أساس الصرف
Asās al-Ṣarf
Foundations of Sarf
The scale of the word: how a three-letter root is weighed against fāʾ-ʿayn-lām, turned through its six bābs, augmented into ten more, and derived into the doer, the done-to, the place and the instrument.
6 lessons
The set text
- متن البناء والأساسMatn al-Bināʾ wa'l-Asās
The shortest matn in Ṣarf: the thirty-five bināʾs of the verb, and nothing else.
- تصريف العزّيAl-Taṣrīf al-ʿIzzīRead alongside it
The matn that gives the six bābs of the sound triliteral verb and the rules of iʿlāl.
By the end of it
- Weigh any word against the mīzān ṣarfī and name what is root and what is added.
- Give the bāb of a sound verb from its māḍī and muḍāriʿ vowels.
- Derive the ism al-fāʿil and ism al-mafʿūl of a triliteral and of an augmented verb.
- Apply the rules of iʿlāl to a hollow and a defective verb.
Lessons
حدّ الصرفWhat Sarf is
Ṣarf turns one root through many buildings; Naḥw governs the end of the word once it is built. Ṣarf never touches a particle and never touches a rigid noun — it is the science of the verb and of what is derived from it.
Recording to followEntries this lesson definesالمِيزان الصَّرْفيThe morphological scale
الميزان الصرفيThe morphological scale
Every word is weighed against f-ʿ-l: kataba is faʿala, ḍuriba is fuʿila, istaghfara is istafʿala. What is not fāʾ, ʿayn or lām in the scale is an addition — and every addition carries a meaning.
Recording to followEntries this lesson definesالمِيزان الصَّرْفيThe morphological scale
أبواب الثلاثي المجرّدThe six bābs of the bare triliteral
Naṣara–yanṣuru, ḍaraba–yaḍribu, fataḥa–yaftaḥu, ʿalima–yaʿlamu, ḥasuna–yaḥsunu, ḥasiba–yaḥsibu. Six and no more: the vowel of the ʿayn in the past and in the present fixes the bāb, and the bāb fixes everything after it.
Recording to followEntries this lesson definesالمِيزان الصَّرْفيThe morphological scale
المزيد فيهThe augmented forms
One letter added: afʿala, faʿʿala, fāʿala. Two: infaʿala, iftaʿala, tafaʿʿala, tafāʿala, ifʿalla. Three: istafʿala and her sisters. “Ziyādat al-mabnā tadullu ʿalā ziyādat al-maʿnā” — more building, more meaning.
Recording to followEntries this lesson definesالمِيزان الصَّرْفيThe morphological scaleالمَصْدَرThe verbal noun
المشتقّاتThe seven derived nouns
From the maṣdar — which the Baṣrans hold to be the origin of them all — come the ism al-fāʿil, the ism al-mafʿūl, the ṣifa mushabbaha, the ism al-tafḍīl, the nouns of time and place, and the ism al-āla.
Recording to followEntries this lesson definesالمَصْدَرThe verbal nounاسْم الفَاعِلThe active participle
الإعلال والإبدالIʿlāl and ibdāl: when the pattern bends
Qawala became qāla, ramaya became ramā, mīzān was mi-wzān. The weak letters are not irregular — they follow rules of substitution and elision that are stated exactly, and the student who knows them never has to memorise a “broken” verb again.
Recording to followEntries this lesson definesالمِيزان الصَّرْفيThe morphological scale
Entries covered by this course
And then
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.
Open the course