Sharh al-Kafiya al-Shafiya
- Author died
- 672 AH
- Editions
- Umm Al-Qura University, Center for Scientific Research and Islamic Heritage Revival, College of Sharia and Islamic Studies
Sharh al-Kafiya al-Shafiya (The Commentary on the Sufficient and Healing Poem) is an extensive grammatical and morphological treatise by the Andalusian grammarian Ibn Malik (d. 672 AH / 1274 CE), written as an auto-commentary on his own comprehensive didactic poem, al-Kafiya al-Shafiya .
Background and Purpose
The base text, al-Kafiya al-Shafiya, is a major poetic compendium on Arabic grammar (nahw) and morphology (sarf) composed in the rajaz meter (urjūzah), comprising 2,757 verses (described by Ibn Malik as numbering over 2,750 lines) . In his introduction, Ibn Malik explains that he undertook the prose commentary—sometimes referenced under the title al-Wafiya fi Sharh al-Kafiya al-Shafiya—in response to requests from scholars and students seeking an elucidation of the poem's complex issues, an unraveling of obscure matters, and a systematic compilation of its scattered points .
Content and Method
The commentary covers the full spectrum of Arabic syntax and morphology . Ibn Malik provides exhaustive treatments of grammatical principles, supporting his explanations with textual evidence (shawāhid) from the Qur'an, hadith, and classical Arabic poetry .
The work holds a central position within Ibn Malik's corpus and the wider grammatical tradition due to its relationship with his celebrated Alfiyya (originally titled al-Khulasa) . The Alfiyya is an abridgment of al-Kafiya al-Shafiya into roughly 1,000 verses; consequently, Sharh al-Kafiya al-Shafiya functions as the author's own expansive, detailed exposition of the grammatical topics distilled in the Alfiyya, and served as an essential primary reference for subsequent commentators on the Alfiyya .
Related Works and Editions
In addition to Ibn Malik's auto-commentary, his son Badr al-Din Ibn Malik (d. 686 AH) also composed a commentary on al-Kafiya al-Shafiya .
In modern scholarship, Sharh al-Kafiya al-Shafiya has been critically edited by Abd al-Mun'im Ahmad Haridi and published under the auspices of the Center for Scientific Research and Heritage Revival at Umm al-Qura University in Mecca .
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