A Short Reference for Arabic Syntactic, Morphological & Phonological Rules for Novice & Intermediate Levels of Proficiency
INTRODUCTION
The Arabic
language developed through the early centuries in the Arabian
Peninsula in the era immediately preceding the appearance of
Islam, when it acquired the form in which it is known today. Arab poets of the
pre-Islamic period had developed a language of amazing richness and
flexibility. For the most part, their poetry was transmitted and preserved
orally. The Arabic language was then, as it is now, easily capable of creating
new words and terminology in order to adapt to the demand of new scientific and
artistic discoveries. As the new believers in the seventh century spread out
from the Peninsula to create a vast empire,
first with its capital in Damascus
and later in Baghdad ,
Arabic became the administrative language of vast section of the Mediterranean
world. It drew upon Byzantine and Persian terms and its own immense inner
resources of vocabulary and grammatical flexibility.
During the ninth and tenth centuries,
a great intellectual movement was underway in Baghdad , in which many ancient scientific and
philosophical tracts were transposed from ancient languages, especially Greek,
into Arabic. Many were augmented by the new wisdom suggested by Arabic thinkers;
other text were simply preserved, until Europe reawakened by the explosion of learning
taking place in Arab Spain, saw its rebirth in the Renaissance. That is how
Arabic became by the eleventh century the principal reservoir of human
knowledge, including the repository for the accumulated wisdom of past ages,
supplanting previous cultural languages such as Greek and Latin.
And it was the Arabic language alone
which united many peoples in the Arab Empire and the civilization which
flourished under it. For when we speak of the Arab civilization and its
achievements we do not necessarily mean that all its representative were Arab,
or that all were Muslims. It was the peculiar genius of Arab civilization that
it attracted and encompassed people of many races and creeds. Citizens of the
Arab Empire, they identified themselves with this civilization and it was the
Arabic language, with its great flexibility, that made them exponents of that
civilization.. Between the eighth and twelfth centuries, Arabic was as much the
universal language of culture, diplomacy, the sciences and philosophy as Latin
was to become in the later Middle Ages. Those who wanted to read Aristotle, use
medical terms, solve mathematical problems, or embark on any intellectual
discourse, had to know Arabic.
The first rules of Arabic language,
including its poetry metrical theory, and its syntax, morphology and phonology,
were written in Iraq .
This task was conducted both in Al-Basrah under Al-Khalil Ibn Ahmed Al-Farahidy
and in Al-Kuufah under Abu al-Hasan Al-Kisaa'i. During the Middle Ages
Al-Khalil in his book کتاب العين
and, his student, Siibawayh in الکتاب
concluded that task. The first complete dictionary of the Arabic
language was composed by Al-Khalil, who had also been involved in the reform of
the Arabic script and who is generally acclaimed as the inventor of the Arabic
metrical theory. The professed aim of کتاب العين , which goes under
his name, was the inclusion of all Arabic roots. In the introduction, a sketch
is given of the phonetic structure of Arabic, and
The early attempt to write the
Arabic grammar began as early as the time of the fourth Well-Guided Caliphs,
Ali Ibn Abi Taalib, when he commissioned a man named Abu Al-Aswad Al-Du'ali for
the task. In his book (نزهة الالبا في طبقات
الادبا) Al-Anbari,
الانباري reports the following
anecdote .
دخلت علی امير المومنين
علي بن ابي طالب ( عليه السلام) فوجدت في يده
رقعة، فقلت ما هذه يا
أمير المؤمنين؟ فقال: إنِّي تأملت کلام العرب فوجدته قد
فسُد بمخالطة هذه
الحمراء –يعني الاعاجم- فأردت أن اضع شيئا يرجعون إليه، ويعتمدون عليه. ثمَّ القی
إليَّ الرقعة وفيها مکتوب: ألکلام کله إسم وفعل وحرف. فالاسم ما أنبأ عن
المُسمَّی، والفعل ما أُنبیءَ به، والحرف ما افاد معنی. وقال لي:
إنحَ هذا النحو، واضف
إليه ما وقع إليك.
I came to The Leader of
the Believers, Ali Ibn Abi Talib, and found that he was holding a note in his
hand. I asked, "What is this, Oh Leader of the Faithful?" He said, "I
have been thinking of the language of the Arabs, and I came to find out that it
has been corrupted through contacts with these foreigners.Therefore, I have
decided to put something that they (the Arabs) refer to and rely on." Then
he gave me the note and on it he wrote: Speech is made of nouns, verbs and
particles. Nouns are names of things, verbs provide information, and particles
complete the meaning." Then he said to me, "Follow this approach and
add to it what comes to your mind."
Al-Du'ali
continued to say,
وضعت بابي
العطف والنعت ثم بابي التعجب والاستفهام، إلی ان وصلت الی
باب إنَّ
واخواتها، ما خلا لکنَّ. فلما عرضتها علی عليٍّ (عليه السلام) أمرني
بضم لکنَّ إليها. وکنت کلما وضعت
بابا من ابواب النحو عرضتها عليه (رضي الله عنه) إلی ان حصلت ما فيه الکفاية. قال
ما أحسنَ هذا النحو الذي نحوته!
فلذلك سُميَّ
النحو.
I wrote two
chapters on conjunctions and attributes then two chapters on exclamation and
interrogatives. Then I wrote about إنَّ واخواتها and I skipped لکنَّ. When I showed that
to him (Peace be upon him), he ordered me to add لکنَّ. Therefore, every
time I finish a chapter I showed it to him
(May God be
satisfied with him), until I covered what I thought to be enough. He said,
"How beautiful is the approach you have taken!" From there the
concept of grammar النحو
came to exist.
Following
Abu Al-Aswad Al-Du'ali came a group of grammarians that we know most of by
their names, not their works. The list includes:
Ibn ‘AaSim
‚نصر بن عاصم , Al-Mahryعنبسة بن معدان المهري , Al-Aqran
ميمون الاقرن , Al-‘Adwaany يحيی بن يعمر العدواني , Al-Akhfash الاخفش الاکبر , Al-‘Araj , Al-Hadhramy عبد الله بن ابي اسحق الحضرمي , Ibn Al-‘Alaa' أبو عمرو بن العلاء ,
Al-Thaqafy عيسی بن عمر الثقفي ,
who wrote two famous books, الإکمال and الجامع
Waafi
credited Al-Thaqafy الثقفي
for transferring the interest from Basrah to Kuufa, because he began his
work there, and Al-Khalil was his student. Among the other Kuufic grammarians
were Al-Tamiimy أبو معاوية شيبان بن عبد الرحمن التميمي and
Al-Harraa' أبو مسلم معاذ الهراء and
Al-Ru'aasy أبو جعفر الرؤاسي who wrote الفيصل)) .If Siibawayh was considered the 'Imaam of grammar in
Basrah, the Kuufic version was Al-Kisaa'y أبو الحسن علي بن حمزة بن
فيروز الکسائي who studied under Al-Harraa' الهرَّاءand Al-Ru'aasy . الرؤاسيUnfortunately, Al-Kisaa'y did not author any
major work in Arabic grammar. However, he became one of the best seven readers
of the Quran.
The
framework of the Arab grammarians served exclusively for the analysis of Arabic
and, therefore, has a special relevance for the study of the language. From the
period between 750 and 1500 we know the names of more than 4000 grammarians who
developed a truly comprehensive body of knowledge on their own language.
Siibawayh
was the first grammarian to give an account of the entire language in what was
probably the first publication in book form in Arabic prose. In his book, زهر الآداب وثمر الألباب , Al-Husary reported that Siibawayh used to have his
work reviewed by another grammarian of his time named Al-Akhfash Al-Saghiir who
said that, " Siibawayh showed me the grammar rules he came up with
thinking that I knew better than him. In fact, he has better knowledge than
me." Siibawayh's example set the trend for all subsequent generations of
grammarians, who believed that their main task was to provide an explanation for every single phenomenon in
Arabic. Consequently, they distinguished between what was transmitted and what
was theoretically possible in language. In principle,
they accepted everything from reliable resources, which included the language
of the Qur'an, pre-Islamic poetry, and testimonies from trustworthy Bedouin
informants. After the period of the Islamic conquests, the sedentary population
of Mekka and Medina began to regard the free-roaming Bedouin, whose language
preserved the purity of the pre-Islamic times, as the ideal type of Arab, and
the term کلام العرب 'Language of the Arabs' came to denote the pure,
unaffected language of the Bedouins.
A Hundred and One Rules !
Mohammed Jiyad
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