Irab al-Quran lil-Baquli - Mansub khataan lil-Zajjaj
- Author died
- 543 AH
- Editions
- Dar al-Kitab al-Misri
I'rab al-Qur'an al-Mansub li-l-Zajjaj (The Parsing of the Qur'an Attributed to al-Zajjaj), whose authenticated title is Jawahir al-Qur'an wa-Nata'ij al-San'ah (Jewels of the Qur'an and the Fruits of the Craft), is a 6th-century AH grammatical and interpretive study of the Quran composed by the grammarian Abu al-Hasan al-Baquli (d. c. 543 AH / 1148 CE) .
Attribution and Identification
The work was long associated with the early Abbasid grammarian Abu Ishaq al-Zajjaj (d. 311 AH / 923 CE) because a unique manuscript preserved at Dar al-Kutub al-Misriyyah in Cairo bore al-Zajjaj's name on its opening page in a handwriting distinct from the rest of the text .
When Ibrahim al-Ibyari prepared the editio princeps of the text, he expressed serious reservations about the attribution to al-Zajjaj, noting that the text contains explicit citations from authorities who lived long after al-Zajjaj's death, such as Ibn Durayd (d. 321 AH), Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Abd al-Aziz al-Jurjani (d. 366 AH), and Abu Sa'id al-Sirafi (d. 368 AH) .
The Syrian philologist Ahmad Ratib al-Naffakh definitively resolved the question in two articles published in the journal of the Arab Academy of Damascus (1973), proving that the work is in fact Jawahir al-Qur'an wa-Nata'ij al-San'ah by Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn al-Husayn al-Baquli al-Isfahani (known as Jami' al-Ulum) . This attribution was further corroborated by Abd al-Qadir al-Sa'di in his study and edition of al-Baquli's other grammatical work, Kashf al-Mushkilat wa-Idah al-Mu'dilat .
Structure and Content
Unlike traditional sequential parsing commentaries that follow the Quran surah by surah, al-Baquli structured the work thematically across ninety grammatical and analytical chapters (abwab) . The book treats specialized syntactical and morphological phenomena in the Quranic text, including:
- Ellipsis of clauses (idmar al-jumal) and nouns (hadhf al-mudaf) .
- Ellipsis of prepositions and redundant particles (al-huruf al-za'idah) .
- Disagreements between grammarians, such as differences between Sibawayh and Abu al-Abbas al-Mubarrad .
- Morphological transformations, vocalization nuances (al-ishmam wa-l-rawm), and syntactic substitution (al-ibdal) .
Publication History
The manuscript on which modern editions are based was transcribed in Shiraz and comprised 245 folios (490 pages) with 21 lines per page, though its disordered and incomplete folios required extensive rearrangement by the editor . The text was first published in Cairo by the Egyptian Ministry of Culture in 1963 in three volumes edited by Ibrahim al-Ibyari under the title I'rab al-Qur'an with attribution to al-Zajjaj . It was subsequently reprinted in multiple editions, often noting the false attribution to al-Zajjaj and restoring the work to al-Baquli .
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