al-Amthal - Ibn Rifaa
- Author died
- 401 AH
- Editions
- Dār Sa‘d al-Dīn
Kitāb al-Amthāl (The Book of Proverbs) is an Arabic paremiological compendium attributed to the fourth-century AH scholar Abū al-Khayr Zayd ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Rifāʿa al-Hāshimī (d. after 401 AH / 1010 CE), comprising classical Arabic proverbs and their explanations .
Attribution and Scope
Among biographical works, only al-Ṣafadī in al-Wāfī bi-al-Wafayāt explicitly listed Kitāb al-Amthāl among the compositions of Ibn Rifāʿa . The collection contains 1,469 proverbs, around twenty of which are unique to this text and not documented in other extant proverb or linguistic reference works .
In his preface, the author states that he compiled the work for students of adab (literature), drawing upon what he transmitted from earlier scholars across their written works and dictation sessions (amālī), highlighting the conciseness, metaphor, allusion, and metonymy inherent in Arab proverbs .
Structure and Method
Ibn Rifāʿa divided the book into thirty-nine chapters (abwāb). Twenty-nine of these correspond to the Arabic alphabet, including lām-alif, while the section on the letter alif includes additional subdivisions :
- Proverbs on the superlative pattern Afʿal (mā jāʾa ʿalā afʿal)
- Proverbs in the imperative mood (lafẓ al-amr)
- Proverbs phrased as interrogatives (lafẓ al-istifhām)
- Proverbs beginning with Inna
- Proverbs beginning with An
- Proverbs beginning with the lightened In (in khafīfa)
- Proverbs framed in the past tense (lafẓ al-māḍī)
- Proverbs beginning with Idhā
- Proverbs beginning with the definite article al- (al-alif wa-al-lām) .
The material relies on earlier paremiographical and philological authorities, including al-Mufaḍḍal al-Ḍabbī (d. ca. 170 AH / 786 CE), Abū ʿUbayda Maʿmar ibn al-Muthannā (d. 209 AH / 824 CE), Abū ʿAmr al-Shaybānī (d. 206 AH / 821 CE), Abū Zayd al-Anṣārī (d. 215 AH / 830 CE), al-Aṣmaʿī (d. 216 AH / 831 CE), Abū ʿUbayd al-Qāsim ibn Sallām (d. 224 AH / 838 CE), Ibn al-Aʿrābī (d. 231 AH / 845 CE), and Ibn al-Sikkīt (d. 244 AH / 858 CE) .
The work is characterized by concise explanations and generally omits the extended narrative backstories (qiṣṣat al-mathal) of the proverbs . The internal arrangement within individual chapters relies loosely on the initial letter without strict alphabetical ordering, and some proverbs appear outside their proper headings .
Manuscripts and Publication
The text survived in a unique manuscript preserved in the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford (MS Laud 276), formerly in the collection of Archbishop William Laud (chancellor of Oxford in 1638 CE), comprising 224 folios in naskh script .
The book was first printed in Hyderabad in 1351 AH / 1932 CE by the Da'irat al-Ma'arif al-Uthmaniyya without an authorial attribution on the title page; the publishers circulated inquiries and sample facsimiles to contemporary scholars and orientalists to identify the author, but received no conclusive identifications . Later, the Da'irat al-Ma'arif issued a catalog attributing the text to Zayd ibn Rifāʿa . A critical edition prepared by Ali Ibrahim Kurdi was published in Damascus in 1423 AH / 2003 CE, containing cross-references, missing narrative accounts, and analytic indexes .
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