Sībawayh and the Knowledge Traditions of His Time
Influences, Dialogues, Critiques, and Legacies
A foundational figure of Arabic grammar, Sībawayh (d. ca. 180/796) occupies a singular place in the intellectual history of medieval Islam. The Kitāb, a monumental work without any known precedent, is not merely an attempt to codify the Arabic language: it is also a crossroads where oral traditions, philological practices, analogical reasoning, logical reflection, and theoretical debates on language, meaning, and normativity converge. Abū al-ʿAbbās Muḥammad ibn Yazīd al-Mubarrad (d. 285/898) famously said of this work (Baġdādī, Ḫazāna 1, 371): “No book has ever been written in any science comparable to that of Sībawayh. Works composed in other sciences require additional references in order to be understood, whereas one who understands the book of Sībawayh has no need of any other alongside it.”1
Does the Kitāb thus constitute a closed system, sufficient unto itself, without precursor or master? When the Kitāb is situated within the intellectual networks of Baṣra and Kūfa, it becomes clear that earlier grammatical traditions, as well as the bodies of knowledge transmitted by Qurʾān reciters (qurrāʾ), poets, and even the anonymous grammarians (nuḥāt) cited in the work, together with masters such as Ibn Abī Isḥāq (d. 117/735 ?), ʿĪsā ibn ʿUmar (d. 149/766), Abū ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAlāʾ (d. 154/771 ?), al-Ḫalīl ibn Aḥmad al-Farāhīdī (d. 170/786 ?), Hārūn ibn Mūsā (d. 170/786), and Yūnus ibn Ḥabīb (d. 182/798), did in fact leave their mark on the work. Far from being a “meteorite” that fell without warning, the Kitāb is embedded in a dense constellation of influences, scholarly practices, and intellectual traditions that preceded it and made it possible.
The question of possible extra-Arab influences on Sībawayh may also be revisited, a classic but still unresolved issue: should the case for the influence of Greek and Indian philosophies, particularly Aristotelian logic, be reopened, especially given Sībawayh’s Persian background? Or should one instead uphold the view of an original Arabic grammar, firmly rooted in Arabo-Islamic culture and inherited from masters such as al-Ḫalīl? Finally, this raises the question of the status of the Kitāb’s terminology: was it already well established in its time, or was it introduced by the author himself?
Attention will also be given to the domains of Arabic knowledge that Sībawayh helped to found: a new way of thinking about language, its regularities and exceptions, and its relationship to rationality, as well as his lasting influence on grammatical science. The Kitāb, the first comprehensive and foundational synthesis of Arabic grammar and the cornerstone of the Baṣran school, established principles that remain operative to this day. But does its impact extend beyond the linguistic domain? One may point in particular to uṣūl al-fiqh, which appear to have drawn extensively on the work in formulating their rules, in a context closely connected to Ḥadīṯ and Fiqh. One may also note the influence of notions such as the “operator” (ʿāmil), and the introduction of interpretive concepts like “ellipsis” (iḍmār) and “omission” (ḥaḏf). This raises the broader question of how Sībawayh’s grammar may have structured, beyond the strictly grammatical field, other domains of classical Islamic knowledge (rhetoric, law, hermeneutics, etc.), and according to which conceptual modalities.
Finally, the thematic dossier will give central place to the critiques addressed to Sībawayh, whether grammatical, methodological, or epistemological, including controversies with the Kūfan school, objections raised by later grammarians, and broader debates concerning the legitimacy of analogy (qiyās), usage (samāʿ), and normativity. These critiques will be examined not as mere technical disagreements, but as expressions of competing conceptions of linguistic knowledge, sometimes connected to other disciplines such as jurisprudence, logic, and exegesis.
Within this framework, the dossier will seek to situate Sībawayh within a transversal history of knowledge, attentive to the circulations between grammar, philosophy, logic, theology, and the religious sciences.
Thematic Axes
Axis 1 – Knowledge Transmitted to Sībawayh: Traditions, Masters, and Contexts
This axis focuses on the intellectual legacies that informed Sībawayh’s work: Arabic oral traditions, pre-Islamic and Islamic poetry, Qurʾānic recitation, the teaching of al-Ḫalīl, and the scholarly practices of Baṣra. Contributions may examine the nature of these forms of knowledge (oral/written, normative/descriptive) and the ways in which they are articulated in the Kitāb.
Axis 2 – Possible Extra-Arab Influences in Sībawayh’s Kitāb
The composition of the Kitāb took place within a plural intellectual context, marked by the circulation of methods and concepts drawn from various traditions present in Abbasid Iraq in the 2ⁿᵈ/8ᵗʰ century. This axis seeks to assess the extent to which the work incorporated, nolens volens, extra-Arab influences, and how these were reconfigured in the service of a distinctly Arabic linguistic project.
Axis 3 – Sībawayh as Founder: Concepts, Methods, and Innovations
This third axis addresses Sībawayh’s own contributions: grammatical conceptualization, the use of analogical reasoning, the status of exception, and the articulation between form and meaning. Contributions may analyze the theoretical scope of his work and its role in the constitution of grammar as an autonomous discipline.
Axis 4 – Critiques, Controversies, and Competing Forms of Knowledge
This axis examines the critiques directed at Sībawayh by his contemporaries and successors: the Kūfan school, later grammarians, and challenges to his methodological choices. The aim is to understand in the name of which alternative forms of knowledge (living usage, local tradition, logic, theology, etc.) these critiques were articulated, and what they reveal about the epistemological debates of the period.
Axis 5 – Afterlives and Interdisciplinary Circulations
This final axis explores the reception of Sībawayh in subsequent centuries: his influence on classical Arabic grammar, his relationship to logic, jurisprudence (uṣūl al-fiqh), Qurʾānic exegesis, and the philosophy of language. Contributions may also examine Sībawayh’s place in modern histories of the language sciences.
Submission Guidelines
Submitted articles must conform to the formatting requirements of the MIDEO (see the guidelines for authors) and will be subject to the journal’s standard review process (double-blind peer review).
Articles should be sent by 31 December 2026 to the following address: jean.druel@ideo-cairo.org.
The volume is scheduled for publication in June 2028.
Guest Editors of the Thematic Dossier: Jean DRUEL & Aziz HILAL.
Primary Source
Ḫazāna al-Baġdādī (m. 1093/1682) ʿAbd al-Qādir ibn ʿUmar, Ḫazānat al-adab wa-lubb lubāb lisān
al-ʿArab, volume 1, édité par ʿAbd al-Salām Muḥammad Hārūn, le Caire : Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1387/1967.
Recent Studies Related to the Themed Dossier
al-ʿĀyid, Sulaymān ibn Ibrāhīm (2015). “Sībawayh muʾassis li-l-naḥw al-ʿarabī am muṣannif lahu? Qirāʾa ǧadīda fī tafsīr našʾat al-naḥw al-ʿarabī”. al-Ḥuǧǧa (Marrākush) 1, 14–43.
Baalbaki, Ramzi (2008). The legacy of the Kitāb: Sībawayhi’s analytical methods within the context of the Arabic grammatical theory. Leiden & Boston: Brill.
Baalbaki, Ramzi (2025). Muqawwimāt al-naẓariyya al-luġawiyya al-ʿarabiyya. Bayrūt: al-Ǧāmiʿa al-Amrīkiyya.
Carter, Michael G. (2016). Sibawayhi’s principles. Arabic grammar and law in early Islamic thought. Atlanta: Lockwood Press.
al-Dirbī, Muḥammad Ǧumʿa (2021). “al-Istiqrāʾ al-nāqiṣ fī Kitāb Sībawayh”. Maǧallat al-Maǧmaʿ al-ʿIlmī al-ʿIrāqī 68/2, 5–24.
Druel, Jean N. (2025). Three Western recensions of Sībawayh’s Kitāb. Leiden & Boston: Brill.
Fassberg, Teddy (2022). “The Greek death of Sībawayhi and the origins of Arabic grammar”. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 85 (2), 173‒193.
al-Ġāmidī, Rihām Ibrāhīm ʿAbd Allāh (2023). “Ihtimām šurrāḥ Kitāb Sībawayh bi-nusaḫ al-kitāb wa-l-furūq baynahā fī abwāb abniyat al-asmāʾ al-ṣaḥīḥa”. Fikr wa-Ibdāʿ 149, 409–423.
Ǧumʿī, ʿĀʾiša (2016). al-Ḥaḏf al-naḥwī ʿinda Sībawayh fī ḍawʾ al-naẓariyya al-ḫalīliyya al-ḥadīṯa. Irbid: ʿĀlam al-Kutub al-Ḥadīṯ.
Ḥammūdī, Hādī Ḥasan (2025). Usṭūrat Sībawayh. al-Qāhira: Shams.
Maqbūl, Idrīs (2015). Sībawayh muʿtaziliyyan: ḥafariyyāt fī mītāfīzīqā al-naḥw al-ʿarabī. al-Dawḥa wa-Bayrūt: al-Markaz al-ʿArabī li-l-Abḥāṯ wa-Dirāsat al-Siyāsāt.
al-Nūrī, Muḥammad Ǧawād (2016). al-Tafkīr al-ṣawtī ʿinda Sībawayh fī ḍawʾ ʿilm al-luġa al-ḥadīṯ. al-Quds: Dār al-Ǧundī.
Ruqayd, Muḥammad (2024). al-Naẓariyya al-ʿāmiliyya al-sībawayhiyya: ḥudūd al-qirāʾa. Marrākush: Rukāz.
Sadan, Arik (2015). “Sībawayhi’s and later grammarians’ usage of ḥadīṯs as a grammatical tool”. Amal Elesha Marogy & Kees Versteegh (ed.), The Foundations of Arabic Linguistics II, Leiden & Boston: Brill, 171‒183.
al-ʿUyūnī, Sulaymān ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿAbd Allāh (1442/2021). Ḥawāšī Kitāb Sībawayh. al-Riyāḍ: Dār al-Ṭība al-Ḫaḍrāʾ.
Versteegh, Kees (2015). “What’s it like to be a Persian? Sībawayhi’s treatment of loanwords”. Amal Elesha Marogy & Kees Versteegh (ed.), The Foundations of Arabic Linguistics II, Leiden & Boston: Brill, 202‒221.
al-Zubaydī, Saʿīd Ǧāsim (2022). “al-Kitāb bayna al-Ḫalīl wa-Sībawayh”. Maǧallat al-Maǧmaʿ al-ʿIlmī al-ʿIrāqī 69/1, 169–178.
1 قال محمّد بن يزيد: «لم يُعْمَل كتابٌ في علم من العلوم مثلُ كتاب سيبويه، وذلك أن الكتب المصنَّفة في العلوم مُضْطَّرة إلى غيرها، وكتاب سيبويه لا يحتاج من فهمه إلى غيره».