al-Shafiya fi Ilm al-Tasrif - maaha al-Wafiya Nazm al-Shafiya
- Author died
- 646 AH
- Editions
- al-Maktabah al-Makkiyyah
al-Shafiya fi Ilm al-Tasrif (The Healer in the Science of Morphology) is a classical Arabic primer on morphology and orthography by the grammarian and jurist Ibn al-Hajib (570–646 AH / 1174–1249 CE) . In modern printings, it is published alongside al-Wafiya Nazm al-Shafiya (The Complete Versification of al-Shafiya), a 12th-century AH poetic rendition of the text .
Subject and Scope
Ibn al-Hajib separated Arabic grammar into two dedicated treatises: he confined syntax to his work al-Kafiya and compiled the fundamentals of morphology (tasrif) and orthography (al-khatt) in al-Shafiya . The text encompasses both core structural morphology and broader derivative and phonetic topics . Its topics include:
- Primitive and augmented noun and verb forms (al-mujarrad wa-al-mazid) and the semantic functions of augmentative letters
- Letter augmentation (ziyada), consonant substitution (ibdal), vocalic permutation (i'lal or qalb), elision (hadhf), phonetic transfer (naql), and assimilation (idgham)
- Diminutives (tasghir), relational nouns (nasab), and broken plurals (jam' al-taksir)
- Phonetic phenomena such as the concurrence of two quiescent consonants (iltiqa' al-sakinayn), pause and commencement (al-waqf wa-al-ibtida'), deflection (imala), shortening and elongation (al-maqsur wa-al-mamdud), and hamza softening
Throughout the text, Ibn al-Hajib employed a compact, condensed prose style, summarizing extensive grammatical material into a concise manual while pointing to dialectal variants among the Arabs and highlighting points of scholarly disagreement .
The Versification: al-Wafiya
Because of the dense phrasing of al-Shafiya, several scholars rendered it into didactic verse . Among ten recorded versifications is al-Wafiya Nazm al-Shafiya, composed by al-Naysari (or al-Nisari), who completed the work in 1133 AH (1721 CE) in 1,162 lines of poetry . Other known versifiers of the text include Ibrahim ibn Husam al-Karmiyani (d. 1016 AH), Abu al-Naja ibn Khalaf al-Ma'arri (b. 849 AH), and Yusuf ibn Abd al-Malik (known as Qarah Sinan, d. 852 AH) .
Reception and Commentaries
al-Shafiya achieved widespread circulation across the Islamic world, prompting dozens of extensive commentaries, supercommentaries, and translations . Scholars documented forty-nine commentaries in Arabic, five in Persian (including one by Ali ibn Muhammad al-Qushji), one in Ottoman Turkish (by Sudi), as well as direct translations into Turkish .
Notable Arabic commentaries include:
- The author's own commentary (Sharh al-Shafiya)
- The commentary by al-Radi al-Astarabadhi (d. 686 AH), which is widely considered one of the most thorough expositions of the text; its poetic citations (shawahid) were separately elucidated by Abd al-Qadir al-Baghdadi (d. 1093 AH)
- The commentary by Rukn al-Din al-Astarabadhi (d. 717 AH)
- Sharh al-Jarbarbi by Ahmad ibn al-Husayn al-Jarbarbi (d. 746 AH)
- Umdat al-Talib fi Tahqiq Tasrif Ibn al-Hajib in two volumes by Ibn Hisham al-Ansari (d. 762 AH)
- al-Manahij al-Kafiya fi Sharh al-Shafiya by Zakariyya al-Ansari (d. 926 AH)
Publication
The work was printed early in Calcutta (1805 CE) and Istanbul (1850 CE), in addition to several Cairo printings . The joint edition titled al-Shafiya fi Ilm al-Tasrif (ma'aha al-Wafiya Nazm al-Shafiya) was edited by Hasan ibn Ahmad al-Uthman and published by al-Maktaba al-Makkiyya in Mecca in 1415 AH / 1995 CE .
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