Ibn Khalawayh

(c. 900 - c. 980)

Born in Hamadan toward the end of the third Islamic century, grammarian and court tutor Ibn Khalawayh cemented his reputation as a smart-mouthed Persian among the Arab aristocracy while living in Aleppo, which was during his lifetime under continual threat of Byzantine aggression. His best-known text was Not in the Speech of the Arabs, in which his long list of lion names first appeared as a chapter. (Asiatic lions were endemic to Syria and were much less people-avoidant than African lions.) “Whether Names of the Lion conceals a secret message,” writes David Larsen, the text’s English translator, “is an inevitable question.”