Adab al-Katib = Adab al-Kuttab li Ibn Qutayba
- Author died
- 276 AH
- Editions
- مؤسسة الرسالة
Adab al-Katib (also titled Adab al-Kuttab) is a foundational handbook on Arabic lexicography, grammar, orthography, and scribal prose composed by the Abbasid scholar Ibn Qutaybah (213–276 AH / 828–889 CE) .
Purpose and Background
Ibn Qutaybah dedicated the work to the Abbasid vizier Abu al-Hasan Ubayd Allah ibn Yahya ibn Khaqan . He composed it in response to what he observed as a decline in literacy, linguistic standards, and intellectual rigor among scribes and literary practitioners of his day . The book was designed to provide chancellery scribes (kuttab al-dawawin) and writers with the essential linguistic foundations and lexical precision necessary for the scribal profession .
Structure and Contents
The work opens with an extensive preface (khutbah) outlining the author's critique of contemporary intellectual laxity and defending Arabic learning . Because of its density and length, early scholars famously remarked that the book was "a sermon without a book" (khutbah bi-la kitab), although it encompassed diverse disciplines .
The main text is arranged into four major divisions (kutub):
- Kitab al-Ma'rifah (The Book of Knowledge): Comprising 63 chapters, it treats vocabulary, nomenclature, human and animal anatomy, natural phenomena, and semantic distinctions (such as distinguishing male designations from female counterparts) .
- Kitab Taqwim al-Yad (The Book of Rectifying the Hand): Containing 47 chapters, it addresses orthography, spelling rules, the elision and writing of hamzat al-wasl and hamzat al-qat', interrogative particles, and syntactic conventions .
- Kitab Taqwim al-Lisan (The Book of Rectifying the Tongue): Arranged in 35 chapters, it focuses on correcting common solecisms (lahn al-'ammah), phonetic shifts, and errors in vocalization and consonant pronunciation .
- Kitab al-Abniyah (The Book of Morphological Forms): A study of Arabic morphology divided into two parts: verbal forms (abniyat al-af'al) across 45 chapters, and nominal forms and their semantics (abniyat al-asma' wa-ma'aniha) across 53 chapters .
Reception and Commentaries
The historian Ibn Khaldun related from his teachers that the discipline of Arabic adab rests upon four foundational works: Ibn Qutaybah's Adab al-Katib, al-Kamil by al-Mubarrad, al-Bayan wa-l-Tabyin by al-Jahiz, and Kitab al-Nawadir by Abu Ali al-Qali, with all other literary treatises being subsidiary to them .
Numerous scholars produced commentaries on the text, including:
- Al-Iqtidab fi Sharh Adab al-Kuttab by Ibn al-Sid al-Batalyawsi (d. 521 AH; also dated 421 AH in some bibliographical notices), arranged in three parts covering the introduction, textual points and corrections, and the explanation of poetic citations .
- Sharh Adab al-Katib by Abu Mansur al-Jawaliqi (466–539 AH) .
- Al-Intikhab fi Sharh Adab al-Kuttab by Abu Ja'far Ahmad ibn Dawud al-Judhami (d. 597 or 598 AH) .
- Further commentaries by Ishaq ibn Ibrahim al-Farabi (d. 350 AH), Sulayman ibn Muhammad al-Zahrawi, and Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Batalyawsi (d. 576 AH), as well as separate commentaries on its preface by scholars such as Abu al-Qasim al-Zajjaji .
Print Editions
The work was printed in Leipzig (1877), in Leiden (1900/1901, edited by Max Grünert), and in Cairo (1300 AH) . It was later edited in Cairo by Muhammad Muhyi al-Din Abd al-Hamid (1963) .
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