Middle East studies scholarship has hardly taken notice of one of the largest controversies of Arabo-Islamic culture not over ethnicity (Shu`ubiyya) but class. In Late Antiquity, 'hasab'; in Arabic denoted 'merit/worth'; by lineage, semantically close to nasab-pedigree, much like the idea in 'chip off the old block.' Then in ninth-century Iraq, a coded revolution erupted, not on the fields of Karbala, but in oral and written form in poetry, prose, and lexicons—sources of adab-humanities. Linguists and poets used verbal tradition and innovation to expand the meaning for hasab, across four centuries, from Ibn al-Sikkit (d. 858) to Ibn Manẓur (d. 1311). While acknowledging the older definition, linguists promoted new usages where hasab is defined by 'the individual, though his forebears lack pedigree' (Ibn al-Sikkit). Genealogists likewise collaborated by fine-tuning the genre of pedigree takedown (mathalib) to de-mythologize lineage. Two camps developed: the High-Born (Ahl al-Sharaf) who elevated the traditional nasab-aristocracy and Egalitarians (Ahl al-Taswiya) who used new linguistics and “mathalib” to verbally construct social equality. The latter vision, if realized, would widen access to respectability for the unpedigreed lower classes. The Egalitarians repurposed archaic Brigand (Su`luk) and Kharijite poetry about individual piety, courage, and generosity, thus conceiving of virtues as self-made. This paper traces their revolution and contextualizes it: First, I situate it in the theoretical discourses of the time, namely edogenous theory in Jahiz’s Rasa’il [Epistles], Ibn Qutayba’s al-Ma`arif [Types of Knowledge] and the linguistic praxis of Abu Nuwas (d. 814), Ibn al-Rumi (d. 896), and Ibn al-Mu`tazz (d. 908) to the lexicons of Ibn al-A`rabi (d. 846), al-Hamadhani (d. 932), Ibn Durayd (d. 933), Ibn Marzuban (d. 956), al-Azhari (d. 980). Second, I contextualize it within the structural transformations in society. Trade networks emerged, enabling non-elites to gain access to investment and commercial opportunities as early as the ninth century, and they built fortunes. But wealth was not enough. Ibn Qutayba noted their precarious status, neither “royalty nor rabble,” and observed their awkwardness in the salons of elites, where they vied for recognition with the High-Born. Beyond material comfort, they sought the ontological benefits associated with adab and hasab, namely self-cultivation and respectability. In Habermasian terms, they gained a sense of themselves as a public, with common concerns about self and society, distinct from elites. We have access to the poetry they commissioned to immortalize themselves, which created a linguistic sphere to raise open-ended questions of ontology.