Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi

Abu ‘Abd ar-Raḥmān al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad ibn ‘Amr ibn Tammām al-Farāhīdī al-Azdī al-Yaḥmadī, known as al-Farāhīdī, or al-Khalīl, was an Arab philologist, lexicographer and leading grammarian of Basra in Iraq. He made the first dictionary of the Arabic language – and the oldest extant dictionary – Kitab al-'Ayn – introduced the now standard harakat system, and was instrumental in the early development of ʿArūḍ, musicology and poetic metre. His linguistic theories influenced the development of Persian, Turkish, Kurdish, and Urdu prosody. The "Shining Star" of the Basran school of Arabic grammar, a polymath and scholar, was a man of genuinely original thought.