Against the Arabic Grammarians Some Poems

Abstract

This chapter analyzes a few poems that grumble against the rules imposed by the grammarians, or mock those who need explicit rules rather than an innate ability to produce correct speech. Ramzi Baalbaki mentioned two such poems in his editorial introduction to a collection of studies exploring the early Arabic grammatical tradition. He also quotes a telling line by Ibn Faris, describing a Turkish girl, whose languid eyes are weaker than a grammarian's argument. The works of grammarians are to a large extent descriptive rather than prescriptive; nevertheless their rules were, quite naturally, taken as normative and binding. This could not but cause some slight resentment in the minds of those who had naturally incorporated the rules to such an extent that they needed neither explicit rules nor a plethora of technical terms. Keywords:Arabic grammarians; poems; Ramzi Baalbaki