Milhat al-Irab
- Author died
- 516 AH
- Editions
- Dār al-Salām
Milhat al-Irab (Arabic: ملحة الإعراب, lit. 'The Witticism of Inflection') is a didactic versification of Arabic grammar composed by the author and philologist Abu Muhammad al-Qasim ibn Ali al-Hariri (446–516 AH / 1054–1122 CE; also reported d. 515 AH).
Content and Structure
Known in full as Milhat al-Irab fi Sina'at al-Irab and also cataloged as Milhat al-Irab wa-Subhat al-Adab, the work is a concise grammatical poem composed in the rajaz metre (urjuzah) intended primarily for introductory learners. It opens with the verse:
أَقُولُ مِنْ بَعْدِ افْتِتَاحِ القَوْلِ ... بِحَمْدِ ذِي الطَّوْلِ الشَّدِيدِ الحَوْلِ
I say, following the opening of speech / with praise of the Possessor of bounty, mighty in power.
The text outlines core syntactic principles and morphological inflection, treating the classification and definition of speech, the criteria for the parts of speech—such as identifying particles by their lack of inflectional signs—and the rules governing standard syntactic roles, including the agent (fa'il), the object of accompaniment (maf'ul ma'ah), and diptotes (ma la yansarif).
Commentaries and Abridgments
Al-Hariri wrote his own prose commentary on the poem, titled Sharh Milhat al-Irab. The poem became widely studied and attracted numerous commentaries and reductions by later scholars:
- Abu al-Abbas Ahmad ibn al-Mubarak al-Hawfi (d. 664 AH) composed a commentary.
- Badr al-Din Muhammad ibn Muhammad Ibn Malik (d. 686 AH) authored an extensive commentary.
- Muhammad ibn Hasan ibn Siba' Ibn al-Sa'igh (d. 722 AH) wrote al-Lamhah fi Sharh al-Milhah.
- Abu al-Mahasin Abd Allah ibn Abd al-Haqq completed an independent commentary in Ramadan 735 AH.
- Zayn al-Din Ibn al-Wardi (d. 846 AH) produced a versified abridgment.
- Ibn al-Wakil Ahmad ibn Musa (d. 791 AH) versified an abridgment and commented upon it.
- Siraj al-Din Abd al-Latif ibn Abi Bakr (d. 802 AH) wrote an exposition of the text.
- Shihab al-Din Ahmad ibn Husayn al-Ramli al-Shafi'i (d. 844 AH) authored a commentary.
- Surayha ibn Muhammad ibn Surayha al-Misri (d. 888 AH) authored a commentary titled Minhat al-A'rab.
- Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti composed a blended commentary (sharh mamzuj) spanning three quires, and abridged the poem to 120 verses.
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