Arabic Grammar and Qurʼānic Exegesis in Early Islam 9004098453, 9789004098459
In this volume the author examines the origins of Arabic linguistics on the basis of the earliest Qur'ānic commenta
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English Pages 244 [243] Year 1997
ARABIC GRAMMAR AND QURᵓĀNIC EXEGESIS IN EARLY ISLAM
CONTENTS
Preface
I. Early linguistic terminology
1. Introduction
2. Sībawayhi's grammatical terminology
3. Kufan and Basran grammatical terminology
4. al-Ḫalīl's grammatical terminology
5. The origin of grammatical terminology
6. The 'Greek' thesis
7 . The Syriac connection
8. The 'legal' thesis
9. The early stages of grammar: Sībawayhi and his predecessors
10. Conclusion
II. Materials from early Islam on the exegesis of the Qurᵓānic
1. Introduction: The sources
2. The debate about the authenticity of early Islamic texts
3. Towards a new evaluation of the sources
4. The development of tafsīr
5. Conclusion
III. Exegetical topics and methods in early Islam
1. Introduction
2. The origin of Qurᵓānic exegesis
3. The application of the text
4. The implications of the text
5. The study of the text itself: the qirāᵓāt
6. The lexical meaning of the text
7 . The development of exegesis
8. Conclusion
IV. Grammatical terminology in early tafsīr
1. Introduction
2. Terminology of meaning
3. Terminology of units of speech
4. Text types and connectors
5. Grammatical terms in the commentaries
5.1. Muǧāhid
5.2. Sufyān aṯ-Ṯawrī
5.3. Muḥammad al-Kalbī
5.4. Muqātil
5.5. ᶜAbd ar-Razzāq, ᶜan Maᶜmar
V. Readers, commentators and grammarians
1. Introduction
2. Sībawayhi and his teachers
3. Grammarians and readers
4. Grammarians and commentators
5. Conclusion
VI. The origin of Arabic grammatical studies
Bibliographical references
A) Primary sources
B) Secondary sources
Abbreviations
Indices
A) Index of names
B) Index of terms
C) Index of Qurᵓānic passages
STUDIES IN SEMITIC
LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTICS
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ARABIC GRAMMAR AND QUR'ANIC EXEGESIS IN EARLY ISLAM
STUDIES IN SEMITIC LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTICS EDITED BY
J.H. HOSPERS AND C.H.M. VERSTEEGH
XIX ARABIC GRAMMAR AND QUR'ANIC EXEGESIS IN EARLY ISLAM
ARABIC GRAMMAR AND QUR)ANIC EXEGESIS IN EARLY ISLAM BY
C.H.M. VERSTEEGH
EJ. BRILL
LEIDEN • NEW YORK • KOLN 1993
This book has been published with financial support from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-PubHcation Data Versteegh, C. H. M. Arabic grammar and Qur'anic exegesis in early Islam I by C.H.M. Versteegh. cm.-(Studies in Semitic languages and linguistics, ISSN p. 0081-8461; 19) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 9004098453 (cloth) l. Koran-Language, style. 2. Arabic language-Grammar-History. 3. Koran-Commentaries-History and criticicsm. I. Title. II. Series. PJ6696.V47 1993 492'.75-dc20 93-7248 CIP
Die Deutsche BibHothek - CIP-Einheitsauf'nalune Versteegh, Cornelis H. M.: Arabic grammar and Qur'anic exegesis in early Islam I by C. H. M. Versteegh.- Leiden; New York; Koln: Brill, 1993 (Studies in Semitic languages and linguistics; 19) ISBN 90-04-09845-3 NE: GT
ISSN 0081-8461 ISBN 90 04 09845 3
© Copyright 1993 by E.]. Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval .rystem, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by E.]. Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid direct!J to Copyright Clearance Center, 2 7Congress Street, SALEM i\.1A 01970, USA. Fees are subject to change. PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS
"The science that more than any other science overwhelms the mind and overburdens even the sharpest wits, by its strange subtleties, that lie on a narrow path, and its hidden secrets, that hang by a slender thread, is the science of the interpretation ofthe Quriin" (inna amla)a l-'ulum bimii yagmuru l-
qariPii) wa-anhat/ahii. bimii yabharu 1-albii.b al-qawii.rii) min garii.)ib nukat yaltafu maslakuhii. wa-mustawda'ii.t asrii.r yaduqqu silkuhii. 'ilm at-tafslr; az-Zamabsari, al-Kassii.j, ed. by Mu~tala l:lusayn ~mad, I, niin.13-14, 3rd ed., Cairo & Beirut: Dar at-Turat& Dar al-Kitab al-'Arabi, 1987)
CONTENTS Preface
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I. Early linguistic terminology Introduction Sibawayhi's grammatical terminology Kufan and Basran grammatical terminology al-:tlalil's grammatical terminology The origin of grammatical terminology The 'Greek' thesis The Syriac connection The 'legal' thesis 9 The early stages of grammar: Sibawayhi and his predecessors Conclusion 10
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II. Materials from early Islam on the exegesis of the Quran Introduction: The sources The debate about the authenticity of early Islamic texts Towards a new evaluation of the sources The development of tajs'ir Conclusion o
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IV Grammatical terminology in early tajs'ir Introduction Terminology of meaning 20
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III Exegetical topics and methods in early Islam Introduction The origin of Qur'anic exegesis The application of the text The implications of the text The study of the text itself: the qira'at The lexical meaning of the text The development of exegesis Conclusion 10
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VIII
CONTENTS
3. Terminology of units of speech .................. 99 4. Text types and connectors ...................... 104 5. Grammatical terms in the commentaries .......... 107 5.1. Mugahid ................................. 107 5.2. Sufyan at-Tawri ........................... 111 5.3. Mul:;tammad al-Kalbi ....................... 114 5.4. Muqatil .................................. 130 5.5. 'Abd ar-Razzaq, 'an Ma'mar ................ 154 V. Readers, commentators and grammarians ............. 160 1. Introduction .................................. 160 2. Siliawayhi and his teachers ...................... 161 3. Grammarians and readers ....................... 174 4. Grammarians and commentators ................. 183 5. Conclusion ................................... 190 VI. The origin of Arabic grammatical studies ............. 191 Bibliographical references .............................. 207 A) Primary sources ................................ 207 B) Secondary sources .............................. 210 Abbreviations ........................................ 217 Indices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218 A) Index of names ................................ 218 B) Index of terms ................................. 223 C) Index of Qur)anic passages ...................... 229
PREFACE In the first year of my stay in Cairo one of my colleagues drew my attention to the appearance ofthe edition ofMuqatil's Tafsir. When I had somebody inquire at the Egyptian Book Organization, the answer was that the book had indeed been published, but the copies were not for sale because the price had not yet been fixed. It soon became obvious that something was wrong with this edition, and the most likely explanation seemed to be that some people did not like the contents of the commentary. It was not easy to obtain a copy, but in the end I managed to get hold of one. My first acquaintance with the commentary was somewhat of a disappointment: I had hoped to find in this very early commentary a lot of interesting grammatical terms, but most of the text seemed to be concerned with exegetical matters that had nothing to do with linguistic problems. When I went through the book a second time, quite by coincidence I came across the term $ila applied to a preposition in the text of Quriin. This term awoke my curiosity, and I decided to go through the whole commentary page by page. The result was a small, but significant list of grammatical terms, which I used for an analysis of Muqatil's methods, published as an article in Der Islam. After Muqatil I decided to tackle other commentaries as well, and I soon found Mugiihid, Sufyan at-Tawri, and at a later stage, the manuscripts of Mu~ammad al-Kalbi and 'Abd ar-Razzaq 'an Ma'mar. In the meantime I had become very interested in the status of these early texts, and I was, therefore, very grateful when I had the opportunity to compare my results with those of Harald Motzki, who had been working on the Mu$annaf of 'Abd ar-Razzaq with a view to proving the authenticity of most of the traditions contained in this work. His conclusions encouraged me to continue with my own research, using the early commentaries as a means to find an answer to one of the most complicated questions in the history of Arabic grammar: the origin of the grammatical terminology that we find in Sibawayhi's Kitiib. Working with these early texts is fascinating, since they bring us back to the dawn of Islam, to a period when there were still people around, who had spoken to the Prophet personally, and who could
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PREFACE
still remember his words. Obviously, one cannot take everything for granted in these testimonies, and when I reject the attitude of wholesale scepticism towards Islamic sources that has become fashionable in some circles, this does not mean that I automatically believe everything that I find in the commentaries on the Quriin, either. After all, Medieval Muslim scholars themselves were always very cautious in their perusal of the sources. The present study is an attempt to combine the data from the early commentaries with what we know from the biographical literature about the development of linguistics in Islam. Chapter I discusses the problem of grammatical terminology as it is found in the earliest grammars of Arabic at the end of the second century of the Higra. In chapter II I present the texts that I have used. Chapters III and IV are devoted to the analysis of the commentaries: first, the general topics and exegetical methods of the commentaries are dealt with, and then, those technical and semi-technical terms that can be connected with the later terminology. In chapter VI use the data from the biographical literature about grammarians and readers in order to establish a link between the generation of the commentators from the 1st half of the second century and the grammarians from the second half of that century. Finally, I summarize the main findings in chapter VI. Several people have given me the opportunity to discuss my provisional findings by inviting me for a guest lecture at their university. I wish to thank Karin Ryding (Georgetown University), Naphtali Kinberg (University of Tel Aviv), Michael Carter (New York University), Sa'id Badawi (American University Cairo) and Gregor Schoeler (University ofBasle) for their interest and hospitality. Some of my findings were also presented at conferences, of which I should like to mention the conference on the history of Arabic grammar at the University of Haifa (1990), the conference on Afro-Asiatic Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley (1991), the meeting of the Societe d'Histoire et d'Epistemologie du Langage at the Universite de Paris VIII (1992), and the conference on The Role of Communication in Linguistics at the University of Aligarh (1992). It is not always easy to obtain materials in this field. I should like to thank Fred Leemhuis (Netherlands' Institute, Cairo and University of Groningen) for procuring for me the manuscript of 'Abd arRazzaq 'an Ma'mar, and several books from Cairo. The Leiden
PREFACE
XI
University Library and Jan-Just Witkam very kindly provided me with a copy of the manuscript of Mul}.ammad al-Kalbi: from the Chester Beatty Collection. Rafael Talmon (University of Haifa) sent me a copy of Abu 'Ubayda's Magiiz al-QuTJan, which on his advice I scrutinized completely, and Harald Motzki (University of Nijmegen) found for me a copy of Stauth's dissertation on Mugahid's commentary. Wim Delsman (University of Nijmegen) helped me with the Syriac material. Naphtali Kinberg (University of Tel Aviv) generously let me share in the data from his forthcoming index on al-Farra.''s Ma'anz. When writing a manuscript, one often wonders about one's own conclusions. During these periods of self-doubt it is very important to have friends and colleagues who are willing to use their valuable time to read one's first drafts and comment on them. I am particularly thankful to Harald Motzki, Maribel Fierro Bello (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientlficas, Madrid) and Gregor Schoeler (University ofBasle) for their help during various stages of my research. They are all engaged in time-consuming research of their own, and I very much appreciate their willingness to spend some time on my ideas. It is difficult to find words to thank Rafael Talmon. His letters to me after I had sent him parts of my manuscript were veritable commentaries on what I had written. I know that he is disappointed that during my research I more or less abandoned my earlier ideas about Greek influence in Arabic linguistic thinking, but it may be a small consolation to him that his own ideas about the Kufan tradition in grammar have profoundly influenced my own thinking about the Arabic grammatical tradition and have found their way into the present study. Finally, I wish to express my gratitude to the Netherland Organization for Scientific Research for the grant that made it possible to publish this book, and thank the publisher for including it in the series Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics. Nijmegen, August 1992
CHAPTER ONE
EARLY LINGUISTIC TERMINOLOGY 1. Introduction ''Wie ein Wunderbau steht in der Mitte des zweiten J ahrhunderts d. Fl. das Lehrgebaude der arabischen Sprache auEerlich zum mindesten vollkommen vor uns". With these words Weil (1913:3) begins his discussion of the Kitiib al-in~iij, in which Ibn al-Anbari: enumerates the controversies between the Basran and Kufan schools of grammar. He goes on to say that SThawayhi, whose Kitiib represented the "Lehrgebaude der arabischen Sprache" in its original form, must have had predecessors, but next to nothing is known about their work. In this chapter we shall deal with the terminology used by SThawayhi and its connection with that of his predecessors, as well as the terminology used by his near contemporary al-Farra), whose work has partly been preserved. A basic point is, of course, what constitutes a technical term in a grammatical tradition. As we shall see below when dealing with the terminology in the earliest Qur)anic commentaries, the study of the origin of the technical terms brings us back to a stage where terminology is not yet completely technical. We intend to show that the technical usage of some of these terms evolved out of a non-technical, general use (cf. below, chapter IV, especially pp. 104-106, on the terminology of text types and connectors). How then do we know with regard to a specific term that the development has been completed, so that it may be regarded as a technical term in its own right? Obviously, it is not always possible to make clear-cut distinctions, but for a general definition we may follow Owens ( 1990a: 11 f.) who says: "When a term is consistently used to represent a constant extensional class or a fixed process it can be taken as a technical term''. He also notes that only very rarely do the grammarians in the early period define their terms, and this applies a fortiori to the early exegetes. On the other hand, the determination of what is a technical term, is facilitated by the fact that terms often occur in derivational sets, e.g., 'amal, 'iimil, 'amila, a'mala, all connected with the concept of 'governing'. Still, even with Owens' definition we often encounter cases where terms ''appear sometimes to represent
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CHAPTER ONE
a fixed class of items, but at other times simply to designate a general function" (Owens 1990a: 12). Some of these cases will be discussed below in connection with the differences between Sibawayhi's terminology and that of al-Farr~i'.
2. Stbawayhi 's grammatical terminology In the introduction to his index of the Kitab Troupeau (1976: 15) concentrates on the relationship between Sibawayhi's terminology and that of the later grammatical tradition. Regarding the provenance of the terminology he draws the general conclusion that most of the terms used by Sibawayhi were already known to his predecessors, given the large number of quotations from them in the Kitab, and he refers to the possibility of a connection with Greek, Syriac, and Persian grammatical terminology (1976:12-14). He also notes the, what he calls, "caractere primitif' of the Sibawayhian terminology (1976: 14), for instance in that there is no sign of the numerous abstract adjectives and nouns used by later grammarians, such as ismi "nominal" ,Ji'l'i "verbal", and ismiyya "nominality" ,Ji'liyya "verbality". Note, however, that the terms ismiyya andfi'liyya occur in the Kitab al-'ayn (II,52; V,166). With regard to the relationship between Sibawayhi's terminology and that of the later tradition Troupeau notes the absence of three
major groups of terms: the terms of the Kufan tradition the phonetic terms used by al-l:;lalil the philosophical terms that were introduced in the fourth/ tenth century We shall come back later to these three groups of terms that are absent in the Kitab, and simply note here that Troupeau's comparison between Sibawayhi and the later terminology (1976: 19-24) shows that a large number of terms were either not known in Sibawayhi's time, but the result oflater innovations, or not used by him for one reason or another. His list ofterms from the later tradition contains terms from all levels of grammatical analysis and includes such well-known terms as magaz "figurative speech", ism ala "instrumental noun", ism ma'na "abstract noun", ism 'ayn "concrete noun", Ji'l al-bQ,l "present verb", insa) "affirmation", ta)wil "interpretation", badd "definition", rutba "rank", mab4 "pure", gumla "proposition", ~l "root", gamid "solid, fixed", murakkab
EARLY LINGUISTIC TERMINOLOGY
3
"composite", agwaf "hollow (verb)", mustakinn "implicit", and many others. Troupeau does not analyze the terminology used by Sibawayhi as such. He roughly distinguishes between five major categories: general notions (word categories and propositions); syntactic terms; morphological terms; phonetic terms; and methodical terms. This last category includes the terms referring to the "concepts utilises par Sibawayhi pour expliquer les faits grammaticaux d'une part, et aux procedes qu'il emploie pour les exposer, d'autre part" (1976: 12). Presumably, this category contains the many terms used in the Kitiib for such notions as 'hierarchy', 'resemblance', 'dependence', 'position', etc. Obviously, these are part of a coherent paradigm for the study of language, although Sibawayhi uses them almost exclusively without any explicit reference to their content (cf. for the terminology of syntactic position Versteegh 1978; Owens 1988:34-36; Carter 1981:49, 131, 139 and passim). Mosel (1975:9-11) makes an attempt to give a general appraisal of Sibawayhi's grammatical terminology. She concludes that "Sibawaihs Termini [sind] der Alltagssprache entnommen und mit Bezeichnungen fiir auGersprachliche Begriffe identisch". As an example she mentions the term fi'l, which is used to denote both ''action'' and ''verb'', as for instance in the heading of chapter 4 7 (Kitiib I, 122.14): hiidii biib min alji'l summiya lji'lfihi bi-asmii) lam tu)b:ad min amJ.ilat alji'l al-}j.iidiJ.. In this sentence, according to Mosel (1975:25) the first two occurrences of the termfi'l mean "action", whereas the third occurrence denotes the verb as a linguistic category. Similar conclusions may be drawn with regard to the use of #fa "property" or "attribute", }j.iil "situation, condition" or "circumstantial accusative" and ~aif "circumstance" or "local or temporal adverb". In general, Mosel concludes that Sibawayhi was not aware of the difference between language and metalanguage. One of the greatest problems in reading the Kitiib-a problem also known to the Arab commentators-is, indeed, the fact that the terminology is not completely fixed. For one and the same category more than one term may be used, for instance in the example given by Mosel (1975: 102ff.) "pronoun", which is represented by 'aliimat al-murfmar, irfmiir, 'aliimat al-irfmiir, murfmar, rfamir, ism murfmar. In such cases the variation in terminology may sometimes be explained by conflicting traditions in Sibawayhi's sources, although one should not exclude the possibility that sometimes the difference in termi-
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nology reflects an underlying functional difference, which may be intentional on the part of the author. Similarly, Mosel points out, one term may stand for different categories. The cases she mentions are the following: one term may simultaneously denote a functional and a substantial category, such as #fa or +aif(1975: 138ff.,346); alternatively, one term may denote both a general category and its subcategories, as in the case of !Jabar (1975:281), which is used in the sense of "predicate" and in the sense of ''phrase expressing a predicate''. In some cases there is virtual homonymy, as with the term IJ,aif, which denotes both "consonant" and "particle" ( = baif al-ma'nii), apparently without any connection between the two meanings. On the basis of one aspect of syntax, the complementation categories of the noun, Owens (1990a:55-102) discusses the range of the various terms used by Sibawayhi to denote the categories of complementizers. This discussion may be called exemplary for the entire problem of terminology, since Owens does not restrict himself to discussing the individual terms, but he also gives a typology of the semantic relationships between them. Without going into the details of his discussion we shall briefly summarize his conclusions regarding this aspect of syntactic theory (1990a:74-83). Sibawayhi distinguishes seven categories of complementizers: biil, .yifa/na't "qualifier" badal "substitute" siriik "coordination" 'at+ "coordination ' ' ' 'tJ ' modifying 'aif', tawkid "emphasis", [tanryiz] "specifier". The last category, that of the 'specifier' is a special case: Sibawayhi implicitly distinguishes this category, but does not use a special term to indicate it (cf. Owens 1990a:65, 135). Within the whole group of terms for complementizers, .yifa is the most important one, since it indicates all nominal complementary relations (except for substitution and coordination). But at the same time .yifa is also used in a special sense to denote a subclass, that of the qualifiers. The phenomenon of one term being used for a general class and at the same time for a subclass Owens calls "class inclusion": wa.yafa and its derivates are used to describe the general class which includes biil, tamyiz phenomena, and .yifa; the latter subclass in its turn includes 'aif and .yifa. The term .yifa in this latter sense also demonstrates another phenomenon in linguistic terminology, that of free variation, since it is completely synonymous with na't, the distinction being only statistical (Owens 1990a:69). A case of partial free variation is presented by the term 'aif, which in some constructions
EARLY LINGUISTIC TERMINOLOGY
5
is used synonymously with ta'kid, but both terms have other uses as well. The term sirak-used only by Sibawayhi-is also synonymous with 'aif, but this term is used only for a subset of the constructions that are indicated by 'aif, and has no additional uses (about 'aif cf. also Talmon 1981). Nonetheless, Owens concludes that there is a certain amount of vacillation in Sibawayhi's terminology, but "the readiness with which Sibawayh assigned items to the l;aal, substitute badal, and coordination (Jiraakl'aif) categories does . . . speak for a relatively well-established syntactic vocabulary" (1990a:83). The vacillation in Sibawayhi's vocabulary may be explained from an earlier situation, in which #fa was used for an even larger class of phenomena, including even f04l (Owens 1990a:83, n.13). Sibawayhi must then have tried to introduce some distinctions within this larger class, while retaining the term #fa for the larger class, as well as for the most characteristic subclass, that of the qualifiers. One might speculate that fifa was reserved for this subclass because its lexical meaning was best suited for the function of this class. According to Owens, however, there is no evidence that the verb WQ4afa in its lexical sense of "to describe" once was the only term for nominal modifying relations, and as we shall see below (chapter IV, p. 118, 140) the early commentaries provide some evidence for this conjecture. In general we agree with Owens that Sibawayhi's terminology is that of a linguist who carefully distinguishes between various lexical and syntactic categories. His Kitab, however, still carries the traces of older traditions, which he could not avoid completely. As an example we may quote his (infrequent) use of na't: this term may be a remnant of an older tradition. Talmon (forthcoming b) connects this earlier use with a theory on the function of prepositional clauses as attributes; according to this theory fifa was originally used for nouns with a locative function and na't for attributes. If na't reflects indeed an earlier terminology, we may suppose that in substituting his own terminology Sibawayhi could not avoid a certain amount of inconsistency. This explains the fact that in some cases he retained the earlier term. Partly different fragments from the older tradition are preserved in al- Farra'' s Ma'ani l-Qur'an (cf. Owens 1990a: 136ff.) where we find three categories of modifying constructions: na't "qualifier", 'aif lnasaq "conjunct", takrir "substitute". For the conjunct constructions nasaq has traditionally been regarded as the Kufan term
6
CHAPTER ONE
par excellence, but it is used in the Ma'ant only 15 times as against 'aif 37 times (Owens 1990a:85). Its Kufan reputation must therefore stem from Ta'lab who uses 'aifonly once (Owens 1990a:94). In spite of the difference between the Kufan and Basran tradition, there are many connections as well. The term ~ifa, for instance, even though in al-Farra) it normally denotes nouns with a locative function, is used infrequently by him as an equivalent for na't (Owens 1990a: 84-91). The relationship between the two traditions with regard to the terminology will be discussed below (chapter VI, pp. 197ff.). In his discussion of the general development of the Arabic grammatical tradition after the early period Owens (1990a:97) notes that there is a trend ''in the direction of what can be termed the 'one lexical class (or sub-class)-one term principle' ". In other words, the cases of free variation and class inclusion become increasingly less frequent. The supra-class of nominal complements with agreement, for which Sibawayhi used the term $ija, is called by Ibn as-Sarrag (d. 316/928) tawabi', and $ija is henceforth restricted to the sub-class of qualifiers (Owens 1990a:100). In some cases sub-classes were split up, for instance the class of the conjuncts and the emphasizers, both called by Sibawayhi 'aif, but distinguished in the later tradition by the terms 'aif and tawk"id, respectively. In those cases where a concept was used without a specific term, such a term was introduced by later authors, e.g., the class of the specifier, tamytz (Owens 1990a: 135). Owens (1990a: 102) links this process to a shift in the language corpus, from a living language to a fixed corpus in which peculiar constructions had become completely fossilized expressions. A question he does not touch upon is the origin of the free variation in the earliest grammarians. This will be the topic of our discussion below in connection with the terminology in the earliest exegetical works (chapter IV and VI). It should be pointed out here that in some cases the free variation and the diffusion in the terminology is only apparent. In this respect the evaluation of the terminology for sentence components at the hands of Western Orientalists is instructive. The existence of two different sets, mubtada)lbabar for the nominal sentence, andfi'llfo'il for the verbal sentence was regarded by them as superfluous: both sets were considered equivalent to the Western 'subject/predicate' distinction, and accordingly Fleisch (1961:24-25) concluded: "une grande lacune chez eux est tres significative: ils n'ont pas une theorie generale de la phrase". As Ayoub & Bohas (1983) have demon-
EARLY LINGUISTIC TERMINOLOGY
7
strated, this criticism is based on a misunderstanding of the real meaning of the Arabic theory of the sentence, which distinguishes carefully between the two types of sentence found in Arabic (cf. recently Levin 1985; Goldenberg 1988). This example should warn us not to regard apparent synonyms automatically as being in free variation. Similarly, terms may seem to be diffuse, although in reality they denote quite well defined concepts. A good example is that of the term kalima: according to Mosel (1975:12) it is impossible to find out what Sibawayhi means with this term, but Levin's (1986) analysis shows that it is used by him in a very precise sense (cf. below, ch. IV, pp. 102 -103). In some cases Sibawayhi's terms were retained by later grammarians, but with a different meaning. One example is that of the terminology for the conditional sentences: Sibawayhi uses gazii)/ gawiib for "protasis/apodosis"' but the later tradition prefers sartl gazii) (Devenyi 1988: 14-16), although the original sense of gazii) is not completely unknown. More serious is the shift in meaning in the set musnad/musnad ilayhi for the basic components of both the nominal and the verbal sentence. In the discussion about the interpretation of these terms and the question, which part is which, various views have been put forward. According to Levin (1981) musnad is the first member of both verbal and nominal sentence, musnad ilayhi is the second member. Later grammarians used the concept of isniid to express a subject/predicate relationship (i.e., musnad as the predicate, musnad ilayhi as the subject). Talman (1987) re-investigates the issue on the basis of material from al-Farra) and Ibn al-Muqaffa'; he concludes that even in the early period this terminology indicated a subject/predicate relationship ( cf. also Goldenberg 1988). One thing is certain, however: in the later tradition the semantic interpretation of the two terms was switched, so that musnad ilayhi instead of the "part of the sentence leaning on the other part" came to indicate the "part of the sentence on which the other part leans", in other words, an impersonal passive interpretation of the participle replaced a personal passive one. A similar switch may have taken place in the case of the two terms for the parts of the possessive construction, murjiij /murjiif ilayhi: murjiij ilayhi may originally have meant the "annexed part", but later it came to mean the "part to which the other part is annexed''. It may be noted here that later grammarians were not unduly worried about these seemingly very confusing shifts in meaning.
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The confusion in terminology was partly caused by the fact that as a general rule Sibawayhi and the other early grammarians did not bother to define the notions they used. At the most, Sibawayhi contents himself by giving a few examples for the terms he introduces. The most obvious example is that of the introductory chapter of the Kitiib, where the notion ism is simply exemplified by ragul/jaras and zaydl'amr. This was already commented upon by the Arab grammarians themselves, for instance by az-Zaggagi (d. 337/949; i¢ab 41-42) who feels obliged to defend Sibawayhi against the criticism of some people, by pointing out that the notion of 'noun' is self-evident, so that Sibawayhi did not really need to define it. With the introduction of Greek logic and philosophy in the Islamic world, the grammarians, too, felt the need to define the basic notions of their discipline, and as a result we find in later grammatical treatises definitions for most grammatical notions, even to the point where some grammarians composed treatises dedicated exclusively to long lists of definitions, e.g., the Kitiib al-budud by ar-Rummani (d. 384/995; cf. Troupeau 1983a, b). It is interesting to note in this connection that the term badd in the sense of "definition" does not occur in the Kitiib although the term itself does (cf. Levin 1979:211 on badd al-kaliim, in his interpretation "the ordinary way of speech"). Evidently, some of the later terms that are not attested in the Kitiib were introduced as the result of this need for ever more precise definitions of the grammatical notions and categories. Although the need for a 'scientific' basis oflinguistic theory may explain the development of a more elaborate terminology in some cases, the introduction of logic and philosophy cannot explain the entire development of the terminology in the period after Sibawayhi. We have seen above that some of the changes were the result of an effort on the part of later grammarians to distinguish more carefully between classes and subclasses of linguistic phenomena, and apply the one-term/one-category principle in a much more rigorous way than Sibawayhi and his contemporaries had done. In applying this principle later grammarians often tried to retain at least parts of the vocabulary used in the Kitiib. In some cases this resulted in a more specialized meaning for the terms used by Sibawayhi, as for instance in the case of the term #fa which no longer denoted all nominal complementizers, but only the qualifiers ( cf. above). In other cases there was a definite tendency to retain the terms in spite of a change in their linguistic status. The use of the
EARLY LINGUISTIC TERMINOLOGY
9
term barf al-i'riib "consonant of the declension" is illuminating in this respect. In the Kitiib this term indicated the consonant that carried the vowel of the declension, e.g., the din the word zaydun. In the later discussion about the possibility of a declension by means of consonants instead of vowels (in the dual and the sound masculine plural) some authors continued to use this term, but for them it indicated the consonant that constitutes the declension itself (e.g. Abu I:Iayyan, Manhag 9.20-21; cf. Versteegh 1985:162). 3. Kufan and Basran grammatical terminology There is one aspect of the development from Sibawayhi' s terminology to that of the later grammatical tradition which is very pertinent to our discussion concerning the origin of grammatical terminology, namely the impact of the Kufan school and their terminology on the later tradition. Without going here into the question of the authenticity of the two schools of Kufa and Basra, we may note that the existence of two separate terminologies is one of the most important arguments for the existence of a separate Kufan tradition. In most cases where there was a divergence between Sibawayhi' s terminology and that of al-Farra), later grammar adopted the terms that were current in Sibawayhi, but the Kufan terms did not disappear without a trace. One of the most obvious examples is the term for 'genitive', for which grammarians after Sibawayhi used not only the usual term in the Kitiib, garr, but-often without any apparent reason-the Kufan term, bajrf,, as well. That later grammarians were very much aware of a difference between the two sets of terms is clear from a quotation in az-Zaggagl's lrf,iib (80.1-2) where he states that he 'translated' the Kufan terms into Basran ones in order to facilitate understanding their arguments ( wa-akJ.ar mii adkuruhu min ibtigiigiit al-Kiifiyyzn innamii u'abbiru 'anhii bi-a{fii?: al-B~riyyzn ''most of what I mention from the Kufans' arguments I reproduce with the Basrans' terminology"). Apparently, not all grammarians followed this example, since we find as-Sigistanl (d. 250/864) complaining about the fact that the grammarians in Bagdad persisted in using Kufan terms instead of the Basran ones, e.g., !Jafr! instead of garr "genitive", $ija instead of -?arf"temporal or local adverb", nasaq instead of'aif"coordination" ( wa-innamii hamma abaduhum idii subiqa ilii l-'ilm an yusayyira isman yabtari'uhu li-yunsaba ilayhi, fa-yusammz l-garr !Jajrf,an ilb ''some of them
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would even try to introduce a term they invented in order to let it pass off as their own, calling the genitive !Jajrj, etc.'', ap. Abu t-Tayyib, Mariitib 102.1ff.). We have seen above that for some of these terms the connection with the terminology of, for instance, alFarriP, is not as clear-cut as later tradition makes it out to be. In the case of nasaq Owens (1990a:94) notes that al-Farri'e uses both terms, but seems to prefer 'aif, whereas Ta'lab uses nasaq almost exclusively. The above quotations may have created the impression that the Kufan and the Basran terms were synonymous, and this is certainly what the later grammarians believed. Since Weil's (1913) analysis of the later tradition concerning the two schools, there has been a tendency on the part of Western scholars to follow the indigenous tradition at least in this respect, and regard the Kufan and Basran terms as synonyms for basically the same linguistic notions. Carter ( 1973) deals with one pair of terms, ~arf I!Jiliif in connection with the construction of the so-called wiiw al-ma'iyya, i.e., the particle wa- in sentences such as Iii ta)kul as-samaka wa-tasraba l-labana "don't eat fish while drinking milk (at the same time)" ( cf. the traditional treatment of this question by Ibn al-Anbar'i, In~iif 229-30; and see Baalbaki 1981:22; Owens 1990a:157f.). According to Mabzum'i (1958:293) the Kufans explained the subjunctive in the verb following wa- by the principle of hiliij, basing themselves on al-l::Jalil's opinion, who connected the ending of the verb with the identity or non-identity between the two elements of the sentence ( cf. Slbawayhi, Kitiib I, 369). In contrast to this, SThawayhi attempted to find a formal explanation for the difference in endings ( cf. Slbawayhi, Kitiib I, 375). SarJ, according to Mabzum'i, was a special case of !Jiliif, applied to the construction of the wiiw al-ma'iyya. Carter, on the other hand, stresses the fictitiousness of the two schools as separate entities, and accordingly, attempts to demonstrate the similarity between the two explanations, the semantic and the formal one. According to him, the Basran explanation is based on a principle of !Jiliij, although SThawayhi does not use this term (he has the verb ~araja, instead, Kitiib I, 418f. ), and his explanation in terms of 'divergence' between the two elements of the sentence is basically the same as the semantic principle adduced by al-Farra) in the form of ~arf(e.g., Ma'iini I, 33; other quotations Carter 1973: 298, n.1 ). In this view, SThawayhi was still trying to find semantic principles as the basis for linguistic explanations, at least in this case,
EARLY LINGUISTIC TERMINOLOGY
11
whereas the later Basran tradition limited itself strictly to formal explanations of the case-endings in the sentence. A similar case is that of the construction 'isruna dirhaman ( cf. Carter 1972b; Owens 1990a:116-19). Sibawayhi's explanation in terms of identity and non-identity uses both semantic and formal features, whereas al-Farra) relies mostly on semantic criteria (the principle of qat'). This is also manifest in those cases where al-Farra) distinguishes between formally identical constructions on the basis of a semantic difference (Owens 1990a: 158). The emphasis on semantic criteria also explains why his terminology may seem to be diffuse because it is applied to different linguistic categories, which are however unified by a semantic component: ''given his exegetical goals, Farra) would have been as interested in a functionally appropriate term as in consistent, syntactic terminology" (Owens 1990a:140). With regard to the case of $arj Ibiliif we believe that a similar difference between the two approaches exists. It may be true that Sibawayhi took into account semantic features as well, but the later Basran explanation which posits a deleted an after the wiiw al-ma'iyya governing the second verb and causing its subjunctive ending, is much more akin to Sibawayhi's approach, whereas the Kufan explanation, in which the particle wa- itself is simply designated as the regent of the second verb has a much more ad hoc character, and is more related to the surface of the sentence. In other cases, too, the Kufan analysis of syntactic phenomena regards the surface as sufficient explanation for these phenomena, for instance in the case of the principle of mugiiwara, analyzed by Devenyi (1987-88), which allows the mere vicinity of one word to another to be the cause of its declensional ending. In Basran theory such a principle is unknown, and the only reminiscence we find of it in later theory is the attempt to explain the congruence in case-endings between adjective and substantive by the fact that the one follows the other. That it may have existed in earlier Basran theory is possible, since we find the principle of giwiir being used by Abu 'Ubayda (Magiiz I, 213.8). Mab.zumi (1958:306-316) gives a traditional treatment of the terminological differences between Basran and Kufan doctrine. He lists the following typically Kufan terms, with what he regards as their Basran equivalents:
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biliif ~uruf a~-~arf
gabd ma~all, ~ifa
targama, tabytn fie! da)im adawat bafr! maghul cimad ~arf a~-~ifa
nact idgam maknt
~arf ~-#la
nasaq
nafy ?arf badal ism al-focil ~uruf al-macant garr ¢amtr a.S-sa)n, ¢amtr al-qi~~a fa# ~arf al-iarr ~ifa, waif iddigam ¢amtr ~arf az-ziyada caif
''negation'' "local adverb" ''substitute'' ''participle'' ''particles'' "genitive" ''cataphoric pronoun'' "copulative pronoun" "preposition" "attribute" ''assimilation'' ''pronoun'' "redundant particle" ''coordination
Some of these terms have already been mentioned above, others will be discussed below, when we deal with the terminology in the early commentaries. As can be seen in the list, in most cases the later tradition has preserved the Basran equivalent: "It is interesting to observe that in no instance where Sibawayh had an unambiguous term did later grammarians fail to adopt his rather than Farra's usage" (Owens 1990a: 161). But Owens also indicates that in some instances the dichotomy is not as clear-cut as Mabzumi's list would have us believe: there are terms which are shared between Sibawayhi and alF arra?, for instance the term for ''coordination'', where Sibawayhi has caif lsirak, and al-Farra? caif /nasaq. Similarly, for the pair ~ifa/nact we have already seen that nact occurs in the Kitab as an infrequent synonym of ~ifa and al-Farra) sometimes uses ~ifa for "attribute". The typically Kufan term ada for ''particle'' is used infrequently by al-Farra), although it is used more often by later Kufan grammarians, for instance by Abu Bakr Ibn al-Anbari (d. 328/939; cf. Owens 1990a: 161, n.4). Although since the appearance of Mabzumi' s book in 1958 much more has become known about al-Farra)'s terminology through the edition of his Macant l-Qu~an, much remains unclear. As an example we may mention here that in the list of chapter headings from al-Farra)'s Kitab al-~udud as it is given by Ibn an-Nadim (Fihrist
EARLY LINGUISTIC TERMINOLOGY
13
66-67; cf. Sezgin 1984:32) we find a number of terms that are usually regarded as typically Basran terms, e.g. n~b and nahy; on the other hand, the list confirms terms such as idgiim, 'imiid, and al-Ji'l al-wiiqi' "transitive verb" (Basran muta'addin). The traditional treatment doubtlessly copies the Arabic tradition, which stereotyped the emergence and the development of the two schools. On the other hand, the later tradition clearly saw in the terminological differences the reflection of a separate development of two groups of scholars, who held more or less the same opinions, since they used terms that were strictly synonymous. In this sense, the later tradition perhaps even underestimated the doctrinal and theoretical differences between the two schools : it is clear that at least in some cases the difference in terminology is a sign of a real theoretical difference between Basrans and Kufans. This applies, for instance, to principles such as biliif and mugiiwara, and to the theories about the conditional sentences. The difference between the two approaches is also underscored in the many recent studies that have appeared about the doctrine and terminology of the Ma'iin'i l-Qur'iin ( cf. e.g. Devenyi 1987-88, 1990a, 1990b, 1991; Bertonati 1988; Talmon 1990a; Owens 1990b; Kinberg 1991). Most of these studies take the view that al-Farra? represents a current in Arabic linguistics that was partly superseded by the success of Sibawayhi's Kitiib, but whose traces can still be detected in later grammar. In Talman's view this current was an old 'Iraqi tradition of grammatical study that was connected with logical influence ( cf. p. 27 below). The success of the Kitiib was certainly not instantaneous. As Bernards (1989; 1990; 1993) shows, the generations following Sibawayhi, until the time of al-Mubarrad (d. 285/898) had no qualms about holding views contrary to those expressed in the Kitiib. According to her, al-Mubarrad was the first grammarian who felt the need to retract his earlier criticisms of Sibawayhi in order to establish the authority of the Kitiib as the main source of grammatical knowledge for the Basran school of grammarians. This is partly confirmed by Humbert's (1992) impressive reconstruction of the textual history of the Kitiib. She concludes (1992:130f.) that the role of alMubarrad in the transmission of the Kitiib was crucial, and he may even be regarded as the first grammarian to introduce the Kitiib in the curriculum of grammar. In Talman's view (1985a) the process of retrojection by which the Basran 'school' was constructed post factum, with Abii 1-Aswad ad-Du)ali (d. 69/688) as its eponymical
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founder, had begun even earlier. His oldest source for the story of Abii 1-Aswad is al-Gumal).i, who died probably in the beginning of the third/ninth century, and the story of Abii 1-Aswad is also mentioned in the Kitiib al-'ayn (III, 302.15-16). If this reconstruction of the history of the Basran 'school' is correct, al-Mubarrad used Sibawayhi and the Kitiib in an attempt to promote the Basrans in Bagdad, building on previous sentiments of allegiance to a 'school'. In the period immediately after Sibawayhi we find a proliferation of different theories that were later abrogated and superseded by the Kitiib. In spite of the 'canonical' character of Arabic grammar, the theories of the dissenting grammarians were, however, not completely forgotten or suppressed. This applies, for instance, to Qutrub' s (d. 206/821) remarkable theory of the function of the caseendings (cf. Versteegh 1983a) and to al-Garmi's (d. 225/839) conception of declension as a process of inqiliib ( cf. V ersteegh 1985). Bernards (1990; 1993) who has studied the influence of al-Garmi on later theories, believes that he played a major role in the formulation of criticisms against the Kitiib. In her view, many of the criticisms that al-Mubarrad expressed in his Kitiib ar-radd 'alii Sibawayhi were actually borrowed from al-Garmi and his contemporary, al-Abfas al-Awsat (d. 215/830). This tallies with the conclusions drawn by Humbert (1992) in her study of the transmission of the Kitiib. According to her, tradition made al-Abfas as well as Qutrub into disciples of Sibawayhi, whereas in reality they were rather his contemporaries and equals: ''Tout se passe done comme si le Kitiib avait ete transmis non pas par des eleves de Sibawayhi qui auraient eu la charge d'assurer la transmission fidele du Kitiib et qui auraient ete patentes pour le faire, mais par deux de ses contemporains ou camarades d'etudes" (1992:26). We shall see below (chapter II, p. 52) that even the title of the book, Kitiib Sibawayhi, may be explained by the special character of its transmission, which made it into a rarity among the studies of his contemporaries, that were mostly transmitted orally, albeit on the basis of written materials. Apart from a few quotations in the literature, nothing much is known about Qutrub, but with regard to al-Abfas and his linguistic theories we are in a somewhat better position to assess the differences between him and Sibawayhi. Thanks to the publication of his Ma'iin'i l-Quriin we may now compare his terminology with that of the Kitiib and that of the later tradition. Without going into details
EARLY LINGUISTIC TERMINOLOGY
15
here we shall just mention some of the unusual terms from the Ma'iinz l-Qu~iin, quoting from the list made by the editor, Fii)iz Faris al- I:Iamad, in the introduction to his edition; in the second column the equivalents from the Kitiib are mentioned. This list shows that at least in some respects al-Abfas used the terminology that is normally attributed to al-Farrii) and the Kufans (na't, isqiit):
taJ.qzl taJ.niya gimii' al-ism al-b~f ism al-/:tin tafszr na't hii) at-ta)nll. isqiit
tasdid takrzr gam' ism al-'alam -?arf az-zamiin fifa, (na't) tii) at-ta)nzJ. i'miil
''gemination'' "dual" "plural" ''proper name'' "temporal adverb" ''specifier'' ''attribute'' ''feminine ending'' ''governance''
It is difficult to assess the value of another text, the Muqaddima fi n-nabw, that is ascribed to a contemporary of Sibawayhi, :tlalaf alAl;tmar (d. 180/796). Since the biographical sources are rather uncertain about its author, it is not surprising that the authenticity is still controversial, although it seems that there is a consensus about anearlydate(e.g., Sezgin 1984:126-27; Owens 1990a:181-85, 202). T almon ( 1990b) summarizes the older research and analyzes the terminology of the Muqaddima; he concludes that at least one fragment was written after 204/820, so that it cannot stem from ]jalaf alAl;tmar. But he, too, believes that in spite of the obscurity surrounding the authorship, the text is old. According to the Arabic tradition :tlalaf was a pupil of Abu 'Amr ibn al-'Alii', 'Isii ibn 'Umar and Yiinus ibn I:Iabib, but he also had Kufan ties, although some scholars maintain that these alleged ties are the result of a confusion with a Kufan :tlalaf, 'Ali ibn al-Mubiirak. Among the terms used by :tlalaf there are some which are usually regarded as Kufan ones, e.g., na't(cf. Talmon 1990b:189);gabd(cf. Talmon 1990b:167); btift! (cf. Talmon 1990b:172-73); nasaq (cf. Talmon 1990b:188). In the above-mentioned later fragment in the text, the term tamiim is used, which will be discussed below (cf. ch. IV, p. 151). The relationship between Sibawayhi's disciples and the Kufan tradition remains largely unclear. Carter (1973) already pointed out that Kufan theories were held by Basran grammarians as well, and it is obvious that in the first generations after Sibawayhi there was
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a lot of cross-over between the two traditions. This tallies with the view mentioned above, according to which al-Mubarrad was the grammarian who put an end to the lack of 'party discipline'. In this sense Weil was right when he stated that the construction of two firmly established schools was an invention of the generation after al-Mubarrad, when the practicing of grammar had been transferred to Bagdad. The availability of Kufan sources nowadays enables us, however, to avoid the exaggerated distrust of the Arabic sources that characterized Weil's analysis. Even though the 'schools' did not exist as sharply defined ideological groups, there were differences between the grammarians working in Basra and their Kufan colleagues. We have seen above that even in their theoretical approach the two groups differed, and in connection with our analysis of the early Islamic sources we shall come back to the relevance of Kufan grammatical terminology for this early period (see below, chapter VI).
4. al-lfaltl's grammatical terminology Troupeau (1976:16-17) mentions another category of linguistic terms that is conspicuously absent in the Kitiib, that of the phonetic terms of al- tlalil. In the last section of the Kitiib after the treatment of syntax and morphology Sibawayhi deals with phonetics/phonology. Most of the topics dealt with here are not strictly phonetic, but rather phonological or morphonological, e.g., pausal forms, imiila, yii' and wiiw as radicals. In the 16 chapters, where assimilation, gemination and insertion are treated, contrary to what one would expect, he does not quote his teacher al-tlalil (cf. Troupeau 1958). Accordingly, many of the terms used by al-tlalil do not belong to the technical vocabulary of the Kitiib. tlalil's vocabulary is known to us from the phonetic introduction to his Kitiib al-'ayn, as well as from the many quotations from al-tlalil in al-Azhari's Tahdib al-luga (d. 370/980; cf. Wild 1965:26-37), for instance: lila nit' r/alaq, r/awlaq agwaf ar/laq nataqa gars
"gingiva" ''palate'' "tip of the tongue" "hollow (of verbs containing alij, w, y)" "pointed (r, l, n)" "to articulate" ''sound''
EARLY LINGUISTIC TERMINOLOGY
17
It should be pointed out here that the authenticity of this phonetic vocabulary is not accepted by everybody. Danecki (1985), for instance, regards the terminology in al-Azhari as pseudo-tlalilian, and of course, the authorship of the Kitiib al-'ayn itself was a controversial topic even in the Arabic tradition. The divergence in the phonetic terminology is a good starting point for our discussion of a topic that is highly relevant for the origin of the linguistic terminology in Sibawayhi's Kitiib, and Sibawayhi's relationship with the grammarians preceding him. As a matter of fact, Sibawayhi quotes his predecessors very often: al-tlalil 608 times; Yunus ibn I:Iabib (d. 182/798) 217 times; 'Isa ibn 'Umar (d. 149/766) 20 times; Abu 'Amr ibn al-'Ala' (d. 154/770) 57 times; Abu 1-tlattab al-Abfas alKabir (d. ?) 58 times; 'Abdallah ibn Abi Isl;laq (d. 117/735 or 127/744) 7 times (for these data cf. Troupeau 1976:227-31). These figures might lead to the conclusion that Sibawayhi borrows heavily from his predecessors, and that for instance in the case of al-tlalil, he is indebted to him also for the terminology used in the Kitiib. But the example of the phonetic terminology shows that some caution must be exercized here. Moreover, we know from quotations elsewhere that al-tlalil himself did not use the terminology he is quoted with in the Kitiib, even though his doctrines are usually regarded as basically identical with those of Sibawayhi, as Reuschel's (1959) analysis has demonstrated. The section in al-tlwarizml's (d. after 387/997) Mafottl; al-'uliim entitled Fi wugiih al-i'riib wa-mii yatba'uhii 'alii mii yul;kii 'an al-flaltl ibn A/:lmad ''the aspects of declension and connected topics according to the account that is given on the authority of al-tlalil ibn Al;lmad" (Mafott/:144-46) is quite illustrative in this respect (cf. Fischer 1985). In this chapter al-tlwarizml quotes 21 terms from al-tlalil. Most of these terms concern the phonetic shape of the word: it seems that altlalil wished to distinguish terminologically between vowels at the beginning (~adr), in the middle (wasat) and at the end ('agz) of a word. Thus, for instance, the vowel u at the beginning is called tawgth, in the middle l;a5w, the vowel a at the beginning is called qa'r, the vowel i in the middle itjgii'. An important difference between this system and the one found in the Kitiib concerns the vowel endings. In the Kitab all endings, both nominal and verbal, are unified, the only distinction made being that between syntactically relevant endings and syntactically irrelevant endings (Kitiib I, 2-3):
18
-u -a -1
0
CHAPTER ONE
declensional
non-declensional
raj'
t/amm jat/.l kasr waqf
n~b
garr gazm
In al-tlalil's system there is an opposition between nouns and verbs: -u -a -1
0
nouns
verbs
nagr ? kasr
rf.amm jat/.l garr gazm (particles: tawqif)
Moreover, this system distinguishes between the non-nunated endings, as given above, and the nunated endings in nouns: -un raj', -an n~b, and -in !Jaj¢. Apparently, it does not operate with one of the basic theories of Arabic linguistics, the relatedness between nouns and imperfect verbs, based on their morphological and syntactic resemblance (mur/.iira'a). The use of some of the terms is strikingly different from SThawayhi, in particular the use of the 'declensional' terms of the Kitab for nunated endings, and the distinction between !Jajd ( = -in, not used in the Kitiib) and garr ( = -i in apocopated verbs before a hamzat al-w~l). The completely different orientation in altlalil' s system shows that the distinction between declensional and non-declensional vowels, as we know it from the Kitiib, had not yet been completely accepted by SThawayhi's time. As a matter of fact, we find in al-Farra?'s Ma'iint yet another distribution of the terms (cf. Owens 1990a: 159). Farra? does distinguish between declensional and non-declensional vowels, but within the latter category he uses for each vowel two terms, seemingly indiscriminately: declensional u
a
non-declensional
raj'
t/amma/raj'
n~b
jat/.laln~b
!Jajrf.
kasra/!Jafr!
According to Owens this system does operate with the notion of 'governance', although al-Farra) uses a different term to denote this notion, waqa'a instead of'amila. Since the system of vowel names can
EARLY LINGUISTIC TERMINOLOGY
19
be traced back to at least one of the early commentaries, that of Mul).ammad al-Kalbi, we shall come back to it below (chapter IV, pp. 125 -130; see also below, pp. 28-32 about the Syriac terminology for the vowels). Another source for al-tlalil's terminology is constituted by the many quotations in lexicographical works, for instance in the Lisiin al-'Arab, and in Ibn Sidah's (d. 458/1066)Mubkam. The latter source contains many metrical terms, whereas the Lisiin has more than 260 quotations, varying from purely lexical information to phonetic and grammatical analyses. Among the latter are a few very interesting remarks, which do not seem to have a parallel, neither in the Kitiib, nor in other grammatical writings, although some of them can be traced back to the Kitiib al-'ayn. A few examples may suffice. In Lisiin III, 223 after the discussion of Sibawayhi's terms musnadlmusnad ilayhi al-tlalil is quoted as saying that the two major syntactic divisions in the sentence are the sanad and the musnad ilayhi: Ja-s-sanad ka-qawlika 'abdulliih ragul ~iilib Ja-'abdulliih sanad wa-ragul ~iilib musnad ilayhi "sanad is, for instance, in the expression 'abdulliih ragul ~iilib: 'abdulliih is the support, and ragul ~iilib is that which is supported by it". The term sanad does not occur in the Kitiib, but it is used, indeed, in the Kitiib al-'ayn (VIII, 228-29). In Lisiin III, 314 the verb is divided into ma'hud, maihud and maw'ud; apparently' these terms have a technical meaning: mashud yaqulu huwa s-sii'a wa-l-ma'hud mii kiina ams wa-l-maw'ud mii yakunu gadan ''maihud means that which is now, ma'hud what was yesterday, and maw'ud what will be tomorrow''. Literally they mean ''witnessed", "warranted, known" and "promised"; they are not used in the Kitiib and we are not aware of any parallel in other grammatical texts. In Lisiin V, 413 the nouns are divided into nabaz and 'iimm; the former category includes the proper names such as zayd, 'amr, the latter the common nouns such as ragul,jaras. This terminology is confirmed by the Kitiib al-'ayn (VII, 375), where the same distinction is mentioned. It is interesting to note that although al-tlalil uses terms that are unknown in the Kitiib, he has the same examples as Slbawayhi. A special case is that of the Kitiib al-gumal attributed to al-.tfalil (cf. Sezgin 1984:47, 162), the text of which has been edited twice, once by Qabawa, who believed in its authenticity, and once by Fa)iz Faris, who assigned it to Ibn Suqayr (d. 315/927). There still is no consensus concerning the real author of this text about the functions
20
CHAPTER ONE
of the case-endings: Ryding (1992) believes that the arguments against its stemming from al-tlalil are not strong enough, and that accordingly those manuscripts which assign it to al-tlalil must be followed, whereas the second editor of the text, Fi=eiz Faris, points out that the text contains many quotations from later authors, including al-tlalil himself. He, therefore, follows the reading of one of the manuscripts in assigning it to Ibn Suqayr under the title alMul}-allii. Wuguh an-n~b. Schoeler (1989a:52-54) concludes from the information in the biographical sources that al-tlalil may have used written notes in his lectures about grammar, but did not publish a book on the subject. Terminologically, it is interesting to note that the text sometimes uses terms traditionally regarded as Kufan ones (cf. Owens 1990a:189-93), e.g., !Jaf4 "genitive" and gal}-d "negation'', and refers to al-Ba$riyyun and al-Kujiyyun. This would support the attribution to Ibn Suqayr, who is known to have followed both grammatical schools (cf., e.g., az-Zaggagi, l¢ab 79).
5. The origin of grammatical terminology The preceding section has shown how complicated the situation with regard to the terminology in the quotations from al- tlalil in the Kitiib is. For the other grammarians quoted in the Kitiib we have virtually no comparative material at our disposal, and it is, therefore, impossible to say anything about their value for a reconstruction of the preceding period from the point of view of the development of linguistic terminology. At a later stage we shall come back to the question of the difference between Kufan and Basran terminology ( cf. below chapter VI), for the moment we shall restrict ourselves to the question of the development of Slbawayhi's terminology. Various attempts have been made to explain the existence in the Arabic grammatical tradition of a full-fledged system of terminology in Siliawayhi's Kitiib. 'To explain' in this context obviously means, to find the historical model on the basis of which these terms were introduced-unless we assume that they were all invented by Siliawayhi himself (or by his immediate predecessors). As a general historiographical problem the development of linguistic terminologies has surprisingly seldom been the subject of any study, and in general it may be said that we know next to nothing about the way linguistic terminologies in various traditions have developed. Explanations usually operate on the assumption that linguistic terms
EARLY LINGUISTIC TERMINOLOGY
21
develop out of non-technical terms, whose meaning is specialized by grammarians. As an example we may quote the terms for the Greek case-endings, which are explained by Sittig ( 1931) by reference to a certain dice game (although in this case, too, one might argue that the terminology of the game is technical in origin). Another possibility is the explanation of a system oflinguistic terminology with the assistance of a foreign model, from which the it was borrowed or calqued. Such a foreign model may be found in another discpline, or in another tradition altogether. As an example of the borrowing of terms from another discipline we may cite that of the Greek grammatical tradition, which borrowed a lot of methodical terms from the science of medicine, in particular from the Empirical physicians. Most of the terminology for the criteria of correct speech, for instance, is derived from medical science (cf. Siebenborn 1976). When Dionysios Thrax calls grammar an empeiria "experience" -notwithstanding the title of his treatise as it became known in the later tradition, Techne-he is referring to a debate among medical scholars of his time. In some cases, a grammatical tradition bases its entire terminology on that of another tradition. The translation of Dionysios Thrax' Techne in Armenian, Georgian and Syriac constituted the starting point for an indigenous tradition which took most of its grammatical terms from that translation. The Latin grammatical tradition-and through it most of the Western tradition-took almost all of its grammatical terms from the Greek tradition, mostly in the form of calques of the Greek words. Or, to quote a more exotic example, when the Japanese became addicted to the Dutch fashion during the period known as Rangakusha, they applied the Dutch grammatical system to the description of their own language, finding, for instance, equivalents for the eight parts of speech in Japanese ( cf. Miller 1975:1251-55; Alpatov, Bass & Fomin 1981). The wholesale borrowing of grammatical terms for the analysis of another language raises the question of the influence such a process has on the description of the language. Elsewhere (Versteegh 1990a) we have argued that this process may be seen as a parallel to the socalled 'missionary grammars', which described exotic languages, especially the Amerindian languages, and the languages of NewGuinea, in terms of the Latin tradition. The purpose of these grammars was a contrastive one, and in general, one may state that the results were not necessarily inaccurate. Using a foreign model for
22
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the description of a language does not mean by definition that the structure of that language is distorted, since the main purpose of the use of the foreign model is to establish a familiar frame of reference for the learner of the language. Obviously, for some traditions, there is no preceding tradition to take recourse to in order to explain the development of a linguistic terminology. The Indian, Chinese, and the Greek traditions for the description of language must have arisen without the help of any preceding tradition, and in such cases the terminology must have been 'invented' for precisely that purpose. Similarly, the Icelandic and Irish traditions have gone through a period before the introduction of the Latin system, when the linguistic terms originated without foreign influence. In such cases we are back to the original question of how such terms are invented. In the case of the Arabic tradition we have an example of a tradition for which both explanations, the domestic and the foreign one, have been advanced. 6. The 'Greek' thesis In the nineteenth century, Merx ( 1889) started a trend to explain the Arabic grammatical tradition as a spin-off of the Greek philosophical and logical tradition. According to this approach, the science of grammar was developed by the Arabs with the help of the model they found in the translations of Greek treatises. In his attempt to prove the dependence of Arabic grammar on the Greek model, Merx based himself in particular on the Syriac tradition, which had been established itself on the basis of the Syriac translation ofDionysios Thrax' Techne. This is not to say that he believed that the Arabs took their grammatical principles from the Syrians, because Merx (1889: 137ff.) stressed the fact that there were fundamental differences between the two traditions. He explained these differences by pointing out that the Syrian grammarians had taken their grammatical theories from the Greek grammatical tradition, whereas the Arabs had taken theirs from the Aristotelian logical tradition, as it was transmitted by the Syrians. Among the terms connected by Merx with an Aristotelian original are the following ones (for a critical analysis see Elamrani-J amal 1983:24-35): 1. the tripartite division of the parts of speech, ism, Ji'l, barf, which, according to him, went back to the Greek onoma, rhema, sundesmos
EARLY LINGUISTIC TERMINOLOGY
23
2. the notion of i'riib, which he connects with the Greek words hellen{zein, heltenismos 3. the notion of 'gender', gins, from Greek genos, and the distinction of masculine and feminine gender 4. the term ~arf "temporal or local adverb" which is connected by him with the Aristotelian notion of time and space as containers of something (the Greek term for 'space' used by Aristotle is angeion "vessel") 5. l;iil is connected by him with both Greek hixis and diathesis 6. the notion of 'predicate', !J,abar, which is connected with the Greek kategoroumenon. The above examples show that Merx did not have a clear notion of the process of transmission and the way technical terms are borrowed from another tradition. Sometimes, one Arabic term corresponds to two Greek terms, sometimes a notion is said to have been borrowed without the corresponding term. A more serious problem with Merx' explanation is, however, the chronology. At the time when the Arabs developed their grammatical theories, there was as yet no widespread knowledge of Greek philosophy and logic, since the first grammatical studies took place before the period ofthe translations into Arabic. This is why Weiss (1910) in his criticism of the thesis that the Arabic term 'iimil "operator, regent" was calqued on the Latin term regens, called the 'Greek thesis' a hysteron proteron, since it did not fit the chronology of the development of Islamic science. Recently, interest in the period before the official translations of Greek treatises into Arabic has been rekindled. Rundgren (1976) revived Merx' thesis by pointing out that even before the period of the translations some knowledge of Greek logic and philosophy had reached the Arabs through the Persian translations that had been made at the academy of Gundishapur. These Persian translations had been translated into Syriac and some elements of Greek logic had even become available in Arabic through a treatise on logic by . Ibn al-Muqaffa', either the famous translator of the Kalila wa-Dimna (d. 142/759) or his son Mu.Q.ammad ibn 'Abdallah Ibn al-Muqaffa' (d. ± 200/815). Rundgren's comparison between the basic notions of Arabic grammar, as they appear in the introductory chapters of Sibawayhi's Kitiib, with the Syriac translation of Paulus Persa's treatise on logic and with later Arabic treatises on logic is not always easy to follow, since he switches between a terminological and a notional
24
CHAPTER ONE
comparison. Moreover, most of his equations of Greek and Arabic terms (or sometimes Syriac and Arabic terms) are formulated in a highly hypothetical way. It appears that he posits a dependence on the Arabs' part from a Greek model in the case of the tripartite division of the parts of speech; the term $arj = klisis ''flection''; the term i'riib = heltenism6s ''declension''; musnad ilayhi = hupokeimenon ''subject''; !Jabar = kategoroumenon ''predicate'', in other words, much the same terms as the ones adduced by Merx, but via a different route. It is interesting to note that Rundgren (1976:131£.) connects the Arabic term na/:tw "grammar" with the Greek analog{a; in this view the first grammarians become the people who study the analogy of speech. Unfortunately, there is absolutely no evidence for any historical connection between the two terms. Semantically, they are quite different, so that a connection becomes rather improbable. Another point mentioned by Rundgren (1976:130f.) is that of the categories of speech distinguished by Sibawayhi in the beginning of the Kitiib on the basis of the notions of mustaqim and mu/:tiil; according to Rundgren these two notions must be related to the Greek notions of orth6s and adunatos. Since Carter in his explanation of the origin of Arabic grammar also refers to these distinctions, we shall come back to this passage from the Kitiib below. Rundgren's remarks about these categories are very general and do not go beyond pointing out a certain resemblance. It is important to point out here that there may have been different channels for logical influence and terminology to filter through in the Islamic world. As an isolated example we may mention here Ibn Fari:gun's (fourth/tenth century) quite idiosyncratic terminology of the verbal tenses (cf. Biesterfeldt 1990): 'iibir "past", giibir "future", muqim "present", of which at the very least muqim goes back to Stoic enhestos (muqim also occurs in Ibn al-Muqaffa', Mantiq 29.11, together with miirfi "past" and munta;;ar "future"). But even within the 'canonical' channel of logical influence, through the translation of Greek logical treatises, one can distinguish quite a large number of divergent traditions. Zimmermann's (1972) study of early logical treatises, including that oflbn al-Muqaffa', shows a quite considerable divergence in the terminology used, partly corresponding with the divergence in the terms used in the translation of the Aristotelian corpus. To quote but one example: in the translations of Aristotle kategoroumenon is translated variably as ma/:tmul, maqul, na't, $ija: in Ibn al-Muqaffa' the Greek term corresponds to
EARLY LINGUISTIC TERMINOLOGY
25
/:larf or f:zadd ma/:lmul, in al-Kindi to ma/:lmul or maqul, in the Rasii'il lb:wiin a~-Safo' to #fa or ma/:lmul, in al-Fiiriibi to ma/:lmul (which became the current term for 'predicate' in later logic). Even within the transmission of logical knowledge from the Greek tradition, some linguistic elements must have reached the Arab world as well. Gatje (1971) already showed that in al-Fiiriibi's (d. 337/949) Kitiib al-al.fo? al-musta'mala fi l-mantiq the terminology pertaining to the parts of speech is derived from Greek grammar. Among the examples he cites are b:awiilif ( < antonum{ai), wii$ilat ( < drthra) and rawiibit ( < sundesmoz) (cf. for a translation and analysis of this passage Elamrani-Jamal 1983: 198-212). In our own study of Greek influence (Versteegh 1977, 1980a, b) we distinguished between a direct and an indirect influence. Direct influence was exercized by the Greek philosophical and logical tradition through the translations in the third and fourth centuries of the Higra, whereas indirect influence took place in the contacts between the Arabs and Hellenistic civilization in the conquered provinces of the Byzantine empire during the early period of Islam. According to this view, the Arabs became acquainted with Hellenistic culture and scholarship in a watered down version as it was being taught in the schools all over the Byzantine empire. In this way, they were able to borrow some of the elements of Greek grammatical teaching, without thereby taking over the entire system. As in other aspects of Greek-Byzantine culture (e.g., law and theology), this influence took the form of a diffusion of isolated elements from the provincial cultural atmosphere. This assumption of a process of osmosis in the transmission of Greek elements has the advantage that it is based on an established locus of contact, but the disadvantage of being almost completely unprovable, since by definition it is based on oral contacts. Some of the terms in Arabic grammar that were connected in this thesis with Greek grammatical terms were: /:larf i'riib ~arf
raj' ta'addin /:laraka 'ilal
stoicheion hettenismos kUsis orthe (ptosis) metabasis kinesis pathe
"particle" ' 'declension' ' ' 'inflection' ' ''nominative'' ''transitivity'' ''vowel'' ''sound changes''
26
kalam/qawl fo)ida ma'na
CHAPTER ONE
!Ogos/lixis autotileia lekton
''sentence/utterance'' ''meaningfulness'' ''meaning''
It is easy to see that some of the equations presented here are identical with earlier proposals, by Rundgren and Merx. The difference is, however, that in their proposal the connection is made with Greek philosophy and logic, whereas in our own view these terms were taken from the living practice of grammar teaching in the schools in the Byzantine provinces. This would explain, for instance, the semantic development in i'rab = hellenismos, which would be hard to explain otherwise. On the other hand, we shall see below (ch. III, p. 91) that already in Mul;lammad al-Kalbi's (d. 146/1763) Tajstr the term i'rab is used in the sense of "correct Arabic" as against luga "dialect": wa-innama qala [Q. 20/63]* inna hadani * ... 'ala l-luga la 'ala l-i'rab (131b27-28). Such a usage presupposes an indigenous development of the term which sufficiently explains the later sense of i'rab "(correct) declensional endings". A second remark concerns the fact that almost all the terms we used in this attempt to show Greek influence in Arabic grammar concerned grammatical categories, rather than the methodical apparatus of grammar. We did, however, try to demonstrate a connection between the Arabic terminology for the criteria of (correct) speech (u$iil an-nabw) and the Greek doctrine of the kanones hellenismoii, which had the same function. We have mentioned above that these criteria of correct speech were connected with medical theory (cf. p. 21). This applies to criteria such as igma' "consensus" and naql "transmission" (Versteegh 1977:90-106), and in particular to the principle of qiyas "analogy" which we connected with the Greek notion of kdnon (cf. Versteegh 1980b). Finally, there was one more argument on which we based our theory, namely the resemblance in the use of paradigms for the noun and the verb between the Arabic and the Greek tradition: in Sibawayhi's Kitab the primary examples for the noun are ragul "man" andfaras "horse", which correspond with the well-known examples of the Stoic school tradition anthropos and hippos. In both traditions the verb "to hit" (tupto/rfaraba) is the most popular example for the category of the verbs. With regard to the Arabs' dependence on Greek logical and
EARLY LINGUISTIC TERMINOLOGY
27
philosophical models we may finally mention Talman's theories, partly unpublished. According to Talman (1987, 1990a, forthcoming a ) Greek philosophical influence did play a role in the development of linguistics in the Arab world, but more in particular in the Kufan school, in the theories of al-Farra). Talman uses the difference between Kufan and Basran linguistic notions to demonstrate the existence of a linguistic tradition before Sibawayhi and the dominant Basran school. The fact that the Kufan theories differ from those advanced by Sibawayhi is explained by him through Greek philosophical influence. Unfortunately, there is not much material with which the philosophical/logical influence can be documented, but he stresses the importance of Ibn al-Muqaffa''s logical treatises as a primary source for our knowledge of Arabic logic in the early period. Whether or not early logic played a role in the establishment of grammatical theory and terminology remains to be seen. With regard to the terminology of the parts of speech in Ibn alMuqaffa' Talman (forthcoming a) concludes that there is practically no connection between the list in the Kitiib al-man#q -based on the eight parts of speech in Dionysios Thrax' Techne, like the list in alFarahi (cf. above, p. 25)-on the one hand, and the grammatical tripartite division, on the other. The only possible exception would be the term abdiil, which is attributed by Ta'lab (Magiilis 439.16) to al-Farra) in the sense of "pronoun" (cf. Greek antonum{a), but this term does not occur in the Kitiib al-ma'iin'i. The attraction of Talman's hypothesis is that it provides us with a means of connecting the Kufan tradition with a preceding grammatical tradition which is not identical with the tradition represented by Sibawayhi. As we shall see below (chapter VI), this possibility may be exploited in order to explain the early development of grammatical studieseven if we do not accept the Greek angle Talman advocates. For the sake of completeness we should finally mention one more attempt to find foreign influence in Arabic grammar, namely the influence oflndian grammar in Arabic phonetic theories. Since the arrangement of the letters in al-tlali1's Kitiib al-'ayn is somewhat similar to the order of the Devanagari alphabet, it has been assumed by some people that this was the result of contact between the first Arab grammarians and Indians (cf. Wild 1965:37-40; Danecki 1985). However, as Law (1990) observes, the alleged similarities and parallels turn out to be only superficial or non-existing, and the
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similarities that do exist are so general as to be of no use for a claim of foreign influence. The most serious argument against Indian influence is the fact that there is no locus for a transmission of grammatical knowledge from the Indians to the Arabs at the period of altlalil and Sibawayhi, and there is no evidence for any pre-existing links between Arab and Indian scholars.
7 . The Syriac connection When the Arabs conquered the Near East and came in touch with Hellenistic culture, they also found a tradition that had already succeeded in assimilating the Greek grammatical system for the description of its own language, Syriac. Even before the translation of the Techne of Dionysios Thrax into Syriac, the Syrians had used Greek grammatical terminology to describe the categories of their own language, and they had even introduced the Greek vowel signs into their own writing system in order to overcome the ambiguity of their consonant script. This first stage of Syriac grammar was profoundly influenced by the existing grammatical tradition in the Hellenistic provinces, but in the analysis of the phonology of their language they had to develop a new terminology for the sound system as well as for the intricate system of accents they used for the recitation of the Bible. Unfortunately, we do not know very much about the earliest attempts of the Syrians in grammar and reading, in the sixth and seventh centuries. Most of what we know is derived from later Syriac writings, which were, however, composed at a time when the Syriac tradition had undergone the influence of Arabic grammar, and had taken over most of the conceptual and terminological apparatus of that tradition. As a matter of fact, both Syriac and Hebrew grammatical terminology, as we know it, are a calque of the Arabic terminology. Still, it is possible to reconstruct some of the early stages in Syriac grammar, in which the system was based on Greek grammar without any traces of Arabic influence. This was the system as the Arabs found it when they came in touch with the Syrian Christians, maybe even in pre-Islamic times, when Christian Arabs and Meccan traders must have got acquainted with the Syriac writing system. After the Islamic conquests both sides had to accommodate to the new situation in order to find a way to peaceful coexistence. This
EARLY LINGUISTIC TERMINOLOGY
29
created all kinds of daily problems for which people had to find practical solutions. Thus, we find in the canons of Jacob of Edessa (d. 708 A.D.) a discussion of the question, whether it is permitted for an abbott to eat from the same bowl as a Muslim, and even more intriguing, whether it is permitted for a Christian priest to teach reading and writing to the children of the Muslims (Merx 1889:43). The latter must have been current practice, since we know that during the first century of the conquests the Arabs had to rely on Christians to handle the archives of the newly founded empire. Even though writing was not completely unknown in the Gahiliyya, for all practical purposes the Arabs had to use Christian scribes. It is, therefore, quite understandable that in the beginning Christians were asked to instruct Muslim children in reading and writing. When Abu 1-Aswad or Na~;>r ibn 'A~;>im (or Ya.l)ya ibn Ya'mar, cf. Schoeler 1992:31-33) devised their own writing system for the representation of Arabic vowels, they borrowed the system of punctuation from the Syrians, and it is, therefore, to be expected that in the earliest terminology for the diacritical signs in Arabic we should be able to find Syriac influence. It is not easy, however, to distinguish within the Syriac tradition between the original system of terminology and the later stage when Arabic grammar was taken over by the Syrians. Merx (1889:34-101) analyzes the information we have about the grammatical system used by Jacob of Edessa, which may be collected from the few fragments that have been preserved, as well as from the discussions in later Syriac grammarians, in particular Barhebraeus (d. 1286 A.D.). About the latter Merx (1889:231) says: "Haec igitur felix hujus viri est inventio, quod non ut Elias Tirhanensis singulas grammaticae arabicae definitiones adhibuit, sed tatum systema tamquam fundamentum libri sui sibi assumens, Syriasmi proprietatem non perdidit, sed secundum J acobum Edessenum accuratissime descripsit". In other words, it should be possible to reconstruct from his writings the original grammatical system of the Syrians. With regard to the vowels Merx ( 1889: 50) concludes that Jacob of Edessa distinguished the following nine vowels in Syriac: a
ii i
peffibii
zeqii.fo r'i/lii$ii )ari/sii
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e i t
ii
o o
/saryii Mfl04ii >ari/sii Q.efl~ii /saryii 'ef~ii >ari/sii 'ef~ii mef'ayii 'ef~ii /saryii refl~ii
The identification of the vowels denoted by these terms is not completely certain, being based on a reconstruction from the text of Barhebraeus. One thing is clear: the terminology is based on two different phonetic concepts. In the first place, we note that the lexical meaning of some of the terms points in the direction of an analysis in terms ofthe mouth aperture: p'iJ.iil;ii "opening", Q,efl~ii "pressure, pushing", 'efiifii "contraction". These terms seem to be related to the Arabic terms Jatl;a, kasra, rjamma, respectively, as they are used in the story about the 'invention' of the vowel signs by Abu 1-Aswad, who told his scribe to watch his mouth, idii ra>aytani qad jatal;tu ]ami bi-l-l;arj, ja-nqut nuqta 'alii a'liihu, wa-idii tfamamtu Jami Ja-nqut nuqta bayna yaday al-Q,arj, wa-idii kasartu Jami Ja-g'al an-nuqta tal;ta l-Q,arj "when you see me opening my mouth, write a dot above the letter, and when you see me contracting my mouth, write a dot within the letter, and when you see me folding my mouth [i.e., drawing back my lips?], write the dot beneath the letter" (Abu t-Tayyib, Mariitib 10-11). It may be added here that the Basran term for "genitive", garr "drawing, pulling", which does not occur in the Abu 1-Aswad story could be regarded as a calque of the Syriac l;efl~ii, which has the same meaning. The other phonetic concept that can be reconstructed from the terminology is that of the progressive lowering (of the tongue?) towards the front of the mouth. According to Revell (1975:181) sounds at the back of the mouth are regarded by the Syriac grammarians as high, those at the front as low. Thus, the grammarians used the terms zeqiifo "raising" and refliifii "lowering" for ii and i, respectively. These vowels were indicated with a supralinear dot (ii) and a sublinear dot (e), corresponding to their relative height. It is obvious that the position of the dot in the Abu 1-Aswad story is in accordance with this Syriac practice. It is equally obvious that the Arabic terms nafb and bajtj, as well as raj' may be interpreted lexically in the same sense as the Syriac terms. The terms nafb and baf4 correspond to zeqiifo and refliifii, respectively. The term raj', meaning
EARLY LINGUISTIC TERMINOLOGY
31
"upright position, elevation", is semantically related to the first of these two terms, although it could also be connected to the above mentioned set indicating relative height with regard to the position within the mouth. It may be added that when the Hebrew grammarian Saadya Gaon classified the Hebrew vowels within an Arabic framework, he interpreted the Arabic terms rajan on the basis of the analogical application of the rules they had extracted from the language of the Bedouin. A striking example is that of Abii cAmr ibn al-cAla) (d. 154/770) who is reported by al-Farra) (Maciin'i II, 183;
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cf. Beck 1945:360) to have quoted one of the Companions of the prophet who said about Q. 20/63 * inna hiidiini la-sii&iriini *: inna.fi l-m~&afla&nan wa-sa-tuq'imuhu l-cArab "the codex contains errors, but the Arabs will correct them". In the sources there are many more examples of this attitude towards the Quriin, and the Arabic language in general, on the part of the early grammarians. It is our contention that in the Kitiib Sibawayhi this is the attitude attributed to the group of people collectively designated as an-na&wiyyiin. In this view, the na&wiyyiin are the grammarians preceding Sibawayhi, including all the grammarians quoted by him by name elsewhere, and they are called thus whenever Sibawayhi disagrees with them, more specifically, whenever Sibawayhi does not agree with their application of the qiyiis to the language of the Quriin as a productive principle. Talman (1982) agrees with the identification of the na&wiyyiin as a label for Sibawayhi' s colleagues when he disagrees with them, and he does not accept their status as a special, anonymous group of grammarians, either. But according to him, the disagreement between Sibawayhi and the na&wiyyiin did not concern the application of the principle of qiyiis as such, but some of their theorems, which were not in agreement with his own conclusions based on qiyiis. He advances the thesis ''that Sibawayhi founded his grammatical system on the groundwork of a fairly advanced school of grammar'' In this context we may also mention the fact that according to Rundgren (1976:132) the notion of qiyiis is connected with the Greek analog{a, so that the nabwiyyiin would be the people concerned with the analogy of speech. Our own thesis (Versteegh 1980b) according to which qiyiis is connected with the Hellenistic school term kdnon points in the same direction. Abii cubayda mentions an-nabwiyyiin three times (Magiiz I, 115.1; II, 143.2; II, 150.10 = II, 152.3). In the first quotation the grammarians provide an argument for the fact that the word maJ.nii is not nunated (li-annahu ma$riif can baddihi). In the second quotation a word is said to be in the accusative for two reasons (min makiinayn): in the first place because of a deleted verb, according to the interpretation of this verse by Abii cAmr ibn al-cAla?, transmitted by Yiinus ibn l:labib; in the second place because of a general theory of the nabwiyyiin concerning the construction of accusatives after a vocative. The third quotation is a repetition of the first (zacama nnabwiyyiin li-annahu $Urifa can waghihi). In none of the three cases is
EARLY LINGUISTIC TERMINOLOGY
39
there any indication that Abu cubayda disagrees with the grammarians, although the use of the verb zacama might point in that direction. But there is no doubt that their judgment is highly technical. It may be added that Abu cubayda uses the technical term qiyiis only once in the Magaz (I, 320.4 wa-huwa l-qiyiis). The conclusion of the above considerations could be that Sibawayhi's main innovation in the field of linguistics was his change in orientation towards the text of the Quriin and his rejection of the principle of qiyiis as a productive instrument of analogical word formation. This is in accordance with Beck's study (1946) of the attitude towards Quriin and cArabiyya. He shows that this attitude changed during the second half of the second century A. H., and by the time of Sibawayhi the critical attitude of the nal}.wiyyiin towards the mu,rl}.ajhad disappeared completely. Henceforth, the authority of the Quriin in its canonical form in the mu,rl}.aj as the ultimate criterium of correct Arabic was uncontested, and the cutmanic text of the Quriin had become authoritative for every Islamic discipline, including grammar. This is not to say that Sibawayhi was not interested in variant readings. As Brockett (1988) shows, he had an academic, theoretical interest in alternative readings, whether attributed to any authority, or purely hypothetical. But this interest did not clash with his respect for the canonical text. Brockett (1988: 199) concludes "that while this earlier stage was far freer from tradition and far less systematised, it was nevertheless one in which the Qur)an text was firmly set within surprisingly narrow bounds''. Beck includes al-Farra) in this conclusion about the status of the mu,rl}.aj. It is, perhaps, worth mentioning in this context that the Kufans' attitude towards the text of the Quriin had always been slightly different from that of the Basrans. In Kufa, the codices of Ibn Mascud and Ibn cAbbas had always been much more popular than elsewhere, and Kufan grammarians such as al-Kisa)i (d. 183/ 799) had always been much more lenient towards the acceptance of variant readings, even when the canonical version of the Quriin had gained currency elsewhere in the Islamic world. As a matter of fact, both al-Kisa)i and al-Farra) continued to use the variant readings, through the principle ofictibiir(cf. Beck 1948:328ff.), i.e. the use of variant readings to explain and support alternative vocalic readings of the canonical text, and al-Farra) shows much more interest in variant readings in his Macani al-Quriin than Sibawayhi does in the Kitiib. As a general conclusion and in spite of the differences between
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the Kufan and the Basran tradition vis-a-vis the text of the Quran, one may nevertheless say that at the end of the second century of the Higra the authority of the text of the Quran had, indeed, prevailed and the identification of the two notions of Quran and 'Arabryya was all but complete. We shall see below (chapter V) that this shift in orientation towards the Quran coincided with a shift in appreciation of the reading tradition, and may, perhaps, even have contributed towards the popularity of the Basran school and the disappearance of the Kufan tradition. 10. Conclusion Most of the theories that have been mentioned above were expressed at a time when the Kitab Sibawayhi and the Kitab al-'ayn were virtually the only texts known from the earliest period oflslam. This situation has changed dramatically in the last few decades, not so much in grammar as in the disciplines of tafs'ir and IJ,adiJ.. Several texts have become available which are attributed to scholars whose date of death falls in the second century of the Higra, and who were active in the first half of that century, sometimes even in the second half of the first century of the Higra. In the next chapter we shall present some of these texts, discuss the problem of the authenticity and demonstrate their relevance for our knowledge concerning the earliest preoccupations with the study of the language of the Quran and language in general in the Islamic world. The idea in itself of tracing the origin of Arabic grammatical thinking in the oldest commentaries on the Quran, is not original. Belguedj (1973:170), for instance, remarks: "Ce fut !'oeuvre des hommes du Ier siecle de l'Hegire qui, preoccupes de serrer au plus pres le sens du verset coranique ou du vers preislamique, furent amenes a degager, peu a peu, les premiers lineaments de Ia grammaire arabe". But such attempts to demonstrate the dependence of the early grammarians on the exegetical activities of the first century scholars of Islam were hampered by the fact that they had to rely on the much later compilations. What is new in our approach is the availability of the commentaries themselves.
CHAPTER TWO
MATERIALS FROM EARLY ISLAM ON THE EXEGESIS OF THE QUR)AN 1. Introduction: The sources In the preceding chapter we have discussed the earliest grammatical texts in Arabic available to us. Our conclusion was that it is impossible to go beyond the period of Sibawayhi, i.e., the end of the second century of the Higra, in spite of the wealth of quotations from preceding grammarians in the Kitab. The existing theories that attempt to explain the development of grammatical terminology in Arabic can at best explain only part of that terminology, so that we still do not have a coherent view of the development in the first two centuries. The thesis underlying our investigation of this period here is that after the death of the Prophet the main preoccupation of the believers was with the text of the Qur'iin. This determined all their efforts to get a grip on the phenomenon oflanguage, and it is, therefore, in the earliest commentaries on the Qur'iin that we shall have to start looking for the original form of language study in Islam. Until quite recently the commentaries from the first two centuries of the Higra were known to us mainly through quotations in later tajszrs, and even though some of them had been preserved in manuscript form, they were generally regarded as unauthentic, i.e., as later fabrications that did not date back to the period they were attributed to. Without going at first into the question of the authenticity, we shall simply list the texts used in the present study. They include the following exegetical works: - the commentary by Muqatil ibn Sulayman (d. 150/767), edited in 4 volumes between 1971 and 1988 by 'Abdallah Mal}.mud Sil}.ata (cf. Sezgin 1967:36-37). - the commentary by Mugiihid ibn Gabr (d. 104/722), edited in 2 volumes by 'Abd ar-Ral}.man at-Tiihir ibn Mul}.ammad asSurti in Islamabad (cf. Sezgin 1967:29); a second edition in one volume, edited by Mul}.ammad 'Abd as-Salam Abu n-Nil appeared in Cairo in 1989. - the commentary by Sufyan at-Tawri (d. 161/778) re-edited in one volume in 1983 by lmtiyaz 'Ali'Arsi(cf. Sezgin 1967:518).
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- the commentary by Mul).ammad ibn as-Sa?ib al-Kalbi (d. 146/ 763), unpublished but extant in a large number of manuscripts (cf. Sezgin 1967:34). - the commentary by Zayd ibn