L2: The Parts of Kalam

وأقسامه ثلاثة : اسم ، وفعل ، وحرف جاء لمعنى
It’s parts are three: an Ism, a Fi’il, and a Harf, that comes with a meaning.

After explaining that kalam is that which is uttered, made of two or more words, and is meaningful i.e not leaving the Listener(one recieving the kalam-the one being spoken to) waiting for more, the author carries on to tell us that the types of Speech are Three. This division is said to have been initiated by Imam Ali – To summarise it speaks of how Imam Abul aswad al-Du’ali, a close assosciate of Imam Ali entered upon the latter after an incident with his daughter, in which the daughter had tried to express her joy at the beauty of the sky but a grammatical mistake in her speech rendered the meaning. Imam al-Du’ali complained to Imam Ali about the deteriotation of the language and his fear of it being corrupted. Imam Ali agreed, fearing the loss of true understanding the meanings of the Quran and Sunnah due to ignorance of the beautiful language through which it was revealed and so he began to write a few rules on a piece of paper. He wrote: Kalam consists of three things – ism(noun), fi’il(verb), and a harf(particle), he subsequently ordered Imam al-Du’ali to carry on in the same manner (أنح هذا النحو) – it is said this is where the name ‘Nawh’ for arabic grammar is derived, from the speech of Imam Ali.Basically, if you were to examine the arabic language you would see that every single word is either an Ism, Fi’il or a Harf. Although the ism is often translated as Noun, the Fi’il as Verb, and the Harf as a particle – these translations are not 100% precise and certainly do change at times. It must also be remembered that beginning students intially learn ‘general’ rules which apply in most cases however there are exceptions to the rules and instances where the general is specified.Ism – a word that refers to something that is ‘named’(musamma-has a name) and is not connected to time. For example – Muhammad, kitab, kursi – these are words, that are names of either a person or a thing and are in no way connected to time.Fi’il – a word describing an action that has taken place in one of three tenses -

1) al-Madi(the pastالماضي) e.g – كتب, أكل, ذهب, ‘he went’, ‘he ate’, ‘he wrote’
2) al-Mudari(Present-futureالمضارع) e.g – يكتب, يأكل, يذهب ‘he is writing/will write’, ‘he is eating/will eat’, ‘he is going/will go’.
3) al-Amr(the imperative/commandالأمر) This is when you command or request someone to do something and in reality is an extension of the Mudari – because if you ask someone to write(أكتب) for example, they will do so only after you’ve told them(the future).

Harf – the first two parts of speech(ism and fi’il) both give a meaning by themselves. However the harf is like a joining word which when solitary, gives no meaning. For example – من, is a harf that gives the meaning of إبتداء(beginning/to start from), however it will only mean this when added to a fi’il or/and an ism. e.g ذهبت من البيت(I went from the house i.e I started going from the house – the journey started from the house.)

He also specifies that the harf is only a part of speech ‘when it comes with a meaning’ – what does this mean? A harf, although a joining letter in the arabic language, is also simply a letter from any one of the letters of the language. If I were to say tha(ث) this is a harf, useless when devoid of other letters to form a complete word, however the harf waw(و) gives a meaning and that is the equivalent of ‘and’ in english. Therefore even though waw is a simple letter from the arabic language it carries a significant meaning(and) in contrast to tha(ث), for example.

The author(Ibn Ajurrum) after clarifying that every word in the arabic language will either be an Ism, fi’il, or a harf, will proceed to mention the *Signs* of each of these types.

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