Abūʾl-Ḥusayn Hilāl b. Muḥassin b. Ibrāhīm al-Ṣābīʾ (Arabic: ابو الحسين هلال بن محسن بن ابراهيم الصابئ) (born: 358 A.H./c. 969 A.D., died: 447-448 A.H./1056 A.D.) (aged 90 lunar) was a historian, bureaucrat, and writer of Arabic. Born into a family of Sabian bureaucrats, al-Ṣābi converted to Islam in 402-403 A.H/1012 AD.. First working under the Buyid amir Ṣamṣām al-Dawla, he later became the Director of the Chancery under Baha' al-Daula's vizier Fakhr al-Mulk.
Works
Hilal al-Sabi' is the author of numerous books, not all of which have survived. Bureaucratic matters and matters of the court were his main themes, along with history.
The Rules and Regulations of the Abbasid Court - (Arabic: رسوم دار الخلافة Rusum dar al-khilafa)
Perhaps his most famous book is the Rusum dar al-khilafa which is a manual for behavior and work in the Abbasid court of late Buyid Baghdad. Though it is designed as a set of instructions and advice, the book contains numerous statistics, anecdotes and historical asides.
The Book of Viziers - (Arabic: كتاب الوزراء Kitab al-wuzara)
Only the beginning of this work has survived, which deals with the viziers of the caliphs Al-Mu'tadid and Al-Muqtadir, namely Ali ibn al-Furat, Muhammad al-Haqqani, and Ali ibn Isa. The work was composed sometime between 1031 and 1041 AD. It notably preserves a detailed budget of the Abbasid court, presented by Hilal al-Sabi as dating to al-Mu'tadid's reign but believed by some scholars to have actually been intended for al-Muqtadir, possibly as a memorandum during a period of financial difficulty. This budget has been used by modern historians as a rare source of information on state expenditures in a premodern Islamic polity.
History of Hilal al-Sabi' - (Arabic: تاريخ ابي الحسين هلال بن المحسن بن ابراهيم الصابي Tarikh Hilal al-Sabi)
This too survives only in fragmentary form, but its fragments fill a gap in the chronicles of the late Buyid era, up to the year 393 hijri (1003 AD).
See also :Category:Sabian scholars from the Abbasid Caliphate Al-Battani Thābit ibn Qurra List of Muslim historians Islamic scholars Sabians
References
Bibliography
Hilāl al-Sābi’. Rusūm Dār al-Khilāfa: The Rules and Regulations of the Abbasid Court. Trans. Elie A. Salem. American University of Beirut, 1977.