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GRAMMAR AND SEMANTICS IN MEDIEVAL ARABIC: A STUDY OF IBNHISHAM'S `MUGHNI L-LABIB'. By ADRIAN GULLY. Richmond, Curzon Press, 1995. xiii, 310 pp.
This substantial and absorbing work is dedicated to `all those working in the field of medieval Arabic linguistics', a growing community which will be well served by Gully's detailed investigation of the contents of the Mughni I-Labi. Ibn Hisham (d. 1360, not 1359 as on p. x): is certainly worthy of a monograph, and Gully recognizes the significance of the later grammatical tradition, hitherto largely unappreciated. Some attention has been given to al-Astaraba-dhl (d. 1285 or 1288) and Abu Hayyan al-Ghamnati (d. 1344), but the real interest is appearing indirectly through such related works as U. Simon, Mittelalterliche arabische Sprachbetrachtung zwischen Grammatik und Rhetorik, Heidelberg 1993, on the rhetorician al-Sakkdki (d. 1229) and B. Weiss, The Search for God's Law, Salt Lake City 1993, on the us,uli al-Amid (d. 1233), both of which appeared too recently to be included in the present study, but which complement it perfectly and confirm the correctness of Gully's perception of the `inextricable links' (p. xii) between all the Islamic disciplines by Ibn Hisham's time.
A principal concern of the book is to establish the exact place of Ibn Hisham in the long, fertile tradition of Arabic linguistics, both in terms of his intellectual inheritance and his own originality. For the former, Gully reviews the history of the concept of wad, (Ch. 2) the theory of the origins of meaning, and (Chs. 3 and 4) Ibn Hisham's relationship to other grammarians and students of language. For the latter, Gully analyses Ibn Hisham-'s treatment of the particles (Ch. 5) and discusses more general semantic themes (Ch. 6), with a view to determining the exact nature of Ibn Hisham's innovativeness.
The second task is in a way the more difficult: Arabic grammar abounds with names, works, debates, polemics and grand theories, but it is often impossible to say why a...