Sharh Abyat Sibawayh
- Author died
- 385 AH
- Editions
- Maktabat al-Kullīyāt al-Azhariyya, Dār al-Fikr lil-Ṭibāʿah wa-al-Nashr wa-al-Tawzīʿ
Sharh Abyat Sibawayh (Commentary on the Verses of Sibawayh) is a grammatical commentary by the grammarian Abu Muhammad Yusuf ibn al-Hasan al-Sirafi (d. 385 AH / 995 CE) explaining the poetic evidential verses cited in al-Kitab of Sibawayh .
Author and Context
The author, Abu Muhammad Yusuf ibn Abi Sa'id al-Hasan ibn Abd Allah al-Sirafi, known as Ibn al-Sirafi, was a grammarian, philologist, and chronicler who assumed his father's teaching circle in Baghdad after the death of the elder al-Sirafi . Along with completing his father's unfinished grammatical work al-Iqna', he specialized in explaining poetic evidence across foundational linguistic texts, producing commentaries on the verses of al-Kitab, Islah al-mantiq, Abu Ubaydah's Majaz al-Qur'an, and Abu Ubayd al-Qasim ibn Sallam's Gharib al-musannaf .
Scope and Content
The work is dedicated to examining the poetic citations (shawāhid) utilized by Sibawayh throughout his foundational treatise on Arabic grammar . Ibn al-Sirafi identifies the authors and tribal attributions of anonymous or contested verses, resolves textual variants, clarifies vocabulary and obscure phrasing, and explains the grammatical rationale underpinning their citation .
Reception and Critique
Biographical sources, including al-Yafi'i and al-Tayyib Ba Makhrama, praised Sharh Abyat Sibawayh as a work of exceptional quality . It served as a widely cited source for subsequent lexicographers and grammarians discussing the poetic evidence of al-Kitab .
The commentary was also subjected to a dedicated refutation by the philologist al-Aswad al-Ghandajani (Abu Muhammad al-A'rabi) titled Farhat al-adib . Al-Ghandajani criticized Ibn al-Sirafi for leaving many verses unexplained, committing textual misreadings (taṣḥīf), misattributing poems to the wrong authors, and distorting their intended meanings, subsequently dedicating his treatise to identifying and correcting these errors .
Editions
The commentary has been published in modern scholarly editions, including:
- An edition edited by Muhammad Ali al-Rayyih Hashim, published in Cairo by Dar al-Fikr (1394 AH / 1974 CE) .
- An edition edited by Muhammad Ali Sultani, published by the Arab Language Academy in Damascus (1396 AH / 1976 CE) .
Answer updated