[495] WE STILL HAVE TO MENTION a younger contemporary of Ibn Isḥāq, of whose Maghāzī fragments have been preserved for us in al-Wāqidī, in Ibn Sacd and elsewhere: Abū Ma‘shar, commonly called al-Sindā, from which it would seem that he himself or one of his forebears had come from Sind to Arabia. If Abū Nu‘aym is right, who states without citing his authority: “Abū Ma‘shar was a Sindū and he could not pronounce the Arabic sounds properly; for example he pronounced the name of Muḥammad ibn Ka‘b as if it had the sound of Qa‘b,” then we must take it that Abū Ma‘shar was born of non-Arab parents; but Sindū could equally well be applied to an Arab settled in Sind, for, since AH 92 Sind had been a province of the Arab caliphate. AbiI Ma‘shar,s grandson, Dawud ibn Muḥammad, states that his grandfather sprang from the Yemen, from which it is to be supposed, therefore, that Abū Ma‘shar,s father emigrated from Sind to the Yemen. The same grandson emphasizes the fact that Abū Mashar,s complexion was white,while Abū Mushir describes it as black.Abū Ma‘shar himself seems to have derived his descent—perhaps on the mother’s side—from the [496] Hanzala ibn Malik sept.His name, as another grandson of his, al-Husayn, informs us,was originally ‘Abd al-Rahmān ibn al-Walid, and only after he had been kidnapped and sold as a slave in Medina did his owners, who belonged to the Banu Asad, name him NajIh.What is here described as kidnapping appears in the report of another grandson, the Dawud already mentioned, as his capture “in the fight of YazId ibn al-Muhallab in al-Yamama and al- Bahrayn.”Later on the slave came into the possession of Umm Musa bint al-Mansūr the Himyarite, the bride of the caliph al-Mansūr and mother of the caliph al-MahdI,and this new mistress gave him his freedom.