2020/01/01 by Nadia Vidro · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Historical and Linguistic Studies #African history and culture analysis #Islamic Studies and History
paper · pdf · doi:10.13173/zeitarabling.72.0026
openalex publication_date 2020/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
The Cairo Genizah, a collection of manuscript fragments from the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo, preserved a number of otherwise unknown grammars of Classical Arabic. 2 These grammars survive in Judaeo-Arabic and were copied by Jews interested in attaining a solid knowledge of Classical Arabic. Among the newly identified works is a fragmentarily preserved treatise on Arabic inflexion that does not belong to the Arabic grammatical tradition. It uses concepts and terminology characteristic of philosophers, logicians and scholars familiar with Greek grammar. Bibliographical information on a similar kind of treatise is preserved in the Fihrist of IBN AL-NADM, who writes that a grammar entitled Kitb Akm al-irb al mahab al-ynniyyn was composed by a famous physician, philosopher, and translator of GALEN and other Greek works AB ZAYD UNAYN B. ISQ AL-IBD (809-873 CE). 3 A book on Arabic grammar by UNAYN B. ISQ is also mentioned by ELIAS OF NISIBIS (975-1046) in Malis. 4 Furthermore, a grammar according to the Greek logicians, which may or may not be identical with UNAYN's treatise, is referred to by MUH AMMAD B. AH MAD AL-KHWARIZMI (10th century) in Kitb Maft al-ulm. 5 However, this work has hitherto not been identified and its existence has been doubted in research literature.