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Separating Mudaf and Mudaf Ilayh
By ArabicTree | June 15, 2008
In the possessive case, the mudaf follows the mudaf ilayh. Check this out:
In this sentence, the mudaf is qalam, and the mudaf ilayh is Muhammad. Let’s play with this sentence; we want to say “this is Muhammad’s new pen” instead of just “this is Muhammad’s pen.” How would we accomplish this?
If you know na’at and man’oot, you might formulate a sentence like this:
Not a bad first try! But there’s a problem with this sentence–you cannot separate the mudaf and the mudaf ilayh! It’s illegal (in the rules of Arabic grammar)!
So how can you formulate the sentence, then? Perhaps like this:
You might ask, how do we know this doesn’t mean “this is the pen of the new Muhammad?” The answer lies in the rules of na’at and man’oot–since they match in number, gender, definitivity, and case, you can easily tell that jadeed applies to qalam–because if it applied to Muhammad, it would be jadeedin, not jadeedu.
Topics: Uncategorized |
June 21st, 2008 at 12:40 pm
It actually should be al-jadeedu (الَجَدِيد), since qalamu muhammadin (قَلَمُ مُحَمَّدٍ) is definite.
June 21st, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Good point! Jazakumullahu khayran.
October 12th, 2008 at 1:25 am
also muhammad is definite, so it’s na’t would be al-jadeedi, not jadeedin, as you stated.
October 12th, 2008 at 1:36 am
interestingly, in the mutawatir qira’ah of ibn ‘aamir, ayah 137 of surah an’aam, has the mudaaf separated from the mudaaf ilayh. (zuyyina, qatlu, awlaadahum, shurakaa’im; and the word shurakaa’ihim written in the usmani mushaf sent to shaam with a yaa as the seat for hamza rather than a waaw (see ghayatul mureed by Shaykh Qaabil Nasr) so there are exceptions to the general rule you stated, and we can rejoice that indeed the perfect Quran is the ultimate, everlasting standard of the language of jannah and our language, Arabic. Subhaanallah.
jazakumullahu khairan for your work on this site