This chapter explores Ibn Aʿtham's biography. Firstly, the remarkably diverse dates proposed for Ibn Aʿtham's life in the scholarly literature since the 1790s are reviewed (1.1). Secondly, it scrutinises selected data of chronological implications provided by the Kitāb al-futūḥ itself to propose a new date for Ibn Aʿtham's floruit and possible date of death (1.2). Thirdly, it analyses the available Arabic biographical sources referring to Ibn Aʿtham alongside their possible network of connections to each other (1.3). In doing so, I will dedicate separate discussions to all those arguments from previous scholarly literature that have a crucial role in dating Ibn Aʿtham but have not been studied thoroughly.

1 Arguments in Favour of a 2nd/8th-, a 3rd/9th- and a 4th/10th-Century Date

As emphasised above, modern scholarship had a long way to go until finding a key piece of evidence which finally opened a new avenue for ascribing Ibn Aʿtham to the 4th/10th century. In describing the main line of evolution, I decided to follow the chronology of the appearances of given dates in modern scholarly studies. In this, I made an exception when discussing Ferdinand Wüstenfeld's proposed date, published in 1882, before entering into a detailed treatment of the one suggested by Christian Fraehn in 1834. The reason for doing so was the various levels of their impact. As none of Ouseley's nor Lees's dates gained currency, I lumped them together at the beginning of the chapter (1.1.1), alongside Wüstenfeld's lesserknown entry on Ibn Aʿtham (1.1.2).

In contrast, the date proposed by Fraehn exercised a real influence on later scholarship. Therefore, it seemed prudent to discuss Fraehn (1.1.3) as a starting point of the subsequent discourse to keep the logic of events. In order to show how long a shadow Fraehn's assumption actually cast, I trace this long development in a continuous discussion up to the present instead of dispersing the coherent pieces of information to different units for keeping a strict chronological order (1.1.4).

It is followed by the discussion of the only date (204/819), which challenged Fraehn's widespread 926 (1.1.5 and 1.1.6). I will present that the early 3rd/9thcentury date has been known in scholarly literature as early as the 1920s. The chapter terminates with a review of an early 5th/11th-century source concerning Ibn Aʿtham which has given a new direction to studying Ibn Aʿtham's biography during the last few years (1.1.8).