Arabic Grammar and Linguistics

Yasir Suleiman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781138963757
• eBook ISBN: 9781136109461
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book explores aspects of the Arabic Grammatical Tradition and Arabic Linguistics from both a theoretical and descriptive perspective. It also touches on issues of relevance to other disciplines, particularly Qur'anic exegesis and jurisprudence. The links between the fields of language and religion are historically strong in the Arabic and Islamic traditions as so much time and effort was spent by grammarians in interpreting the precise meanings of two of the main sources of Islamic jurisprudence - the Quran and Hadith. Prof Suleiman has assembled an international team of experts in this area and presents a thorough review of the sources and arguments. The book will be of interest to all students, researchers and teachers of Arabic Language and Culture.

PART I

ARABIC GRAMMAR

CHAPTER ONE

ZAYD IBN ‘ALĪ'S COMMENTARY ON THE QUR’ĀN

Kees Versteegh

One of the most controversial questions in the study of the Arabic grammatical tradition concerns its origins. Until recently the standard view on the emergence of the grammatical tradition in Islam regarded the Kitāb Sībawayhi, the first real publication, as the starting point of the tradition. Sometimes the entire tradition was regarded as one huge commentary on the Kitāb. Certainly, this standard view contains a kernel of truth: the Kitāb does constitute a turning point in the development of the tradition, and there can be no doubt that it remained the point of reference for all grammarians throughout that tradition. Yet, it has always been clear that Sibawayhi's work was not completely without a precursor: in the Kitāb he cites very frequently the opinions of his predecessors, such as Yūnus ibn Habīb, īsā ibn ‘Umar, Ibn 'Abi 'Ishāq, and of course al-Khalīl ibn 'Ahmad, and although there is no consensus regarding the nature of the linguistic work of these predecessors, I do not think anyone seriously doubts their preoccupation with the Arabic language as a phenomenon worthy of linguistic study and systematization. Whether the naḥwiyyūn in the Kitāb are to be regarded as true grammarians, as Baalbaki (1981), Talmon (1982) and Versteegh (1983a) feel, or as amateurs concerned with the correct way of speaking, as Carter (1968) believes, is really immaterial: whatever the true nature of their work, they certainly were involved in linguistic problems, although they did not publish any large-scale analysis of the structure of Arabic as Sībawayhi did.

But the predecessors named in the Kitāb were not the only scholars in the period preceding Sībawayhi. Recent investigations by Dévényi (1988, 1990), Kinberg (1990, 1996), Owens (1990) and Talmon (1985, 1990) have shown that the approach of the Kufan grammarians was an independent effort towards the analysis of the Arabic language. Far from constituting the fictitious school that Weil (1913) and others have made them out to be, the Kufan grammarians made a number of discoveries about linguistic structure that were much more different from Sībawayhi's approach than the Arabic tradition with its emphasis on mere terminological differences would have us believe. In Talmon's view this Kufan tradition represents a much earlier tradition - called by him the Old ‘Irāqī School - which predated Sībawayhi's innovative approach to linguistic structure. If one follows this line of thought, one could even say that it is the Basran tradition that was invented by later grammarians: according to Talmon this invention took place in Baghdad when grammarians who originated from Basra sought to enhance their status by tracing their pedigree back to such venerable authorities as 'Abū l-'Aswad al-Du'alī with whom they were linked through the Kitāb of Sībawayhi. From this time onwards the Kitāb served as the point of reference for those grammarians who felt themselves to be connected with Basra as a group and who were called by later biographers the Basran grammarians. Bernards (1993) and Humbert (1994) have shown that the grammarian al-Mubarrad (d. 285/898) played a crucial role in the process of acceptation of the Kitāb, as well as in the reception of the text.

If we accept the chronological priority of the Kufan or ‘Irāqī tradition, the question may be raised as to their model. In the last century Merx (1889) tried to explain the emergence of the Arabic grammatical tradition by linking it with the logical writings of Aristotle. According to him logical terminology and categories reached the Arabs through the mediation of the Syriac grammarians and translators. His critics pointed out that his chronology was wrong: the Arab world did not become acquainted with Greek logic and philosophy until the period of the translations in the 3rd/9th century. According to this argument it is highly unlikely that the first Arab grammarians knew anything about Greek logic. Others have attempted to establish a connection with the living tradition of Greek grammar in the Hellenistic period, either through the intermediary of the Persian translations of Greek writings or through the direct contact with Hellenistic schools in Syria and Egypt (Rundgren 1976; Versteegh 1977). In Talmon's publications (1985, 1990) the ideas of the Kufan grammarians are again linked to the Greek logical tradition. In his view the Syriac grammarians were instrumental in transmitting the knowledge about logic and grammar to the Arabs, and he points out the role of logicians such as Ibn al-Muqaffa’, who died in the middle of the 2nd century of the Hijra in this connection (cf. Talmon 1991).

In this paper I wish to discuss the origin of the Arabic grammatical tradition from a different angle (cf. Versteegh 1993). If we take for granted that whatever the foreign factor in this tradition was there must have been an indigenous development as well, then the best place to look for formative elements in linguistic or philological thinking in Islam is the tradition of exegesis of the Qur'ān. I shall concentrate here on the role of one commentary in the development of Arabic grammar, that of Zayd ibn ‘Alī (d. 120/738). It is common knowledge that the large Qur'ānic commentaries of the Classical period, such as the ones by al-Ṭabarī, al-Zamakhsharī, and al-Rāzī, contain an immense quantity of grammatical material. In many cases judgments about grammatical points in the text of the Qur'ān are attributed to authorities from the formative period of Islam, i.e., to the first two centuries of the Hijra, sometimes by uninterrupted 'isnāds linking the commentator with these authorities in a direct line. Western scholarship has usually pronounced a negative judgment on these 'isnāds, and accordingly on the entire ḥadīth literature: most people followed Schacht (1950), Wansbrough (1977), Juynboll (1983) and others in regarding the 'isnāds as forgeries that had been fabricated by third century scholars and could not possibly date back to the earliest period of Islam, let alone to the period of the Companions and the Prophet himself.

In recent times however a number of texts have become available that have brought about a different opinion. In the field of hadīth the collections of ‘Abd al-Razzāq (d. 211/827) and Ibn 'Abī Shayba (d. 235/849) have been subjected to a minute analysis by Motzki and others. Regarding the 'isnāds used by these compilers Motzki (1991) concludes that they cannot be the result of large scale forgery, since their pattern is inconsistent with fabrication. The traditions are reported from a wide variety of informants, and the collectors do not hesitate to declare their ignorance when they do not know the name of an informant. There are many traditions that are attributed to unknown or unspecified persons, something that is hardly compatible with what one would expect a forger to do.

A similar tendency towards a more positive attitude may be detected in the study of the earliest commentaries, although here the picture is much less clear. At the moment editions are available of the commentaries by Muqātil (d. 150/767; cf. Versteegh 1990), Mujāhid (d. 104/722), Sufyān al-Thawrī (d. 161/778), ‘Abd al-Razzāq ‘an Ma‘mar (d. 153/770?), as well as the commentary selected for this paper, the one by Zayd ibn ‘Alī. In an earlier study (1993) I have also used the manuscript of Muhammad al-Kalbī's (d. 146/763) commentary on the Qur'ān and there are other texts that are relevant in this connection, such as al-Yazīdī's Gharīb al-Qur'ān wa-tafsīruhu, Makkī's commentary, and the ṣaḥīfa of Ibn 'Abī Ṭalḥa.

The contribution of these texts to the discussion about the formative period of Arabic grammar is considerable. The analysis of the early commentaries has brought to light a number of terms that may be regarded as models for later technical terms, in particular technical terms used by the Kufan grammarians. It must be pointed out that the texts of the earliest exegetical tradition do not contain a consistent technical vocabulary with fixed meanings. What we find is an effort on the part of the commentators to deal with the exegetical complications of the Qur'ānic text. A case in point is Muqātil's habit of referring to certain text types in the Qur'ān by using terms such as na‘ata, 'akhbara, istathnā, that do not correlate exactly with formal features of the text, but may still be regarded as an effort to categorize types of texts. Other terms concern phenomena of style, such as the notion of 'elision' ('iḍmār) or the use of the term ṣila to refer to redundant prepositions. This stock of semi-technical terms served as a reservoir from which the grammarians could draw when they started to develop a scientific vocabulary for the description of speech.

This is very clear in the vowel terminology. Some commentaries use certain terms to indicate the vowelling of the words they explain, either to distinguish them from homographs, or to discuss alternate readings of the text. In Muḥammad al-Kalbī's commentary...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Names of contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART I ARABIC GRAMMAR
• PART II ARABIC LINGUISTICS and BEYOND