This article is about the grammarian. For the historian, see
Ibn Ishaq.
ʿAbd-Allāh ibn Abī Isḥāq al-Ḥaḍramī (
Arabic, عَبْدُ اللّهِ بْنُ أَبِي إِسْحَاقَ الْحَضْرَمِيُّ), (died
AD 735 /
AH 117)[1][2] was an
Arab from
Yemen and is considered the first grammarian of the
Arabic language.[3] He compiled a prescriptive grammar by referring to the usage of the
Bedouins, whose language was seen as especially pure (see also
iʿrāb,
aʿrāb). He is also considered the first person to use linguistic
analogy in Arabic.[3]
Two students of Ibn Abi Ishaq's were
Harun ibn Musa and
Abu 'Amr ibn al-'Ala'.[4][5] His student al-Thaqafi seems to have had more prescriptive views while al-'Ala's were more descriptive. Their differences have been suggested to lie at the core of the late division of
Arabic grammar into the schools of
Kufa and
Basra. Ibn Abi Ishaq was said to be more proficient with the rules of grammar than the analysis of common speech.[6]
Abi Ishaq's work was considered influential upon later grammarians, as he was quoted as an authority by
Sibawayhi in his seminal work on
Arabic grammar seven times.[2]
^
abMonique Bernards, "Pioneers of Arabic Linguistic Studies." Taken from In the Shadow of Arabic: The Centrality of Language to Arabic Culture, pg. 213. Ed. Bilal Orfali. Leiden: Brill Publishers, 2011.
ISBN9789004215375
^Sībawayh, ʻAmr ibn ʻUthmān (1988), in Hārūn, ʻAbd al-Salām Muḥammad, Al-Kitāb Kitāb Sībawayh Abī Bishr ʻAmr ibn ʻUthmān ibn Qanbar, Introduction (3rd ed.), Cairo: Maktabat al-Khānjī, p. 13.
^M.G. Carter, Sibawayh, pg. 21. Part of the Makers of Islamic Civilization series. London:
I.B. Tauris, 2004.
ISBN9781850436713
^Gregor Schoeler, The Oral and the Written in Early Islam, pg. 187. Trns. Uwe Vagelpohl, ed. James E Montgomery. Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Literatures. London: Routledge, 2006.
ISBN9781134158805
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