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Language & Literature
Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad
Author of Kitab al-Ayn and prosody — 718–786 CE / Basra
Founder of Kitab al-Ayn, the first dictionary in the history of languages ordered phonetically — an Arabic lexicon preceding the whole European lexicographic concept. He invented prosody with twenty metres by which Arabic poetry is still measured, and his student Sibawayh carried grammar from him.