Irab Qawlihi Taala: {Wa an Laysa lil-Insan illa ma saa} - Dimna Athar al-Muallimi
- Author died
- 1386 AH
- Editions
- Dār ‘Ālam al-Fawā’id lil-Nashr wa-al-Tawzī‘
I‘rab Qawlihi Ta‘ala: {Wa-an Laysa lil-Insani illa ma Sa‘a} (Grammatical Analysis of the Almighty’s Saying: “And that there is not for man except that [good] for which he strives”) is a short grammatical treatise by the Yemeni scholar Abd al-Rahman al-Muallimi (1313–1386 AH / 1895–1966 CE) analyzing the syntax of Quran 53:39 .
Background and Manuscripts
The treatise was composed during al-Mu‘allimi’s stay in the Idrisid state in the Asir region, stemming from scholarly discussions held in the presence of Imam Muhammad ibn Ali al-Idrisi or as a response to a question posed to him .
The original text spans one and a half folios (ff. 30–31) preserved within manuscript collection no. 4696 . An abridged manuscript copy also exists, signed by the author as al-Haqir Abd al-Rahman ibn Yahya al-Mu‘allimi, in which he omitted extensive verbatim quotations from al-Suyuti’s Ham‘ al-Hawami‘ to retain only the essential points directly pertinent to parsing the verse . The work was published as the eleventh treatise in the collection of his Quranic exegesis treatises within Athar al-Mu‘allimi .
Grammatical Analysis
In the treatise, al-Mu‘allimi parses the verse وَأَنْ لَيْسَ لِلْإِنْسَانِ إِلَّا مَا سَعَى systematically:
- Wa: A coordinating conjunction (harf ‘atf) coupling the clause to the preceding verse أَلَّا تَزِرُ وَازِرَةٌ وِزْرَ أُخْرَى [al-Najm: 38] . The coupled clause is either in the nominative case (raf‘) as the predicate of an omitted subject (huwa / "it is") acting as an explanatory resumption (isti'naf bayani), or in the genitive case (jarr) as an explanatory apposition (‘atf bayan) or substitute (badal) for the relative pronoun in بِمَا فِي صُحُفِ مُوسَى [al-Najm: 36] .
- An: The lightened form of the heavy particle (mukhaffafah min al-thaqilah) . Citing Ham‘ al-Hawami‘, al-Mu‘allimi notes the majority view that its noun is an omitted pronoun of the situation (damir al-sha'n), while its predicate is the subsequent verbal sentence .
- Laysa: A rigid defective verb (fi‘l jamid naqis) governing like kana by raising the noun and placing the predicate in the accusative .
- Lil-insan: A prepositional phrase (jar wa-majrur) acting as the advanced predicate (khabar muqaddam) of laysa . Al-Mu‘allimi cites grammatical debates over its governing agent (‘amil), weighing whether it is an implicit active participle (such as ka'in or mustaqirr, preferred by Ibn Malik) or an implicit verb (such as kana or istaqarra, preferred by Ibn al-Hajib, al-Zamakhshari, and Abu Ali al-Farisi) .
- Illa: A voided particle of exception (adat istithna' mulghah) in a defective negation structure (istithna' mufarragh) .
- Ma sa‘a: The particle ma is infinitive (masdariyyah), and sa‘a is its connective past-tense verb (silah) . The resulting interpreted infinitive is in the nominative case as the delayed subject (ism laysa mu'akhkhar) .
The entire clause of laysa and its arguments forms the predicate of an, and the presence of the implicit pronoun of the situation (damir al-sha'n) eliminates the requirement for an explicit syntactic link (rabit) back to the subject .
Answer updated