az-Zamachshari

az-Zamachshari الزمخشري / az-Zamaḫšarī , with full name Abu l-Kasim Mahmud ibn Umar  /أبو القاسم محمود بن عمر / Abū 'l-Qāsim Maḥmūd b. ʿUmar , also al-Zamachschari , (* 1075 in Zamachschar , † 1144 in Gurganj ) was a Muslim Koran exegete and philologist of Persian origin. On his study trips he stayed in Mecca for a long time and was therefore nicknamed "God's neighbor" jar Allah  /جار الله / ǧāru 'llāh . As a theologian, he confessed to the Mu'tazilites . Despite his Persian descent from the Khorezm region , he emphasized the superiority of the Arabic language, the structure and explanation of which he devoted himself to in his writings.

Works

• His main work is the Koran commentary al-kashschaf 'an haqa'iq at-tanzil  / completed in 1134الكشاف عن حقائق التنزيل / al-kaššāf ʿan ḥaqāʾiqi 't-tanzīl  /' Presentation of the truths of revelation '. Despite its presentation of the doctrine of the Mu'tazila about the composition of the Koran in the introduction, the work was also spread in broad circles of Orthodoxy and was widely recognized up to the present day. The author directs his attention to the philosophical and dogmatic interpretation of the Koran text, while he pays little attention to the tradition , the tafsir bi-l-ma'thur (see Tafsir ). In addition to the grammatical analysis of Koranic structures, he also consistently presents the rhetorical subtleties of the text in order to support the teaching about the inimitability of revelation . In his presentation of the lexical peculiarities of the Koran iʿdschāz  /اعجاز / iʿǧāz and the readings qira'at  /قراءات / qirāʾāt he draws on ancient Arabic poetry and justifies it with numerous quotations. In his Muqaddima, in the chapter on Koranic studies , Ibn Chaldun placed this work high above the other philologically oriented commentaries, but warned against the dogmatic orientation of the author.

• His manual of Arabic grammar al-mufassal fil-nahw  /المفصّل في النحو / al-mufaṣṣal fī-'n-naḥw represents a milestone in Arabic grammar writing . In contrast to its predecessors, az-Zamachschari does not arrange his work according to syntax , morphology and phonology , but according to nouns , verbs and particles and complements this arrangement morpho-phonological considerations. He uses both the book (kitab) of Sibawayhi , the first, basic grammar of the Arabic language, and the studies of the grammatical school of Kufa from the late 8th and 9th centuries. al-Mufassal was not only popular reading on grammar in the Arab world, but also influenced the emergence of Arabic grammars in oriental studies : CP Caspari's Arabic grammar (1848), edited in the fourth edition by August Müller (Halle 1876), and Their translation into English by William Wright : A Grammar of the Arabic Language translated from the German of Caspari and edited, with numerous additions and corrections . 3rd edition (Cambridge 1896–1898) are essentially based on az-Zamachscharis al-Mufassal and in many ways form the basis of other grammars of Arabic.

• His work al-fa'iq fi gharib al-hadith  /الفائق في غريب الحديث / al-fāʾiq fī ġarībi 'l-ḥadīṯ , which was briefly referred to as al-Fa'iq, "The Excellent", deals with difficult and difficult-to-understand terms from the hadith literature. The work was only printed in Cairo in 1971.

literature

• Carl Brockelmann : History of Arabic Literature , Second edition adapted to the supplement volumes, Vol. 1, Brill, Leiden 1943, pp. 344-350.
• Encyclopaedia of Islam , New Edition, Vol. 11, Brill, Leiden, p. 431.

Web links

• Literature by and about Az-Zamachscharī in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Yaqut : Muʿǧam al-buldān , Vol. 3, p. 147 (Beirut 1957); The Encyclopaedia of Islam , New Edition, Vol. 11, p. 431
2. ↑ The Encyclopaedia of Islam , New Edition, Vol. 11, p. 431 (see also "Gurgandsch" in: The Encyclopaedia of Islam , New Edition, Vol. 2, p. 1141)