Maji Abu fi Mawdi Nasb aw Jarr ala al-Hikaya
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- Maji Abu fi Mawdi Nasb aw Jarr ala al-Hikaya
Maji Abu fi Mawdi Nasb aw Jarr ala al-Hikaya (The Occurrence of "Abu" in the Accusative or Genitive Position by Way of Quotation) is a specialized grammatical treatise by Ibrahim bin Abdullah al-Mudayhish, released electronically in its third edition in Rabi' al-Awwal 1440 AH (November 2018 CE) . The monograph investigates whether compound proper names beginning with the agnomen (kunya) Abu (أبو)—such as in "Ali ibn Abu Talib" or "Mu'awiya ibn Abu Sufyan"—can retain the nominative form (Abu) when positioned syntactically in the accusative or genitive cases by way of verbatim citation (ʿala al-hikaya) .
Background and Purpose
The author was prompted to write the work following an inquiry posed roughly thirteen years earlier by Professor Abdullah ibn Sulaym al-Rushayd to his university students, asking them to trace whether Abu had ever been recorded in genitive or accusative contexts in historical or linguistic texts . Al-Mudayhish compiled the treatise to gather and document the statements of classical grammarians, hadith scholars, Quranic exegetes, and historians across Arabic literature concerning this grammatical phenomenon .
Scholarly Positions
The treatise synthesizes the divergent viewpoints of classical and modern scholars into four primary positions :
- Permissible in both script and speech by way of hikaya: Held by the Kufan grammarians, Ibn Qutayba, al-Khattabi, al-Hakim al-Naysaburi, Ibn Barri, Ibn al-Athir (in one statement), Ibn Hisham al-Ansari (in one statement), Badr al-Din al-Ayni, Khalid al-Azhari, Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, Muhammad ibn Yusuf al-Salihi, and Abbas Hasan in al-Nahw al-Wafi. This usage is transmitted as a dialectal feature of the people of Hijaz by Sibawayh and Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati .
- Written with a waw in script but inflected verbally in speech: Held by al-Farra', Ibn Kharuf, Ali ibn Sulayman al-Akhfash, al-Zajjaj, Abu Bakr ibn Abi Talha, Ibn Jarir al-Tabari, Ibn Malik (who described it as the preferred view of verifying scholars), Ibn al-Athir in al-Badi', Ibn Hisham, and al-Safadi, as well as contemporary researchers Abdullah al-Rushayd and Faysal ibn Ali al-Mansur .
- Impermissible in both writing and speech: Delineated as an absolute error or scribal solecism (lahn), inferred from a report attributed to Umar ibn al-Khattab, Ibn Kathir, selections from Ibn Hisham's al-Tadhkira, and Mustafa Sadiq al-Rafi'i .
- Invariable retention of Abu across all cases: A dialectal construction reported from the dialect of Quraysh by Abu Zayd al-Ansari via al-Asma'i from Yahya ibn Umar, and mentioned by Mulla Ali al-Qari in his commentary on al-Shifa' .
Findings and Analysis
Al-Mudayhish concludes that the second opinion is the strongest and best supported by leading grammarians, asserting that ancient occurrences of Abu in genitive or accusative constructions represent orthographic conventions rather than spoken syntax . He discusses several explanations for why early scribes wrote Abu with a waw while pronouncing it according to its proper grammatical case (Aba or Abi):
- Analogy with early orthographic conventions found in Quranic codices, such as writing al-salat and al-zakat with a waw .
- Preservation of the word's underlying morphological base (al-asl), which originally contains a waw .
- Avoiding scribal confusion in unpointed early Arabic script between ibn (بن) and Abi (أبي), where writing Abu (أبو) provided visual distinction to prevent misreading .
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