al-Maqsur wal-Mamdud li-Abi Ali al-Qali
- Author died
- 356 AH
- Editions
- Maktabat al-Khānjī
al-Maqsur wal-Mamdud (also recorded as al-Maqsur wal-Mamdud wal-Mahmuz) is an Arabic philological treatise on shortened (maqsur), lengthened (mamdud), and hamzated nouns by the grammarian and lexicographer Abu Ali al-Qali (280–356 AH / 893–967 CE).
Composition and Structure
After leaving Baghdad and arriving in al-Andalus in 330 AH, al-Qali settled in Cordoba under the patronage of the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Rahman al-Nasir and his son al-Hakam al-Mustansir. Al-Qali dictated al-Maqsur wal-Mamdud from memory as part of his teaching and compositional activities in al-Andalus.
Al-Qali organized the work systematically according to morphological patterns (tafʿil) and the phonetic articulation points of letters, beginning from the throat (makharij al-huruf min al-halq). The text treats nouns ending in an invariable alif (maqsur) alongside those ending in a hamza preceded by an additional alif (mamdud), classifying their morphological forms, nouns, and adjectives with citations from earlier authorities.
Reception and Transmission
Biographers characterized the book as an exhaustive survey of the subject from which virtually no relevant linguistic material escaped, noting that no comparable work of its kind had been composed.
The text was transmitted across al-Andalus through chains of transmission going back to al-Qali; the Andalusian scholar Ibn Khayr al-Ishbili listed it in his Fihrasa as comprising ten parts (ajzaʾ). The book was published in Cairo in a critical edition prepared by Ahmad Abd al-Majid Haridi.
Answer updated