Fath al-Aqfal wa Hall al-Ishkal bi Sharh Lamiyat al-Afal al-Mashhur bi al-Sharh al-Kabir
- Author died
- 930 AH
- Editions
- Faculty of Arts - Kuwait University
Fath al-Aqfal wa Hall al-Ishkal bi Sharh Lamiyat al-Afal ("Opening the Locks and Resolving the Obscurities in Explaining the L-Rhyming Ode of Verbs"), widely known as al-Sharh al-Kabir ("The Major Commentary"), is a commentary on Arabic morphology and lexicography by the Yemeni scholar Bahraq al-Yamani (869–930 AH / 1465–1524 CE) . It explicates Lamiyat al-Afal (also titled Abniyat al-Afal), the didactic poem on verbal conjugation and morphological templates composed by Ibn Malik (d. 672 AH / 1274 CE) .
Title and Scope
The work is recorded under the full title Fath al-Aqfal wa Hall al-Ishkal bi Sharh Lamiyat al-Afal . In bio-bibliographical sources, it is also cited with slight variants such as Fath al-Aqfal wa Darb al-Amthal or Fath al-Aqfal wa Durub al-Amthal . The text opens with the doxology:
Al-hamdu lillāh al-mutaṣarrif qabla ʿilal al-taṣrīf ("Praise be to God, the Disposer before the causes of inflection...")
Bahraq explains that the study of morphology (tasrif) is an essential gateway to the Arabic language, which in turn serves as the bridge to understanding the Quran and the Sunnah . Noting declining student ambition in his time, he composed the commentary to elucidate the poem's vocabulary, resolve its structural obscurities, and supply comprehensive examples .
The commentary covers the structural divisions of Ibn Malik's poem, which addresses:
- Bare (unaugmented) verbs and their morphological patterns
- Augmented verbal templates and their variations
- Verbal nouns (masadir) of bare and augmented verbs
- Active and passive participles (asma' al-fa'ilin wa-l-maf'ulin)
- Nouns of time and place (asma' al-zaman wa-l-makan) and instrumental nouns (al-alah)
Method and Structure
Bahraq designed the book to bridge Arabic lexicography (ilm al-lughah) and morphology (ilm al-tasrif) . He observed that while Ibn Malik focused in his verse on enumerating anomalous (shadhdh) forms—leaving regular analogical patterns (maqis) to general lexical references—learners cannot properly master irregular forms without first commanding standard ones .
To achieve completeness, Bahraq consulted leading classical dictionaries, specifically al-Jawhari's al-Sihah and al-Fayruzabadi's al-Qamus al-Muhit . From these, he supplemented anomalous forms omitted by Ibn Malik and incorporated nearly 2,000 examples for bare triliteral and quadriliteral verbs in the first chapter alone . These examples are arranged alphabetically according to the dictionary ordering of al-Sihah to facilitate lookup and prevent misreadings or scribal corruption .
Relation to Other Commentaries
Bahraq consulted and benefited from earlier commentaries on the poem, particularly the commentary of Ibn Malik's son, Ibn al-Nazim (d. 686 AH) .
In addition to this extensive work, Bahraq authored a condensed commentary titled al-Sharh al-Saghir ("The Minor Commentary") . Al-Sharh al-Saghir represents an abridgment of al-Sharh al-Kabir, stripping away much of the voluminous lexical examples to provide a more compact overview of the rules .
Reception and Editions
Fath al-Aqfal became a widely cited authority among later grammarians and commentators on Lamiyat al-Afal . Hamad ibn Muhammad al-Sa'idi al-Maliki drew extensively upon it in his commentary Fath al-Muta'al, noting in his introduction that whenever he refers generically to "the commentator" (al-sharih), he intends Bahraq .
The work has been published in several modern editions, including:
- An edition edited by Mustafa al-Nahhas, published by the College of Arts at Kuwait University (1414 AH / 1993 CE) .
- An edition prepared by Ammar ibn Khamis, published by Dar Ibn Hazm in Beirut .
- An edition published by al-Maktaba al-Asriyya in Beirut (1427 AH) .
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