The oldest known reference to a Turkic origin is given by the medieval historian Ibn Khallikan (died in 1282), who in his work Wafayat (completed in 669/1271) states that al-Farabi was born in the small village of Wasij near Farab (in what is today Otrar, Kazakhstan) of Turkic parents. Based on this account, some scholars say he is of Turkic origin. Dimitri Gutas, an American Arabist, criticizes this, saying that Ibn Khallikan 's account is aimed at the earlier historical accounts by Ibn Abi Usaybi'a, and serves the purpose to "prove" a Turkic origin for al-Farabi, for instance by mentioning the additional nisba (surname) "al-Turk" (arab. "the Turk")—a nisba al-Farabi never had. However, Abu al-Feda, who copied Ibn Khallekan, corrected this and changed al-Torkī to the phrase "wa-kana rajolan torkiyan", meaning "he was a Turkish man." In this regard, since works of such supposed Turks lack traces of Turkic nomadic culture, Oxford professor C.E. Bosworth notes that "great figures [such] as Farabi, Biruni, and Avicenna have been attached by over enthusiastic Turkish scholars to their race".