitna (civil war) that would culminate in the collapse of the Umayyad dynasty.[4][5] After four years of turmoil, he fled toZaragoza.[9] He remained there for seven years before moving to an unidentified place called al-Wuṭṭa.[4] In 1018, he moved to thetaifa of Dénia and earned the patronage of SultanMujāhid al-ʿĀmirī. He lived first in the capital,Dénia, and then spent eight years inMallorca.[4][5]Al-Dānī—thenisba by which he is now known—means "the one from Dénia".[3] In 1026, he returned to the capital to teach and write.[4] There he founded a school of Qurʾān recitation which drew student from far afield.[5]
Al-Dānī died in Dénia on 8 February 1053.[10] He was given a splendid funeral procession, with SultanʿAlī ibn Mujāhid Iqbāl al-Dawla [es] leading the cortège through the crowds.[5][7] The funeral prayers were recited by ʿAbd Allāh ibn Khumays al-Anṣārī and he was buried at the Bāb Indāra.[4] On account of his piety, al-Dānī was considered amujāb al-daʿwa (one whose prayers are answered).[5]
Al-Dānī wrote over one hundred works, of which 73 are known and about a third of that published. According toal-Dhahabī, he wrote 120 works, which he listed in anurjūza (poem).[11] His works mainly concern the Qurʾān and theḥadīth.[4] He wrote onqiraʾāt (Qurʾānic readings), including non-canonical readings;tafsīr (Qurʾānic exegesis);tajwīd (Qurʾānic pronunciation);Arabic orthography; andIslamic theology.[5]
Al-Dānī's most influential work was theKitāb al-Taysīr fī al-qirāʾāt al-sabʿa, a manual on the seven readings of the Qurʾān.[3][5] In the 12th century,al-Shāṭibī produced a versified version known as theShāṭibiyya. Al-Shāṭibī also versified al-Dānī'sKitāb al-Muqniʿ fī maʿrifat rasm maṣāḥif al-amṣār, a treatise on Qurʾānic orthography.[5] Al-Dānī wrote theKitāb al-Naqṭ as an addendum to theal-Muqniʿ summarizingArabic diacritics as used in the Qurʾān.[4] These three works have all been published. Among al-Dānī's other works, the following have been published:[12][13]
al-Farq bayn al-ḍād wa al-ẓāʾ fī Kitāb Allāh, explaining phonetic difference between Arabic lettersḍād andẓāʾ
al-Muḥkam fī naqṭ al-maṣāḥif
al-Muktafī fī al-waqf wa al-ibtidāʾ
al-Sunan al-wārida fī al-fitan, also known asal-Fitan wa al-malāḥim
^His full name was Abū ʿAmr ʿUthmān ibn Saʿīd ibn ʿUthmān ibn Saʿīd ibn ʿUmar al-Umawī al-Qurṭubī (Penelas 2014;Fesharaki 2015). According toArab naming conventions, Abū ʿAmr is akunya. His given name was ʿUthmān. "al-Umawī" and "al-Qurṭubī" refer to his Umayyad descent and home city, respectively.
^A contemporary nickname implying that his father or grandfather was a moneychanger (Penelas 2014).
^Bencheneb 1913 andFesharaki 2015 agree that he was in Kairouan between Muḥarram and Shawwāl in 397 AH and that he went on theḤajj in 398, but Bencheneb dates this to 1007, while Fesharaki andPenelas 2014 give the year as 1008.
^Bencheneb 1913 gives the exact day (equivalent to 14 Shawwāl 444) and day of the week (Monday).Penelas 2014 andFesharaki 2015 specify only the middle of Shawwāl or early February.
^Fesharaki 2015: "Abū ʿAmr al-Dānī left behind ... a corpus which apparently exceeds one hundred titles." He lists seven published and fourteen more in manuscript. Penelas 2014: "Al-Dhahabī states that al-Dānī wrote one hundred twenty books. ... Vizcaíno and Fakhri al-Wasif [Vizcaíno & Fakhri al-Wasif 2012] list as many as seventy-three titles, of which about a third have been edited." Lewis, Pellat & Schacht 1965: "Among more than 120 works which he wrote and enumerated himself in anurdjūza , only about ten are known." Bencheneb 1913: "Out of more than a hundred works from his pen enumerated by him in anOrdjūza we now possess only" nine.
Vizcaíno, J. M.; Fakhri al-Wasif, M. (2012). "al-Dānī, Abū ʿAmr". In Jorge Lirola Delgado; José Miguel Puerta Vílchez (eds.).Biblioteca de al-Andalus. Vol. 1: De al-ʿAbbādīya a Ibn Abyaḍ. Almería: Fundación Ibn Tufayl de Estudios Árabes. pp. 308–322.
