Min al-Mushkilat al-Lughawiyya fi al-Quran al-Karim
- Author died
- 1415 AH
- Editions
- الجامعة الإسلامية بالمدينة المنورة
Min al-Mushkilat al-Lughawiyya fi al-Quran al-Karim (Linguistic Problems in the Noble Quran) is a scholarly treatise by Abd al-Jalil Abduh Shalabi (d. 1415 AH / 1994 CE), an instructor in the Faculty of Sharia at the Islamic University of Madinah . The work investigates complex grammatical parsing (iʿrāb) and rhetorical structures in the text of the Quran that posed interpretive difficulties for classical Arabic grammarians and rhetoricians .
Scope and Purpose
The treatise addresses passages whose phrasing appeared at first glance to diverge from standard grammatical rules or conventional rhetorical norms, prompting commentators and grammarians to propose varied syntactical justifications (takhrījāt) according to their respective grammatical schools . To demonstrate how such linguistic challenges are resolved within the framework of authentic Arabic usage, Shalabi selects two specific verses for detailed analysis: one posing a grammatical dilemma and the other a rhetorical one .
Linguistic Analyses
The Grammatical Case
The grammatical inquiry focuses on the phrasing in Surah al-Baqarah: وَالَّذِينَ يُتَوَفَّوْنَ مِنْكُمْ وَيَذَرُونَ أَزْوَاجًا يَتَرَبَّصْنَ بِأَنْفُسِهِنَّ أَرْبَعَةَ أَشْهُرٍ وَعَشْرًا ("And those of you who die and leave wives behind, they [the wives] shall wait by themselves for four months and ten [days]") . The grammatical difficulty arises because the sentence begins with the masculine plural relative pronoun al-ladhīna as the subject (mubtadaʾ), whereas the predicate phrase yatarabbaṣna has as its grammatical agent the feminine plural suffix -na (nūn al-niswah), creating an apparent lack of agreement between the subject and its predicate .
Shalabi reviews the classical treatments of this construction:
- Abu Ja'far al-Tabari explained that the predicate concerning the deceased is omitted because the primary intent was to state the obligation incumbent upon the widows, shifting the discourse to the wives . Shalabi notes that while this clarifies the intended meaning, it leaves the syntactic dilemma unresolved .
- Al-Mubarrad parsed yatarabbaṣna as the predicate of an omitted subject (azwājuhum) .
- Al-Zamakhshari proposed either an elided pre-modifying noun at the beginning (azwāj al-ladhīna) or an elided adverbial phrase at the end (yatarabbaṣna baʿdahum), both of which Shalabi considers syntactically acceptable .
- Al-Zajjaj argued in Maʿānī al-Qurʾān wa-Iʿrābuh that azwājan implicitly carries a pronoun linking it to the initial subject (azwājan lahum), meaning the predicate is not devoid of a connecting link . Shalabi favors al-Zajjaj's analysis as the most sound and closest to grammatical logic because it avoids far-fetched assumptions of omitted elements .
The analysis evaluates poetic parallels cited by grammarians such as al-Farra', al-Zajjaj, and al-Tabari, including verses by Thabit Qutnah and Ibn Qays .
The Rhetorical Case
The rhetorical inquiry examines the narrative of Moses and al-Khadir in Surah al-Kahf: حَتَّى إِذَا أَتَيَا أَهْلَ قَرْيَةٍ اسْتَطْعَمَا أَهْلَهَا فَأَبَوْا أَنْ يُضَيِّفُوهُمَا فَوَجَدَا فِيهَا جِدَارًا يُرِيدُ أَنْ يَنْقَضَّ فَأَقَامَهُ قَالَ لَوْ شِئْتَ لَتَّخَذْتَ عَلَيْهِ أَجْرًا ("Until, when they came to the people of a town, they asked its people for food, but they refused to offer them hospitality. They found therein a wall about to collapse, so he restored it. [Moses] said, 'If you wished, you could have taken for it a payment'") .
Rhetoricians historically questioned why the noun ahl ("people") was repeated (istatʿamā ahlahā) rather than replaced by a pronoun (istatʿamūhum), treating it as an instance of employing an overt noun where a pronoun would be expected (al-iẓhār fī mawḍiʿ al-iḍmār) . Shalabi argues that this is not an instance of replacing a pronoun with an overt noun, but an essential syntactical construction . He demonstrates that istatʿamā ahlahā functions as an adjectival clause (naʿt) modifying the town (qaryah), which requires a referring pronoun returning to the town rather than its inhabitants . The actual main clause responding to the conditional particle (jawāb al-sharṭ) is Moses's objection ( قَالَ لَوْ شِئْتَ لَتَّخَذْتَ عَلَيْهِ أَجْرًا ), keeping in line with the narrative pattern of the preceding encounters involving the ship and the boy .
Shalabi traces this solution to Chief Judge Taqi al-Din al-Subki, who articulated it in response to poetic inquiries posed to him by the scholar and litterateur Salah al-Din al-Safadi, an explanation later recorded by Subki's son in ʿArūs al-Afrāḥ and transmitted by al-Alusi in his exegesis .
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