ألفية ابن مالك
Alfiyyat Ibn Mālik
The Alfiyya of Ibn Malik
A thousand lines of rajaz that hold Nahw and Ṣarf entire, read with Sharḥ Ibn ʿAqīl. The text the Shaykh spent a year on in Morocco, and the end of the path.
6 lessons
The set text
- ألفية ابن مالكAlfiyyat Ibn Mālik
A thousand lines of rajaz holding Nahw and Ṣarf entire. The Shaykh read it over a year in Morocco.
- شرح ابن عقيل على ألفية ابن مالكSharḥ Ibn ʿAqīlRead alongside it
The commentary the Alfiyya is normally read through: it names the shawāhid and reports the disagreement.
By the end of it
- Memorise the lines of each bāb and cite them as evidence in a parsing.
- Report the disagreement between the Baṣrans and the Kūfans on a contested question.
- Parse classical poetry — the shawāhid — without a vowelled text.
Lessons
الكلام وما يتألّف منه“Kalāmunā lafẓun mufīd…”
The opening line defines speech and gives its example in one breath — istaqim, a single word that is a whole sentence. The commentary begins the year's argument here.
Recording to followالمعرب والمبنيDeclension, and what resists it
Ibn Mālik grades what is built and what is inflected, and gives the estimated iʿrāb of the shortened, the lengthened and the defective noun.
Recording to followEntries this lesson definesالإعْرابCase and mood inflection
المرفوعاتThe raised: mubtadaʾ, fāʿil, nāʾib
The same chapters as the primers, now with every exception the Arabs actually said: the deleted khabar, the mubtadaʾ that is indefinite by licence, the fāʿil that follows a maṣdar.
Recording to followEntries this lesson definesالمُبْتَدَأThe subject of a nominal sentenceالخَبَرThe predicateالفَاعِلThe doer (grammatical subject of a verb)المَصْدَرThe verbal noun
المفاعيل والمنصوباتThe five objects, the ḥāl, the tamyīz
Object, absolute object, object of purpose, object of accompaniment, the ẓarf — then the ḥāl and the tamyīz, the two manṣūbāt that answer the question “in what state?” and “in what respect?”.
Recording to followEntries this lesson definesالمَفْعُول بهThe direct objectالمَصْدَرThe verbal noun
الإضافة والممنوع من الصرفAnnexation; the nine causes that bar tanwīn
Two ʿilal or one that stands for two: ʿadl, waṣf, taʾnīth, maʿrifa, ʿujma, jamʿ, tarkīb, alif-nūn zāʾidatān, wazn al-fiʿl — the chapter that fixes the reading of a hundred Qurʾānic words.
Recording to followEntries this lesson definesالإعْرابCase and mood inflection
أبنية المصادر والتصريفThe last third: Ṣarf inside the Alfiyya
The Alfiyya does not stop at syntax. Its final chapters are pure Ṣarf: the patterns of the maṣdar, of the derived nouns, the doubling, the substitution and the imāla.
Recording to followEntries this lesson definesالمَصْدَرThe verbal nounاسْم الفَاعِلThe active participleالمِيزان الصَّرْفيThe morphological scale