al-Hawashi ala Durrat al-Ghawwas li-Ibn Bari wa-Ibn Zufar
- Author died
- 582 AH
- Editions
- Dār al-Jīl
al-Hawāshī ʿalā Durrat al-Ghawwāṣ (Marginal Glosses on Durrat al-Ghawwāṣ) is a compilation of critical linguistic commentaries by the grammarians Ibn Barri (499–582 AH / 1106–1186 CE) and Ibn Zafar al-Ṣiqillī (497–565 AH / 1104–1170 CE) on al-Ḥarīrī's (446–516 AH) celebrated work on linguistic correction, Durrat al-Ghawwāṣ fī Awhām al-Khawāṣṣ (The Pearl of the Diver on the Errors of the Elite) .
Background and Purpose
Al-Ḥarīrī composed Durrat al-Ghawwāṣ to identify and correct common grammatical, lexical, and stylistic solecisms made by educated speakers and writers . The book attracted wide scholarly attention, generating commentaries, abridgments, versifications, and critical glosses .
Both Ibn Barri and Ibn Zafar composed independent sets of marginal annotations (ḥawāshī) examining al-Ḥarīrī's rulings . Ibn Barri, who had previously defended al-Ḥarīrī against Ibn al-Khashshāb's criticisms of the Maqāmāt in his treatise al-Lubbāb fī al-Radd ʿalā Ibn al-Khashshāb (also titled al-Dhabb ʿan al-Ḥarīrī), nevertheless scrutinized al-Ḥarīrī's own linguistic judgments in Durrat al-Ghawwāṣ . Ibn Zafar's critique of the work was also titled Ibhām al-Ghawwāṣ fī Īhām al-Khawāṣṣ fī Bayān Ghalaṭ al-Ḥarīrī . Later scholars combined these two separate sets of glosses into a single unified work .
Method and Content
The annotations focus on verifying al-Ḥarīrī's strictures and demonstrating where his condemnations of certain expressions were unfounded under classical grammatical analogy (qiyās) and textual evidence . For instance, when al-Ḥarīrī declared the phrase ijtamaʿa fulān maʿa fulān ("so-and-so met with so-and-so") to be an error and insisted that only ijtamaʿa fulān wa-fulān is correct, Ibn Barri refuted his restriction by demonstrating that the construction conforms with the rules of Arabic syntax by analogy to the accusative of accompaniment (al-mafʿūl maʿahu) . The glosses cite early authorities, poetic verses, and grammatical sources, such as the works of Sībawayh .
Scholarly Reception and Editions
The glosses became an authoritative reference for later lexicographers and commentators on Durrat al-Ghawwāṣ. Citations from Ibn Barri's Ḥawāshī appear in works such as Baḥr al-ʿAwwām and ʿAqd al-Khalāṣ by Ibn al-Ḥanbalī al-Ḥalabī (d. 971 AH), Shihāb al-Dīn al-Khafājī's (d. 1069 AH) commentary on Durrat al-Ghawwāṣ, and ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Baghdādī's (d. 1093 AH) Khizānat al-Adab .
The work has been edited and published in modern times, including an edition prepared by Abd al-Hafiz Farghali Ali al-Qarani, and an edition by Ahmad Taha Hasanayn Sultan published in Cairo (1411 AH / 1990 CE) containing the combined glosses of both Ibn Barri and Ibn Zafar .
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