Early Arabic Grammatical Theory: Heterogeneity and Standardization.

• Author: Carter, M.G.

That this review has taken so long to appear is entirely due to the large number of mistakes the book contains, creating a genuine problem of conscience for a reviewer constitutionally unable to respond to such carelessness in a work of scholarship with anything but dismay and resentment. A prophylactic review is called for, written firmly and with conviction, and as there is no inoffensive way to say what a very bad book this is, the reader must judge from the following sad catalogue of errors:

Mistranslations of Quranic material: "Indeed this is your mother, one mother" for inna hadihi ummatukum ummatan wahidatan (p. 139). "Don't you even know what the day of religion is!" for ma adraka ma yawmu l-dini (p. 165, with ma explicitly glossed as "neg.," cf. p, 25, ma laka 1-nazira fi am-rind, translated "you have no business looking into our affair"). "Or they cast it in the earth" for aw itrahahu ardan (p. 148, wrongly read and transliterated as aw atrahuhu). "He is given" for$yuhda (p. 153: the context is inna llaha la yahdi man yudillu). "As a shroud for the living and the dead" for kifatan ahyaan wa amwatan (p. 163: read as kifanan, a word not recorded in the dictionaries). "This is a day which will benefit the believers" for hada yawmu yanfau l-sadiqina (p. 171, omitting the actual agent sidquhum). "Deaths rather than life" for amwatu (sic) gayru ahyai (p. 93). Owens reads S. 54, v. 52 as wa-kullu sayin faaluhu fi zurin instead of fi zuburin and the translation "and everything they did in falsehood" (p. 170) does not correspond to the Arabic even as read. In p. 130 matubatan (S. 5, v. 60) is transcribed as matubata and the translation of its context hal unabbi ukum bi-sarrin min dalika matubatan as "suppose I forewarn you of an evil so that you don't do it" is an insult both to the original and to the reader. Likewise the translation "guarding against death" for hadara l-mawti (p. 31, S. 2, v. 19) is weak to the point of theological absurdity, while "no tame ones" for la musta nisina (p. 21, S. 33, v. 53) is so far from its intended Quranic meaning that one can only marvel at Owens' apparent contempt for his sources, a kind of neo-Orientalism in which the true context of Arab linguistics counts for absolutely nothing.

Inadequate or misleading glosses: "every day" for kulla l-yawmi (p. 252), "it was followed some of the day" for sira a-layhi l-yawmu (p. 113), "there is no good from it for you" for la hayran minhu laka (p. 44), "wealthy" for tajir (p. 251), "beginning of the road" for wajh al-tariq (p. 144). A remark of al-Farra about the corroboratives nafs, ajmaun etc. is not well handled: he describes them as innama takunu atrafan li-awahiri l-kalam, translated as "these words are like a part of the preceding sentence" (p. 84) instead of "are just ends of an utterance," meaning that they are virtually word-endings or suffixes, which would have emerged more clearly if Owens had not insisted on rendering kalam as "sentence." Marartu bi-rajulin illadi yaqulu daka (p. 38) is certainly not an acceptable example. Ahmada llahu hamdan (p. 46) is a blasphemy, and should be ahmadu llaha hamdan, though the translation "God praised (a praising)" leaves no doubt as to how Owens reads it. There is definitely something wrong with marartu bi-rajulin sawa u alayhi l-hayru wa-l-sarru (p. 102), as well as marartu bi-sahi-fatin tinun hatamuhu (p. 39) and anta rajulun ilman (p. 47). The unlikely reconstruction ila l-fawri (p. 145) is probably based on a misinterpretation of al-Kisa i as quoted by al-Farra, while "the beginning of the exam" awwalu l-imtihani (p. 105) has obviously been fabricated by Owens himself, though it is presented as coming from al-Farra (it is bad enough that linguistics...