Concept
Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi
Overview
Abu ‘Abd ar-Raḥmān al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad ibn ‘Amr ibn Tammām al-Farāhīdī al-Azdī al-Yaḥmadī (Arabic: أبو عبد الرحمن الخليل بن أحمد بن عمرو بن تمام الفراهيدي الأزدي اليحمدي; 718 – 786 CE), known as al-Farāhīdī, or al-Khalīl, was an Arab philologist, lexicographer and leading grammarian of Basra in Iraq. He made the first dictionary of the Arabic language – and the oldest extant dictionary – Kitab al-'Ayn (Arabic: كتاب العين "The Source") – introduced the now standard harakat (vowel marks in Arabic script) system, and was instrumental in the early development of ʿArūḍ (study of prosody), musicology and poetic metre. His linguistic theories influenced the development of Persian, Turkish, Kurdish, and Urdu prosody. The "Shining Star" of the Basran school of Arabic grammar, a polymath and scholar, was a man of genuinely original thought.
Al-Farahidi was the first scholar to subject the prosody of Classical Arabic poetry to a detailed phonological analysis. The primary data he listed and categorized in meticulous detail was extremely complex to master and utilize, and later theorists developed simpler formulations with greater coherence and general utility. He was also a pioneer in the field of cryptography and influenced the work of al-Kindi.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
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XX. Now history is akin to this side of writing, in which the authors relate with elegance, and often describe a legion, or a battle, and also addresses and exhortations are intermingled, but in them something connected and fluent is required, and not this compressed and vehement sort of speaking. And the eloquence which we are looking for must be distinguished from theirs nearly as much as it must from that of the…
Marcus Tullius Cicero, The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4
States what Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi is.
From the point of view just developed, the investigation of the grammatical forms of primitive language is of particular importance for the psychology of primitive man. True, as has already been remarked, the languages of the most primitive tribes have not been preserved to us in their original form. And yet it is in this very realm of grammatical forms, far more even than in that of sound pictures and onomatopoetic…
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
States what Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi is.
The name of the translator is not mentioned. In the Commentary of Moses, son of Solomon, of Salerno, on the Moreh, a Latin translation is quoted, and the quotations agree with this version. It is called by this commentator ha ʻataḳat ha-noẓrit (“the Christian translation”), and its author, ha-ma ʻatiḳ ha-noẓer (lit. “the Christian translator”). Dr.
Moses Maimonides, The guide for the perplexed
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Philosophers who discussed Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi
Related ideas
- Muqaddimah
- Washington, D.C.
- Persian language
- Harvard University Press
- Stanford University Press
- Princeton University Press
- Hadith
- Arab world
- London
- Muhammad
- Islamic world
- Ibn Khaldun
- Mecca
- Arabic alphabet
- Oxford
- Writing system
- Orthodoxy
- Al-Kindi
- Sharia
- Turkish language
- Brill Publishers
- Urdu
- Pre-Islamic Arabia
- Leiden
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