HAMMAD (Abul-Qasim Hammad ibn Abi Laila Sapur [or ibn Maisara]) (A.D. 70o), Arabic scholar, was of Dailamite descent, but was born in Kufa. He was reputed to be the most learned man of his time in regard to the "days of the Arabs" (i.e., their chief battles), their stories, poems, gene alogies and dialects. He is said to have boasted that he could recite a hundred long qasidas for each letter of the alphabet (i.e., rhyming in each letter) and these chiefly from pre-Islamic times. Hence his name Hammad ar-Rawiya, "the reciter of verses from memory." He was favoured by Yazid II. and his successor Hisham, who brought him up from Irak to Damascus. To him is ascribed the collecting of the Mo`allakat (q.v.). No diwan of his is extant, though he composed verse of his own.
Biography in McG. de Slane's trans. of Ibn Khallikan, vol. i. and many stories are told of him in the Kitab ul-Aghani, vol. v.