HİCRİ İLK DÖRT ASRIN ÖNDE GELEN ARAP DİLBİLİMCİLERİ PERSPEKTİFİNDEN HARFLERİN MAHREÇLERİ ve SIFATLARININ DEĞERLENDİRİLMESİ

The subject of the uttering‐places and features of the Arabic letters is one of the foremost topics that the first century Arabic philologists after the Hijrah addressed. Of the early period philologists, Khalīl bin Aḥmad (d. 175/791), Sībawayh (d. 180/796) and, following them, Ibn Duraid (d. 321/933) and Ibn Jinnī (d. 392/1002) never failed to address the subject of the uttering‐places and features of the Arabic letters in their books. Though the later philologists were influenced by the earlier ones, every philologist made his own original contributions. Sībawayh, a pupil of Khalīl bin Aḥmad, further advanced his teacher’s studies on this topic. He first ascertained the pronouncing‐places of letters. For him, the pronouncing‐places number sixteen. Sibawayh made the hierarchy of letters in a way different from his teacher Khalīl bin Aḥmad’s by putting the letters hā’ and hamzah in the bottom of the throat. Abū ‘Uthmān al‐Māzinī also examined the pronouncing‐places and properties of letters, saying that every letter has a distinct pronouncing‐place and thus every letter has a different pronouncing‐place, thus forming different vocalization and speech. If the pronouncing‐places of letters were the same, it would be impossible for man to speak. Therefore, the different pronouncing‐places of letters and their different vocalization are given by God only to the human beings.Al‐Mubarrad (d. 286/900), one of the leading philologists of the third century after Hijraj, discusses the pronouncing‐places and properties of letters in his al‐Muqtaḍab. After Sībawayh in his al‐Kitāb, al‐Mubarrad discussed in detail the pronouncing‐places and properties of letters as well as those letters that are subject to elision and those that are not, etc. But he did not address these topics as systematically as did Sībawayh in his al‐Kitāb. But al‐Mubarrad, making original remarks, is a philologist of different approaches and a wide perspective. His remarks on the properties of letters shed a great deal of light for the subsequent philologists. Ibn Duraid (d. 321/933) is another philologist who focused on the pronouncing‐places and properties of letters. In the opening chapter of the first volume of his book Jamharat al‐Lughah, the earliest alphabetically ordered Arabic lexicon, he first discussed the issue of the properties of letters and then their pronouncing‐places. Though he cites his own views, he supports his views by quoting the grammarians. He dealt with the subject of the properties of letters unsystematically, digressing into the topic of the pronouncing‐places of letters when discussing the properties of letters and digressing into the latter when discussing the former. In the fourth century, we see Azharī (d. 370/980) as an influential philologist. He discussed the topic of the pronouncing‐places and properties of letters in the first volume of his Tahdhīb al‐Lughah, which he composed in the last days of his life. He adopted the method followed by Khalīl bin Aḥmad in his Kitāb al‐‘Ayn, tracing most of his views back to Khalīl. He mentioned Khalīl’s views in his book more than his own. Ibn Jinnī, one of the leading philologists of the fourth century, discussed the pronouncing‐places and properties of letters in a systematic and clear way and in distinct chapters. He examined this topic in his Sirru Ṣinā‘at al‐I‘rāb, discussing there at length the difference between the alif and the hamzah. He also drew upon Sībawayh’s views. He also counts the number of the pronouncing‐places of letters sixteen as did Sībawayh. This work, examining the Arabic phonetic, is one of the reference books for the scholars of the Tajwīd and Arabic grammar. All of these philologists were considerably influenced by Khalīl bin Aḥmad, because he is an authoritative scholar on this topic. The linguistic authorities covered a great distance in ascertaining the pronouncing‐organs and their functions. These studies, dating back to the years prior to the corruption of the purity of Arabic, have never lost their importance. Another point of distinction for Khalīl bin Aḥmad is that he discovered that the letters of madd (intonation) also have pronouncingplaces and they are supposed (muqaddar) pronouncing‐places. The Arabic philologists followed a systematic way in discussing the properties of letters. They first discussed the contradictory properties and then the non‐contradictory ones. They employed different terms in discussing the properties. For instance, Sībawayh and Ibn Jinnī referred to the property of qalqalah with the term mushrabah. They used the term khafā’ instead of makhfūfah. If we examine the chapters of the works on the pronouncing‐places and properties of letters that are composed in the later periods, we see that they reiterate the same information as occurred in the earlier ones, making very little additions. In the fifth century after the Hijrah when the books of Tajwīd started being composed as well as in the following centuries, the subject of the pronouncing‐places and features of letters tended to develop in the direction of the comments by the earlier philologists. It is a fact that this topic makes up the real subject of Tajwīd.