Muhammad al-Khushani
Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. al-Ḥārith al-Khushanī, or Al-Khushanī of Qayrawān (born Kairouan around the early tenth century CE; died Córdoba, ?981 CE), was an Arab historian, jurist and judge. Life. Al-Khushanī was born in Khushan in Kairouan, in Tunisia under the Umayyads. He studied in his home town and Tunis. However, in 923, following the rise of the Fatamid conquest in Tunisia, al-Khushani fled, like other Maliki scholars at the time. He went first to Ceuta, where he taught, and then on to the Umayyad court in Cordoba. In Spain, studying  especially with Ḳāsim ibn Aṣbagh, he completed his legal training, and gained the patronage of the prince and later caliph in Cordoba, al-Ḥakam II. Al-Khushanī served accordingly as "qāḍī" of inheritances in Pechina; then as "shūrā" in Cordoba. He also practiced alchemy and medicine, perhaps subsisting on these after the death of al-Ḥakam in 976. The year of al-Khushanī's death is not certain. Some biographers give 981, but other dates circulated; they 'knew very little information about the last years of his life'. Works. It is thought that al-Khushanī composed around a hundred works  under the patronage of al-Ḥakam. Titles of works which seem not to have survived but are attributed to al-Khushanī include: Of his surviving works, his biographical studies are most noted: According to Pellat, al-Khushanī was also 'something of a poet (though accused of committing faults here)'. References.