Sibawayh

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Iranian scholar
Medieval era
Name
Sibawayh
Birth ca. 760
Death ca. 796[1]
School/tradition
Main interests Arabic language
Influenced by Khalil ibn Ahmad
Influenced

Sibawayh (Sibuyeh in Persian, سيبويه Sîbawayh in Arabic, سیبویه) was a linguist of Persian origin born ca. 760 in the town of Bayza (ancient Nesayak) in the Fars province of Iran, died in Shiraz, also in the Fars, around 180 AH (796–797).

He was one of the earliest and greatest grammarians of the Arabic language, and his phonetic description of Arabic is one of the most precise ever made, leading some to compare him with Panini. He greatly helped to spread the Arabic language in the Middle East.

Sibawayh was the first non-Arab to write on Arabic grammar and therefore the first one to explain Arabic grammar from a non-Arab perspective. Much of the impetus for this work came from the desire for non-Arab Muslims to understand the Qur'an properly and thoroughly; the Qur'an, which is composed in a poetic language that even native Arabic speakers must study with great care in order to comprehend thoroughly[citation needed], is even more difficult for those who, like Sibawayh, did not grow up speaking Arabic. Additionally, because Arabic does not necessarily mark all pronounced vowel sounds, it is possible to misread a text aloud (See Short vowels in Arabic); such difficulty was particularly troublesome for Muslims, who regard the Qur'an as the literal word of God to man and as such should never be mispronounced or misread.

The name Sibawayh is derived from the Persian words سیب-بو-یه (Sib-bu-yeh) meaning "the one with an apple's scent". His full name is: ʕAmr ibn ʕUthmān ibn Qanbar - al-mulaqqab bi-"Sibawayhi". That is: "ʕAmr ibn ʕUthmān ibn Qanbar - a.k.a. Sibawayhi".[citation needed]

On the other hand, the above explanation does not seem to be completely correct. There are words like "asal-wayh" (عسل ویه), "sar-wayh" (سارویه), and "shir-wayh" (شیرویه) that are the combination of the name of an animal or something edible plus "wayh". "wayh" (it is pronounced "uyeh" in modern Persian) is an ascriptive postfix. In modern Persian these words are pronounced "asaluyeh", "saruyeh", and "shiruyeh"; respectively. "asal", "Sar", and "Shir" mean Honey, Starling, and Lion/Milk (both spelled the same, so there is no way to say what the appropriate meaning of Shir is in this particular application), respectively. So based on this comparison sibuyeh does not mean "smell of apple" or anything like that. Another word with the same structure that is still spelled with the old style (or probably middle Persian) is "babvayh" in "ebn babvayh" (ابن بابویه) that is the old cemetery of Tehran. But the first part of the word (bab) is not the name of neither something edible nor an animal.

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[edit] References

  1. ^ Mit-Ejmes
  • de Sacy, Silvestre. Anthologie grammaticale arabe. Paris 1829.
  • Derenbourg, H. (ed.) Le livre de Sibawaihi. 2 vols. Paris 1881-1889. [reprinted: New York: Hildesheim 1970].
  • Jahn, Gustav. Sībawaihis Buch über die Grammatik übersetzt und erklärt. Berlin 1895-1900. [reprinted: Hildesheim 1969].
  • Schaade, A. Sībawaihi’s Lautlehre. Leiden 1911.
  • ʕAbd al-Salām Hārūn, M. (ed.) Kitāb Sibawayhi. 5 vols. Cairo 1966-1977.
  • Owens, J. The Foundations of Grammar: An introduction to Medieval Arabic Grammatical Theory. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company 1988. ISBN 90-272-4528-2.
  • Al-Nassir, A.A. Sibawayh the Phonologist.London and New York: Keegan Paul International 1993. ISBN 0-7103-0356-4.
  • Edzard, L. "Sibawayhi's Observations on Assimilatory Processes and Re-Syllabification in the Light of Optimality Theory", in: Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies, vol. 3 (2000), pp. 48-65. (PDF version; HTML version; HTML Unicode version)
  • Carter, M.G. Sibawayhi. London and New York: I.B. Tauris 2004. ISBN 1-85043-671-1.

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