Risalat al-Mabahith al-Mardiyya
- Author died
- 761 AH
- Editions
- Dar Ibn Kathir
Risalat al-Mabahith al-Mardiyya (The Satisfying Investigations), in full al-Mabahith al-Mardiyya al-muta'alliga bi-Man al-shartiyya wa-ghayriha min asma' al-shart (The Satisfying Investigations Concerning the Conditional "Man" and Other Conditional Nouns), is a specialized grammatical treatise by the Egyptian grammarian Ibn Hisham al-Nahwi (d. 761 AH / 1360 CE; another report gives 763 AH) . The work belongs to the monographic genre of Arabic grammatical studies dedicated to the exhaustive analysis of a single particle or semantic tool (adawat al-ma'ani) .
Background and Context
The treatise originated from scholarly debates on conditional nouns and particles between Ibn Hisham and the Shafi'i jurist and scholar Taqi al-Din al-Subki (Abu al-Hasan) . Ibn Hisham compiled these discussions into a short work setting out three distinct inquiries (masa'il) that explore the morphological classification, syntactic governance, and semantic scope of conditional instruments .
Contents and Structure
The treatise is organized around three primary grammatical questions:
- The distinction between in and man: The first issue addresses al-Subki's question regarding why conditional in is universally classified as a particle (harf) while conditional man is classified as a noun (ism), given their shared conceptual meaning of conditionality . Ibn Hisham argues that in denotes only one element—the contractual relationship of cause and effect between two clauses—and thus signifies a meaning solely in another word, fulfilling the definition of a particle . By contrast, conditional man signifies two distinct elements: an intelligent entity (al-shakhs al-'aqil), which is an inherent nominal meaning in itself, and an implied conditionality acquired by incorporating the sense of in . In this context, he also refutes the Kufan grammatical theory of mutual elevation (al-tarafu') between subject and predicate .
- The predicate of a conditional noun: The second issue examines the syntactic analysis of a conditional noun acting as a subject (mubtada'), specifically whether its predicate (khabar) is the conditional clause (jumlat al-shart), the response clause (jumlat al-jawab), or both combined . Ibn Hisham maintains that the predicate is solely the conditional clause, explaining that the apparent incompleteness of the sentence without the response is due to semantic suspension (al-ta'liq) rather than predication (al-khabariyya) . He discusses this in relation to Hanafi legal arguments concerning prayer behind an imam and cites the prophetic hadith من ملك ذا رحم محرم فهو حر ("Whoever owns a close relative, he is free") .
- Scope and generality in conditional clauses: The third issue evaluates a legal–grammatical problem formulated by the early Hanafi jurist Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Shaybani and analyzed by Ibn Jinni regarding manumission phrasing: "Whichever of my slaves strikes you is free" versus "Whichever of my slaves you strike is free" . Ibn Jinni argued that the generality of an agent (fa'il) extends to the verb whereas that of an object (maf'ul) does not . Ibn Hisham records Ibn Malik's objection to this distinction, supporting it with poetic evidence from al-'Abbas ibn Mirdas al-Sulami .
Publication
The work was edited by Mazin al-Mubarak and published by Dar Ibn Kathir in Damascus and Beirut in 1408 AH / 1987 CE .
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