Sharh Shafiya Ibn al-Hajib - Rukn al-Din al-Astarabadi
- Author died
- 715 AH
- Editions
- Maktabat al-Thaqafah al-Diniyyah
Sharh Shafiya Ibn al-Hajib is a commentary on Arabic morphology (sarf) written by Rukn al-Din al-Astarabadi (d. 715 AH / 1315 CE) on the grammatical primer al-Shafiya by Ibn al-Hajib (d. 646 AH / 1249 CE) .
Background and Motivation
Rukn al-Din al-Astarabadi—whose full name appears in catalog records as Abu al-Fada'il al-Hasan ibn Muhammad ibn Sharafshah al-Alawi al-Astarabadi—was introduced to Ibn al-Hajib's al-Shafiya through his teacher Nasir al-Din al-Tusi . Due to the conciseness and difficulty of the original text, a group of scholars requested that he compose a lucid, comprehensive commentary to make Ibn al-Hajib's morphological principles accessible to beginners and advanced students alike . The exact date of composition is not recorded in biographical dictionaries or extant manuscripts .
Method and Content
In his introduction, al-Astarabadi states that he aimed to untangle the work's obscurities with clear phrasing, uncover its underlying subtleties, and support its core issues with established proofs and accepted linguistic premises . To interpret the author's concise positions, he relied directly on Ibn al-Hajib's other writings, notably al-Idah fi Sharh al-Mufassal and Ibn al-Hajib's own commentary on al-Shafiya .
The commentary addresses key debates in Arabic morphology, including:
- The underlying morphological form of the verbal noun kaynuna (sayrura, daymuma) .
- The morphological status of the final ha' in hunah .
- The morphological weight of ashya' and the rationale for its diptote (man' min al-sarf) classification .
- The origin of the alif substituted for nunation (tanwin) in defective nouns (al-ism al-maqsur) during pausal pronunciation (waqf) .
- The morphological patterns of words such as insan and himrish .
Manuscripts and Editing
Several manuscript copies of the commentary survive in libraries, including copies held at Dar al-Kutub in Cairo (MS 5731 H and MS 13 Sarf Qawala) . Another manuscript copy at Dar al-Kutub (MS 159 Sarf) had historically been misattributed to al-Sharif al-Jurjani; however, its colophon dates to 713 AH—two years before al-Astarabadi's death and over two decades prior to al-Jurjani's birth in 740 AH . The text was edited and studied as a doctoral dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Dar al-Ulum at Cairo University in 1992, and subsequently published in two volumes containing a study of the author and the critical text .
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