Abū Ḥanīfa Dīnawarī

Ābu Ḥanīfah Āḥmad ibn Dawūd Dīnawarī
Title	Al-Dinawari
Born	212-213 A.H /815 CE
Died	282-283 A.H/ 896 (aged 80–81)
Era	Islamic golden age
Occupation	Muslim scholar
Religion	Islam
Main interest(s)	botanist, historian, geographer, metallurgy, astronomer and mathematician

Ābu Ḥanīfah Āḥmad ibn Dawūd Dīnawarī (815–896 CE, Arabic: أبو حنيفة الدينوري‎‎) was an Islamic Golden Age polymath, astronomer, agriculturist, botanist, metallurgist, geographer, mathematician, and historian. He was born in the region of Dinawar, halfway between Hamadan and Kermanshah in modern-day western Iran. He studied astronomy, mathematics and mechanics in Isfahan and philology and poetry in Kufa and Basra. He died in Dinawar. His most renowned contribution is Book of Plants, for which he is considered the founder of Arabic botany. He was of Iranian origin.

He is the author of about fifteen works

His General History (al-Akhbar al-Tiwal) has been edited and published numerous times (Vladimir Guirgass, 1888; Muhammad Sa'id Rafi'i, 1911; 'Abd al-Munim 'Amir & Jamal al-din Shayyal, 1960; Isam Muhammad al-Hajj 'Ali, 2001), but has not been translated in its entirety into a European language. Jackson Bonner has recently prepared an English translation of the pre-Islamic passages of al-Akhbar al-Tiwal.

Al-Dinawari is considered the founder of Arabic botany for his Kitab al-Nabat (Book of Plants), which consisted of six volumes. Only the third and fifth volumes have survived, though the sixth volume has partly been reconstructed based on citations from later works. In the surviving portions of his works, 637 plants are described from the letters sin to ya. He describes the phases of plant growth and the production of flowers and fruit.

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