Abu ‘Abd ar-Raḥmān al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad ibn ‘Amr ibn Tammām al-Farāhīdī al-Azdī al-Yaḥmadī ( ar, أبو عبدالرحمن الخليل بن أحمد الفراهيدي; 718 – 786 CE), known as Al-Farāhīdī, or Al-Khalīl, was an Arab

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...

lexicographer Lexicography is the study of lexicons, and is divided into two separate academic disciplines. It is the art of compiling dictionaries. * Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries. * Theoreti ...

and leading grammarian of Basra based on

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...

. He made the first

dictionary A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies ...

of the

Arabic language Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

– and the oldest extant dictionary – ''

Kitab al-'Ayn ''Kitab al-'Ayn'' ( ar, كتاب العين) is the first Arabic language dictionary and one of the earliest known dictionaries of any language. It was compiled in the eighth century by Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi. The letter ''ayn'' () of th ...

'' ( ar, كتاب العين "The Source")Introduction to ''Early Medieval Arabic: Studies on Al-Khalīl Ibn Ahmad'', pg. 3. Ed. Karin C. Ryding.

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

Georgetown University Press Georgetown University Press is a university press affiliated with Georgetown University that publishes about forty new books a year. The press's major subject areas include bioethics, international affairs, languages and linguistics, political sc ...

, 1998. – introduced the now standard

harakat The Arabic script has numerous diacritics, which include: consonant pointing known as (), and supplementary diacritics known as (). The latter include the vowel marks termed (; singular: , '). The Arabic script is a modified abjad, where sh ...

(vowel marks in Arabic script) system, and was instrumental in the early development of ʿArūḍ (study of prosody),al-Khalīl ibn Aḥmad
at the

Encyclopædia Britannica Online An encyclopedia (American English) or encyclopædia (British English) is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either general or special to a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into article ...

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. is a British-American company known for publishing the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', the world's oldest continuously published encyclopaedia, as well as extensive digital efforts—including text and audiovisual— ...

Abit Yaşar Koçak, ''Handbook of Arabic Dictionaries'', pg. 19. Berlin: Verlag Hans Schiler, 2002. Hamid Dabashi, ''The World of Persian Literary Humanism'', pg. 64.

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...

Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the retirem ...

, 2012.

musicology Musicology (from Greek μουσική ''mousikē'' 'music' and -λογια ''-logia'', 'domain of study') is the scholarly analysis and research-based study of music. Musicology departments traditionally belong to the humanities, although some mu ...

and

poetic metre In poetry, metre ( Commonwealth spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of m ...

.Kees Versteegh, ''Arabic Linguistic Tradition'', pg. 23.Muhammad Hasan Bakalla, "Ancient Arab and Muslim Phoneticians: An Appraisal of Their Contrubition to Phonetics." Taken from ''Current Issues in the Phonetic Sciences: Proceedings of the IPS-77 Congress, Miami Beach, Florida, 17-19th December 1977, Part 1'', pg. 4. Eds. Harry Francis Hollien and Patricia Hollien. Volume 9 of Current Issues in Linguistic Theory Series. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing, 1979. His linguistic theories influenced the development of

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

Turkish Turkish may refer to: *a Turkic language spoken by the Turks * of or about Turkey ** Turkish language *** Turkish alphabet ** Turkish people, a Turkic ethnic group and nation *** Turkish citizen, a citizen of Turkey *** Turkish communities and mi ...

Kurdish Kurdish may refer to: *Kurds or Kurdish people *Kurdish languages *Kurdish alphabets *Kurdistan, the land of the Kurdish people which includes: **Southern Kurdistan **Eastern Kurdistan **Northern Kurdistan **Western Kurdistan See also * Kurd (dis ...

and

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
''

Arabic grammar Arabic grammar or Arabic language sciences ( ar, النحو العربي ' or ar, عُلُوم اللغَة العَرَبِيَّة ') is the grammar of the Arabic language. Arabic is a Semitic language and its grammar has many similarities with ...

, a polymath and scholar, he was a man of genuinely original thought.John A. Haywood, ''Arabic'', pg. 20.

Ibn Khaldun Ibn Khaldun (; ar, أبو زيد عبد الرحمن بن محمد بن خلدون الحضرمي, ; 27 May 1332 – 17 March 1406, 732-808 AH) was an Arab The Historical Muhammad', Irving M. Zeitlin, (Polity Press, 2007), p. 21; "It is, of ...

Muqaddimah The ''Muqaddimah'', also known as the ''Muqaddimah of Ibn Khaldun'' ( ar, مقدّمة ابن خلدون) or ''Ibn Khaldun's Prolegomena'' ( grc, Προλεγόμενα), is a book written by the Arab The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ...

, vol. 2, pg. 435. Trns.

Franz Rosenthal Franz Rosenthal (August 31, 1914 – April 8, 2003) was the Louis M. Rabinowitz professor of Semitic languages at Yale from 1956 to 1967 and Sterling Professor Emeritus of Arabic, scholar of Arabic literature and Islam at Yale from 1967 to 1985 ...

Princeton Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine ...

Princeton University Press Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial su ...

, 1969. 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 have developed simpler formulations with greater coherence and general utility. He was also a pioneer in the field of

cryptography Cryptography, or cryptology (from grc, , translit=kryptós "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adver ...

, and influenced the work of

Al-Kindi Abū Yūsuf Yaʻqūb ibn ʼIsḥāq aṣ-Ṣabbāḥ al-Kindī (; ar, أبو يوسف يعقوب بن إسحاق الصبّاح الكندي; la, Alkindus; c. 801–873 AD) was an Arab Muslim philosopher, polymath, mathematician, physician ...

Life

Born in 718 in

Oman Oman ( ; ar, عُمَان ' ), officially the Sultanate of Oman ( ar, سلْطنةُ عُمان ), is an Arabian country located in southwestern Asia. It is situated on the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, and spans the mouth of t ...

, southern

Arabia The Arabian Peninsula, (; ar, شِبْهُ الْجَزِيرَةِ الْعَرَبِيَّة, , "Arabian Peninsula" or , , "Island of the Arabs") or Arabia, is a peninsula of Western Asia, situated northeast of Africa on the Arabian Plate. ...

, to

Azd The Azd ( ar, أَزْد), or ''Al-Azd'' ( ar, ٱلْأَزْد), are a tribe of Sabaean Arabs. In ancient times, the Sabaeans inhabited Ma'rib, capital city of the Kingdom of Saba' in modern-day Yemen. Their lands were irrigated by the Ma ...

i parents of modest means, al-Farahidi became a leading grammarian of Basra in

.Paula Casey-Vine, ''Oman in History'', pg. 261. London: Immel Publishing, 1995. In

Basra Basra ( ar, ٱلْبَصْرَة, al-Baṣrah) is an Iraqi city located on the Shatt al-Arab. It had an estimated population of 1.4 million in 2018. Basra is also Iraq's main port, although it does not have deep water access, which is hand ...

, he studied Islamic traditions and philology under

Abu 'Amr ibn al-'Ala' Abu ʻAmr ibn al-ʻAlāʼ al-Basri ( ar, أبو عمرو بن العلاء; died 770 CE/154 AH) was the Qur'an reciter of Basra, Iraq and an Arab linguist. He was born in Mecca in .Ibn Khallikan's Biographical Dictionary, translated by William ...

with Aiyūb al-Sakhtiyāni, ‘Āṣm al-Aḥwal, al-‘Awwām b. Ḥawshab, etc. His teacher Ayyub persuaded him to renounce the Abāḍi doctrine and convert to

Sunni Sunni Islam () is the largest branch of Islam, followed by 85–90% of the world's Muslims. Its name comes from the word '' Sunnah'', referring to the tradition of Muhammad. The differences between Sunni and Shia Muslims arose from a disagr ...

orthodoxy Orthodoxy (from Greek: ) is adherence to correct or accepted creeds, especially in religion. Orthodoxy within Christianity refers to acceptance of the doctrines defined by various creeds and ecumenical councils in Antiquity, but different Churc ...

; Among his pupils were

Sibawayh Sibawayh ( ar, سِيبَوَيْهِ ' or ; fa, سِیبُویه‎ ' ; c. 760–796), whose full name is Abu Bishr Amr ibn Uthman ibn Qanbar al-Basri (, '), was a Persian leading grammarian of Basra and author of the earliest book on Arabic ...

, al-Naḍr b. Shumail, and al-Layth b. al-Muẓaffar b. Naṣr. Known for his piety and frugality, he was a companion of

Jābir ibn Zayd Abu al-Sha'tha Jabir ibn Zayd al-Zahrani al-Azdi () was a Muslim theologian and one of the founding figures of the Ibadis,Donald Hawley, ''Oman'', pg. 199. Jubilee edition. Kensington: Stacey International, 1995. the third major denomination of Is ...

, the founder of ibadism.Introduction to ''Early Medieval Arabic'', pg. 2. It was said his parents were converts to Islam, and that his father was the first to be named "Ahmad" after the time of Prophet Muhammad.Ibn Khallikan, ''Deaths'', pg. 497. His nickname, "Farahidi", differed from his tribal name and derived from an ancestor named Furhud (Young Lion); plural . He refused lavish gifts from rulers, or to indulge in the slander and gossip his fellow Arab and Persian rival scholars were wont, and he performed annual pilgrimage to Mecca. He lived in a small

reed Reed or Reeds may refer to: Science, technology, biology, and medicine * Reed bird (disambiguation) * Reed pen, writing implement in use since ancient times * Reed (plant), one of several tall, grass-like wetland plants of the order Poales * Re ...

house in Basra and once remarked that when his door was shut, his mind did not go beyond it.Ibn Khallikan, ''Deaths'', pg. 494. He taught linguistics,John A. Haywood, ''Arabic'', pg. 22. and some of his students became wealthy teachers. Al-Farahidi's main income was

falconry Falconry is the hunting of wild animals in their natural state and habitat by means of a trained bird of prey. Small animals are hunted; squirrels and rabbits often fall prey to these birds. Two traditional terms are used to describe a person ...

and a garden inherited from his father.''Aujourd'hui L'Egypte'', iss. #18-20, pg. 114. Egypt: Hayʾah al-ʻĀmmah lil-Istiʻlāmāt, 1992. Digitized by AbeBooks July 16, 2010. Two dates of death are cited, 786 and 791 CE.Kees Versteegh, ''Arabic Linguistic Tradition'', pg. 7. The story goes that it was theoretical contemplation that brought about his death. On the particular day, while he was deeply absorbed in contemplation of a system of accounting to save his maidservant from being cheated by the

green grocer A greengrocer is a person who owns or operates a shop selling primarily fruit and vegetables. The term may also be used to refer to a shop selling primarily produce. It is used predominantly in the United Kingdom and Australia. In the United ...

, he wandered into a mosque and there he absent-mindedly bumped into a pillar and was fatally injured.

Views

Al-Farahidi's eschewing of material wealth has been noted by a number of biographers. In his old age, the son of

Habib ibn al-Muhallab Habib ibn al-Muhallab al-Azdi ( ar, حبيب بن المهلب الأزدي) (died 720) was an Umayyad provincial governor and military commander, and a member of the Muhallabid family. He later participated in the revolt of his brother Yazid ibn ...

and reigning governor of the

Muhallabids The Muhallabids () or the Muhallabid dynasty were an Arab family who became prominent in the middle Umayyad Caliphate and reached its greatest eminence during the early Abbasids, when members of the family ruled Basra and Ifriqiya. The founders of ...

offered al-Farahidi a pension and requested that the latter tutor the former's son. Al-Farahidi declined, stating that he was wealthy though possessing no money, as true poverty lay not in a lack of money, but in the soul.Ibn Khallikan, ''Deaths'', pg. 495. The governor reacted by rescinding the pension, an act to which al-Farahidi responded with the following lines of poetry: :"He, Who formed me with a mouth, engaged to give me nourishment till such a time as He takes me to Himself. Thou hast refused me a trifling sum, but that refusal will not increase thy wealth." Embarrassed, the governor then responded with an offer to renew the pension and double the rate, which al-Farahidi still greeted with a lukewarm reception. Al-Farahidi's apathy about material wealth was demonstrated in his habit of quoting

Akhtal Ghiyath ibn Ghawth ibn al-Salt ibn Tariqa al-Taghlibi () commonly known as al-Akhtal () (The Loquacious), was one of the most famous Arab poets of the Umayyad period. He belonged to the Banu Taghlib tribe, and was, like his fellow-tribesmen, a Ch ...

's famous stanza: "If thou wantest treasures, thou wilt find none equal to a virtuous conduct." Al-Farahidi distinguished himself via his philosophical views as well. He reasoned that a man's intelligence peaked at the age of forty – the age when the Islamic prophet

Muhammad Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد; 570 – 8 June 632 Common Era, CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Muhammad in Islam, Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet Divine inspiration, di ...

began his call – and began to diminish after sixty, the point at which Muhammad died. He also believed that a person was at their peak intelligence at the clearest part of dawn. In regard to the field of grammar, al-Farahidi held the realist views common among early Arab linguists yet rare among both later and modern times. Rather than holding the rules of grammar as he and his students described them to be absolute rules, al-Farahidi saw the Arabic language as the natural, instinctual speaking habits of the

Bedouin The Bedouin, Beduin, or Bedu (; , singular ) are nomadic Arab tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia. The Bedouin originated in the Syrian Desert and A ...

; if the descriptions of scholars such as himself differed from how the Arabs of the desert naturally spoke, then the cause was a lack of knowledge on the scholar's part as the unspoken, unwritten natural speech of pure Arabs was the final determiner. Al-Farahidi was distinguished, however, in his view that the Arabic alphabet included 29 letters rather than 28 and that each letter represented a fundamental characteristic of people or animals. His classification of 29 letters was due to his consideration of the combination of

Lām Lamedh or Lamed is the twelfth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Hebrew Lāmed , Aramaic Lāmadh , Syriac Lāmaḏ ܠ, Arabic , and Phoenician Lāmed . Its sound value is . The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Lambda (Λ), Latin ...

and Alif as a separate third letter from the two individual parts.

Legacy

In the

Arab world The Arab world ( ar, اَلْعَالَمُ الْعَرَبِيُّ '), formally the Arab homeland ( '), also known as the Arab nation ( '), the Arabsphere, or the Arab states, refers to a vast group of countries, mainly located in Western A ...

al-Farahidi had become a household name by the time he died, and become almost as mythic a figure as

Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali Abu al-Aswad al-Duʾali ( ar, أَبُو ٱلْأَسْوَد ٱلدُّؤَلِيّ, '; -16 BH/603 CE – 69 AH/689 CE), whose full name is ʾAbū al-Aswad Ẓālim ibn ʿAmr ibn Sufyān ibn Jandal ibn Yamār ibn Hīls ibn Nufātha ibn al-ʿĀd ...

in Arabic philology. He was the first to codify the complex metres of

Arabic poetry Arabic poetry ( ar, الشعر العربي ''ash-shi‘ru al-‘Arabīyyu'') is the earliest form of Arabic literature. Present knowledge of poetry in Arabic dates from the 6th century, but oral poetry is believed to predate that. Arabic poetry ...

, and an outstanding genius of the

Muslim world The terms Muslim world and Islamic world commonly refer to the Islamic community, which is also known as the Ummah. This consists of all those who adhere to the religious beliefs and laws of Islam or to societies in which Islam is practiced. I ...

and Al-Asma'i were among his students, with the former having been more indebted to al-Farahidi than to any other teacher.

Al-Nadim Abū al-Faraj Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq al-Nadīm ( ar, ابو الفرج محمد بن إسحاق النديم), also ibn Abī Ya'qūb Isḥāq ibn Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq al-Warrāq, and commonly known by the ''nasab'' (patronymic) Ibn al-Nadīm ...

, the 10th century bibliophile biographer from Basra, reports that in fact Sibawayh's "Kitab" (''Book''), was a collaborative work of forty-two authors, but also that the principles and subjects in the "Kitab" were based on those of al-Farahidi. He is quoted by Sibawayh 608 times, more than any other authority. Throughout the ''Kitab'' Sibawayh says "I asked him" or "he said", without naming the person referred to by the pronoun, however, it is clear that he refers to al-Farahidi. Both the latter and the former are historically the earliest and most significant figures in the formal recording of the Arabic language. Al-Farahidi was also well versed in

astronomy Astronomy () is a natural science that studies astronomical object, celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and chronology of the Universe, evolution. Objects of interest ...

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

Islamic law Sharia (; ar, شريعة, sharīʿa ) is a body of religious law that forms a part of the Islamic tradition. It is derived from the religious precepts of Islam and is based on the sacred scriptures of Islam, particularly the Quran and the ...

music theory Music theory is the study of the practices and possibilities of music. ''The Oxford Companion to Music'' describes three interrelated uses of the term "music theory". The first is the "rudiments", that are needed to understand music notation (ke ...

and Muslim prophetic tradition. His prowess in the Arabic language was said to be drawn, first and foremost, from his vast knowledge of Muslim prophetic tradition as well as exegesis of the Qur'an. The Al Khalil Bin Ahmed Al Farahidi School of Basic Education in

Rustaq Rustaq ( ar, ٱلرُّسْتَاق, Ar-Rustāq) is a town and ''Wilayah'' (District) in Al Batinah Region of northern Oman. The wilayah is in the Western Hajar Mountains, in the south of the Batinah. Rustaq was once the capital of Oman, during ...

, Oman is named after him.

Works

''Kitab al-'Ayn''

''Kitab al-Ayn'' was the first dictionary written for the Arabic language. "Ayn" is the deepest letter in Arabic, and "ayn" may also mean a water source in the desert. Its title, "the source", reflects its author's goal to derive the etymological origins of Arabic vocabulary and lexicography.

Isnad of Kitab al-'Ayn

In his "Kitab al-

Fihrist The ''Kitāb al-Fihrist'' ( ar, كتاب الفهرست) (''The Book Catalogue'') is a compendium of the knowledge and literature of tenth-century Islam compiled by Ibn Al-Nadim (c.998). It references approx. 10,000 books and 2,000 authors.''The ...

" (Catalogue) ibn Ishaq al-Nadim recounts the various names attached to the transmission of Kitab al-'Ayn, i.e. the

isnad Hadith studies ( ar, علم الحديث ''ʻilm al-ḥadīth'' "science of hadith", also science of hadith, or science of hadith criticism or hadith criticism) consists of several religious scholarly disciplines used by Muslim scholars in th ...

(chain of authorities). He begins with Durustuyah's account that it was al-Kasrawi who said that al-Zaj al-Muhaddath had said that al-Khalil had explained the concept and structure of his dictionary to

al-Layth Al-Layth ibn Ali ibn al-Layth (died 928) was amir of the Saffarid amirate from 909 until 910. He was the son of Ali ibn al-Layth and nephew of the first two Saffarid rulers, Ya'qub ibn al-Layth and Amr ibn al-Layth. Biography In 890 al-Layth ...

b. al-Muzaffar b. Nasr b. Sayyar, had dictated edited portions to al-Layth and they had reviewed its preparation together. Al-Nadim writes that a manuscript in the possession of Da'laj had probably belonged originally to Ibn al-'Ala

al-Sijistani Al-Sijistani refers to people from the historic Sijistan region in present-day Sistan, the border region of eastern Iran and southwestern Afghanistan. Prominent people who have been called Al-Sijistani include: * Abu Da'ud Sulayman ibn Ash`ath al ...

, who according to Durustuyah had been a member of a circle of scholars who critiqued the book. In this group was Abu Talib al-Mufaddal ibn Slamah, 'Abd Allah ibn Muhammad al-Karmani, Abu Bakr ibn Durayd and al-Huna'i al-Dawsi.

Other works

In addition to his work in prosody and lexicography, al-Farahidi established the fields of ''ʻarūḍ'' – rules-governing Arabic poetry metre – and Arabic musicology.Kees Versteegh, ''The Arabic Language'', pg. 62. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001. Paperback edition. Often called a genius by historians, he was a scholar, a theorist and an original thinker. Al-Nadim's list of al-Khalil's other works were: *Chanting; Prosody; Witnesses; (Consonant) Points and (Vowel) Signs; Death (or pronunciation or omitting) of the 'Ayn; Harmony.

Cryptography

Al-Farahidi's ''Kitab al-Muamma'' "Book of Cryptographic Messages", was the first book on

and

cryptanalysis Cryptanalysis (from the Greek ''kryptós'', "hidden", and ''analýein'', "to analyze") refers to the process of analyzing information systems in order to understand hidden aspects of the systems. Cryptanalysis is used to breach cryptographic sec ...

written by a linguist. The lost work contains many "firsts", including the use of permutations and combinations to list all possible Arabic words with and without vowels. Later Arab cryptographers explicitly resorted to al-Farahidi's phonological analysis for calculating letter frequency in their own works. His work on cryptography influenced

(c. 801–873), who discovered the method of cryptanalysis by

frequency analysis In cryptanalysis, frequency analysis (also known as counting letters) is the study of the frequency of letters or groups of letters in a ciphertext. The method is used as an aid to breaking classical ciphers. Frequency analysis is based on t ...

Diacritic system

Al-Farahidi is also credited with the current standard for

Arabic diacritics The Arabic script has numerous diacritics, which include: consonant pointing known as (), and supplementary diacritics known as (). The latter include the vowel marks termed (; singular: , '). The Arabic script is a modified abjad, where sh ...

; rather than a series of indistinguishable dots, it was al-Farahidi who introduced different shapes for the vowel

diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...

s in Arabic, which simplified the

writing system A writing system is a method of visually representing verbal communication, based on a script and a set of rules regulating its use. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a reliable form ...

so much that it has not been changed since. He also began using a small letter

shin Shin may refer to: Biology * The front part of the human leg below the knee * Shinbone, the tibia, the larger of the two bones in the leg below the knee in vertebrates Names * Shin (given name) (Katakana: シン, Hiragana: しん), a Japanese ...

to signify the

shadda Shaddah ( ar, شَدّة ' , "

ign of ''IGN'' (formerly ''Imagine Games Network'') is an American video game and Mass media, entertainment media website operated by IGN Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, Ziff Davis, Inc. The company's headquarters is located in San ...

emphasis", also called by the verbal noun from the same root, tashdid ' "emphasis") is one of the Arabic diacritics, diacritics used with the Arabic alphabet, indicating a gemination, geminated consonant. ...

mark for doubling consonants. Al-Farahidi's style for writing the Arabic alphabet was much less ambiguous than the previous system where dots had to perform various functions, and while he only intended its use for poetry it was eventually used for the Qur'an as well.

Prosody

Al-Farahidi's first work was in the study of Arabic prosody, a field for which he is credited as the founder. Reportedly, he performed the

Hajj The Hajj (; ar, حَجّ '; sometimes also spelled Hadj, Hadji or Haj in English) is an annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the holiest city for Muslims. Hajj is a mandatory religious duty for Muslims that must be carried ...

pilgrimage to

Mecca Mecca (; officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, commonly shortened to Makkah ()) is a city and administrative center of the Mecca Province of Saudi Arabia, and the Holiest sites in Islam, holiest city in Islam. It is inland from Jeddah on the Red ...

while a young man and prayed to God that he be inspired with knowledge no one else had. When he returned to Basra shortly thereafter, he overheard the rhythmic beating of a blacksmith on an anvil and he immediately wrote down fifteen metres around the periphery of five circles, which were accepted as the basis of the field and still accepted as such in Arabic language prosody today. Three of the meters were not known to

Pre-Islamic Arabia Pre-Islamic Arabia ( ar, شبه الجزيرة العربية قبل الإسلام) refers to the Arabian Peninsula before the History of Islam, emergence of Islam in 610 CE. Some of the settled communities developed into distinctive civilizati ...

, suggesting that al-Farahidi may have invented them himself. He never mandated, however, that all Arab poets must necessarily follow his rules without question, and even he was said to have knowingly broken the rules at times.

Shmuel Moreh Shmuel Moreh ( he, שמואל מורה; December 22, 1932 – September 22, 2017) was a professor of Arabic Language and Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a recipient of the Israel Prize in Middle Eastern studies in 1999. In ...

, ''Modern Arabic Poetry: 1800 - 1970; the Development of Its Forms and Themes Under the Influence of Western Literature'', pg. 192. Volume 5 of Studies in Arabic literature: Supplements to the Journal of Arabic Literature. Leiden: Brill Archive, 1976.

Notes

References

Bibliography

* *Rafael Talmon.
Arabic Grammar in its Formative Age: Kitāb al-‘ayn and its Attribution to Halīl b. Aḥmad
', Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics, 25 (Leiden: Brill, 1997). Includes a thorough assessment of al-Khalil's biography. *Abdel-Malek, Zaki N. (2019) ''Towards a New Theory of Arabic Prosody'', 5th ed. (Revised), Posted online with free access.

External links

The Al Khalil bin Ahmed Al Farahidi Center
at the

University of Nizwa The University of Nizwa (UoN) was established in 2002 by the Decree of Sultan Qaboos as the first non-profit university in the Sultanate of Oman. It remains the only institution of its kind in Oman. Upon the satisfaction of all requirements set ...

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The Tajdīd Online Forum for Facilitating Arabic Studies
' مُنتَدَى التَّجْديدِ: المِنْـبَـرُ الإلكترونيُّ لِتَيْسِيرِ الدِّراساتِ العربـيَّةِ * {{DEFAULTSORT:Ahmad, Khalil 718 births 786 deaths 8th-century Arabic poets 8th-century lexicographers Mathematicians from the Abbasid Caliphate Arab lexicographers Arabists Grammarians of Arabic Grammarians of Basra Lexicographers of Arabic Medieval grammarians of Arabic People from Basra Philologists of Arabic Phonologists Poets from the Abbasid Caliphate Pre-19th-century cryptographers 8th-century Omani people