al-Majid fi Irab al-Quran al-Majid
- Author died
- 742 AH
- Editions
- Dār Ibn al-Jawzī li-l-Nashr wa-al-Tawzī‘
al-Majid fi Irab al-Quran al-Majid (The Glorious [Work] on the Parsing of the Glorious Quran) is a multi-volume treatise on Quranic syntax and grammatical analysis (iʿrāb) authored by the Maliki scholar and grammarian Burhan al-Din Abu Ishaq Ibrahim ibn Muhammad al-Safaqsi (d. 742 AH / 1342 CE) .
Composition and Sources
Al-Safaqsi composed the work primarily as an extraction and distillation of the grammatical discussions contained in al-Bahr al-muhit (The Encompassing Ocean), the expansive Quranic commentary by his teacher Abu Hayyan al-Andalusi . Al-Safaqsi noted that Abu Hayyan followed the conventional approach of commentators by interweaving exegesis (tafsīr) and grammatical analysis, which caused the syntactic material to be dispersed throughout the text; al-Safaqsi therefore compiled and condensed these analyses into a focused work .
In addition to Abu Hayyan’s commentary, al-Safaqsi drew upon several major reference works, including al-Tibyan fi irab al-Quran by Abu al-Baqa al-Ukbari, al-Muharrar al-wajiz by Ibn Atiyya, and al-Kashshaf by al-Zamakhshari . He also frequently cited earlier authorities in Arabic grammar and philology, such as al-Farra, Abu Ubayda, al-Akhfash, al-Zajjaj, Abu Jafar al-Nahhas, and Ibn Jinni .
Methodology
Al-Safaqsi structured the treatise around the sequential order of the Quranic surahs . Because al-Ukbari's al-Tibyan had become a standard manual widely studied by scholars, al-Safaqsi supplemented his summary of Abu Hayyan with any grammatical analyses found in al-Ukbari that Abu Hayyan had omitted, designating these additions with the Arabic letter mīm (م) . When introducing his own personal commentaries or independent analyses, al-Safaqsi used the formula "I said" (qultu), whereas critical objections embedded in the extracted text reflected the views of Abu Hayyan .
Regarding variant Quranic readings (qirāʾāt), when an anomalous reading (shādhdhah) was transmitted through multiple authorities, al-Safaqsi cited only one transmitter for brevity . For readings associated with any of the seven canonical readers—whether standard or anomalous—he attributed the variant to that specific reader, subsequently using the phrase "and the remainder" (wa-l-bāqūn) to denote the rest of the Seven .
Reception and Abridgments
Al-Safaqsi frequently challenged and diverged from the opinions of his teacher Abu Hayyan throughout the text; this independence reportedly angered Abu Hayyan, who wrote a censure criticizing his student for refuting him in Quranic parsing . Later scholars evaluated al-Safaqsi's interventions positively; the North African scholar Abu Abd Allah al-Kabir praised his critical acumen and considered him correct in most of his remarks and criticisms of Abu Hayyan .
Although a report preserved in al-Dibaj suggested that al-Safaqsi’s brother Shams al-Din Muhammad had co-authored the book, biographers including Ibn Marzuq, Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, and Ahmad Baba al-Tinbukti affirmed that Burhan al-Din al-Safaqsi was its sole author .
Due to the substantial length of the work, the Shafi'i scholar Muhammad ibn Sulayman al-Sarkhadi (d. 792 AH) prepared an abridgment of al-Majid, incorporating his own critiques in several places . Portions of the text have been edited in modern scholarship, including an edition of the parsing of Surat al-Fatiha by Hatim Salih al-Damin .
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