Sharh al-Faridi ala Alfiyat Ibn Malik
- Author died
- 981 AH
- Editions
- Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyyah
Sharh al-Faridi ala Alfiyat Ibn Malik (Commentary of al-Faridi on the Alfiyya of Ibn Malik) is an extensive Arabic grammatical commentary on Ibn Malik’s (d. 672 AH) one-thousand-verse didactic poem on grammar and morphology, composed by the Hanbali scholar and poet Shams al-Din Muhammad al-Faridi (d. 981 AH / c. 1573 CE) .
Background and Composition
The author describes the work in his preface as an elucidation of Ibn Malik’s celebrated poem, prefacing the grammatical exposition with a biographical sketch of Ibn Malik, noting his origins in Jaén and his studies under scholars such as Thabit ibn Khiyar al-Kala‘i, Abu Ali al-Shalubin, Alam al-Din al-Sakhawi, and Ibn Ya'ish in Aleppo .
Al-Faridi completed his own holographic manuscript of the commentary in 958 AH . Later biographical accounts noted that he was still among the living in 980 AH before his death around 981 AH .
Manuscripts and Publication
The work survived across several manuscript repositories and was edited based primarily on two historical codices :
- The Author’s Autograph: Preserved in the Süleymaniye Library (MS 1069), comprising 332 folios in regular naskh script, penned by al-Faridi himself and completed in 958 AH .
- The Escorial Copy: Preserved in the El Escorial Library (MS 1464), comprising 374 folios, copied by Abd al-Latif ibn Muhammad al-Barhamtushi on 8 Ramadan 987 AH .
The commentary was edited and annotated by Muhammad Mustafa al-Khatib and published by Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiyya in Beirut in 2018 CE (1439 AH) in four volumes . In preparing the edition, the editor fully vocalized the base text of the Alfiyya, supplemented the work with grammatical analyses (i‘rab) of the verses sourced from Muhammad Muhyi al-Din Abd al-Hamid's Minhat al-Jalil, and cross-referenced al-Faridi’s textual quotations with earlier grammatical treatises .
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