Ahmad b. Ali b. Masud on Arabic Morphology, Marah al-Arwah, part 1: The Strong Verb, As-Sahih.

• Author: Smyth, William

The Arabic grammatical tradition is one of the most impressive monuments of Islamic scholarship. The interests of medieval grammarians went beyond the linguistic structures that make up the Arabic language. The best--or perhaps most speculative--among them sought out the reason and order behind language with quasi-mystical enthusiasm. In the words of a modern scholar, the grammarians of Arabic approached their subject with a "deep sense of wonder, of uncovering deeper and deeper hidden correspondences between apparently unrelated phenomena, of contemplating |within the Arabic language~ wider and wider realms of order and harmony...."(1)

The field of Arabic grammar was generally divided into two subjects: grammar proper (ilm al-nahw) and morphology (ilm al-sarf). While the first of these has received a moderate amount of attention from modern scholars, the second has not, and the work under review promises to fill in the gaps in our knowledge. Joyce Akesson has taken Ali ibn Masud's (eighth/fourteenth century) Marah al-Arwah (The Soul's Place of Rest) and translated the first part of it--on the sahih (the strong verb)--into English. She has also provided a substantial introduction and commentary on the text, and promises to consider the rest of the Marah at a later date.

There is some very interesting material here that will appeal not only to the specialist in Arabic grammar but also to Arabists and litterateurs with more general interests. As one would expect from his work's title, Ali ibn Masud describes the rules according to which the verb is conjugated. But the author includes as well a number of more speculative remarks that consider the underlying reasons that Arabic verbs take the forms that they do. In explaining the third person, feminine, singular form (faalat), for instance, Ali explains why the letter ta is attached to the root in this case. Ta, he explains, is a dental, and so "originates," as it were, from a position that is midway between a laryngeal and a labial. One might say then that ta--and other dentals--come after laryngeals because of the manner in which they are formed. Ali suggests on this basis that it is appropriate to use the ta for a feminine form of the verb because the female species--like the dental--was formed after the male. It is comments like these that make the grammatical tradition fascinating for specialists and non-specialists alike.

Akesson has done a great service in bringing this all together in...