Irab La Ilaha Illa Allah
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- Editions
- al-Jāmiʻah al-Islāmīyah bi-al-Madīnah al-Munawwarah
Irab La Ilaha Illa Allah (Syntactic Analysis of the Statement of Tawhid) is a grammatical treatise on the parsing of the Islamic declaration of faith (Lā ilāha illā Allāh), attributed to Ibn Hisham al-Ansari (d. 761 AH / 1360 CE) and critically edited and studied by Dr. Hasan Musa al-Shaer.
Manuscript and Attribution
The text was edited from a unique twelve-page manuscript preserved in the Arif Hikmat Library in Medina (Majāmīʿ, MS 88, fols. 29–34). The manuscript was transcribed in a standard Naskh hand by the Egyptian Hanbali jurist Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Buhuti, known as al-Khalwati (d. 1088 AH), on Friday, 12 Dhu al-Qiʿdah 1038 AH.
Although the title and introduction of the manuscript attribute the treatise to Ibn Hisham, its attribution has been subject to debate. Scholars supporting the attribution, such as Dr. Ali Fawdah Nayil, cite the author's stylistic opening, the comparative method of discussing opinions, the presence of identical positions in Ibn Hisham's Mughni al-Labib, and the reliance on earlier grammarians like Ibn Amrun. Conversely, Hasan Musa al-Shaer expressed reservations because the work is absent from Ibn Hisham's known biographical entries and catalogues, and because the text respectfully quotes Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati as "our shaykh," despite Ibn Hisham's well-known intellectual estrangement and sharp disagreements with him.
Content and Method
The core subject of the treatise is the grammatical inflection of the noun following the particle illā (إلّا) in the phrase Lā ilāha illā Allāh. The text explores both the nominative (rafʿ) and accusative (naṣb) cases:
- Nominative case (rafʿ): The text details six syntactic aspects, including treating the phrase after illā as an appositive (badal) for the syntactic position of lā and its noun or the position of the noun before the entry of lā, an appositive for the implied pronoun in the omitted predicate, an adjectival qualifier (ṣifah) in place, an excepted element forming the predicate, a preposed subject, or an agent raised by ilāh.
- Accusative case (naṣb): The text outlines two aspects, either by treating it as an exception (istithnāʾ) with an omitted predicate, or as an adjectival qualifier matching the accusative form or local syntactic position of the noun of lā.
When factoring in variations of apposition and qualification, the treatise calculates up to ten distinct syntactic orientations for the phrase.
Accompanying Study and Publication
The edition includes an analytical study by Hasan Musa al-Shaer surveying textual attestations of the construction across the Quran, Hadith literature, and classical Arabic poetry. His findings establish that the nominative case is the predominant, most eloquent form, found exclusively throughout all canonical and non-canonical Quranic recitations and prophetic traditions, whereas the accusative case appears only rarely in poetry.
The edition and accompanying study were published in the Journal of the Islamic University of Medina (issues 81–82) in 1409 AH / 1989 CE.
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