Irab al-Quran al-Azim al-Mansub li-Zakariya al-Ansari
- Author died
- 926 AH
- Editions
- Dr. Musa Ali Musa Mas'ud
Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm (The Grammatical Analysis of the Great Quran) is a treatise on Quranic parsing (iʿrāb) and grammatical analysis attributed to the Shafiʿi scholar and chief judge Zakariya al-Ansari (823–926 AH / 1420–1520 CE) .
Content and Method
The work provides a sequential grammatical, morphological, and phonetic breakdown of Quranic verses, beginning with Surat al-Fatiha and continuing through subsequent surahs such as Surat al-Baqarah . Its methodology incorporates:
- Syntactic Analysis and Grammatical Disagreements: The text explains grammatical functions, syntactic positions (such as preposed objects, circumstantial qualifiers, and omitted elements), and systematically presents the differing views of the Basran and Kufan grammatical schools, such as their dispute over whether the imperative verb form is inherently indeclinable (mabnī) or inflected via an elided particle .
- Morphology and Phonology: It examines the underlying morphological patterns (awzān) and phonetic transformations of vocabulary—such as assimilation (idgham), weak-letter mutations (iʿlāl), and vowel shifts—as seen in its analyses of words like نَسْتَعِينُ (nastaʿīn), يُؤْمِنُونَ (yuʾminūn), and كَصَيِّبٍ (ka-ṣayyib) .
- Linguistic Variants and Poetic Evidence: The commentary addresses dialectal variations (such as the linguistic usages of the Hijaz and the Banu Tamim) and adduces classical Arabic poetry to corroborate grammatical and transitivity patterns, including verses by al-Farazdaq .
Modern Study and Publication
The text was edited and studied by Dr. Musa Ali Musa Mas'ud as a master's thesis submitted to the Department of Grammar, Morphology, and Prosody at the Faculty of Dar al-Ulum, Cairo University . It was published in a single volume in 1421 AH / 2001 CE (with some bibliographical citations noting the first edition date as 1420 AH) .
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