Abu Turab al-Lughawi wa Kitabuhu al-Itiqab
- Author died
- -
- Editions
- Islamic University of Madinah Journal
Abu Turab al-Lughawi wa Kitabuhu al-Itiqab (Abu Turab the Lexicographer and His Book al-I'tiqab) is a specialized linguistic study and textual reconstruction by the Saudi scholar Abd al-Razzaq bin Faraj al-Saidi, dedicated to recovering the lost treatise on lexical consonant alternation (ibdal / al-i'tiqab) authored by the classical philologist Abu Turab al-Lughawi.
Background and Purpose
Abu Turab's original work, Kitab al-I'tiqab, was lost over time, yet substantial portions survived as citations across major classical dictionaries. Chief among these was Tahdhib al-Lughah by Abu Mansur al-Azhari (d. 370 AH), who praised Abu Turab's accuracy and transmitted more than three hundred excerpts from his book. Al-Saidi conceived the project of reconstructing the treatise and clarifying Abu Turab's obscure biography after consulting his mentor, Muhammad Ya'qub Turkistani. After addressing the confusion surrounding Abu Turab's name and reading Tahdhib al-Lughah twice alongside works like al-Sihah of al-Jawhari, al-Takmilah and al-Ubab of al-Saghani, and Lisan al-Arab of Ibn Manzur, al-Saidi completed the collection and study in 1421 AH.
Structure and Scope
The book is structured into two main parts:
- Part One: Abu Turab and the Book of al-I'tiqab (Abu Turab wa Kitab al-I'tiqab): Contains two main divisions. The first covers Abu Turab's personal biography and scholarly career. The second division examines Kitab al-I'tiqab, detailing its subject matter, methodology, source material, textual evidence (shawahid), and historical influence.
- Part Two: Texts from Kitab al-I'tiqab—Collection and Arrangement (Nusus min Kitab al-I'tiqab: Jam' wa Tartib): Comprises the reconstructed text of the treatise organized into chapters according to the alternating Arabic letters, followed by a chapter on general lexical benefits and rare usages (al-fawa'id wa-al-nawadir).
Methodology and Reconstructed Material
Al-Saidi gathered a total of 375 texts attributed to Abu Turab, comprising 345 entries addressing phonetic alternation and 30 entries containing other philological observations, rare expressions, and dialectal forms. While classical references confirm that Abu Turab arranged his original work by chapters dedicated to alternating pairs of letters, the scattered citations did not preserve his exact organizational sequence. Consequently, al-Saidi organized the reconstructed chapters alphabetically based on the letter that appears earlier in the Arabic alphabet. In presenting the texts, he transcribed the passages verbatim from their primary lexicographical sources within quotation marks and opted not to independently document the poetic citations, as they were already recorded in early reference works.
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