Catalogue of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish Manuscripts of the Imperial Library of Vienna

III.

Grammarians and Rhetoricians.

22. This codex is wrongly inscribed as a Muhammadan theological work; for it is a commentary on the most famous philological work تلخيص المفتاح Epitome of the Key of Rhetoric; by the author Sheikh Jalal al-Din Mohammed f. Abd al-Rahman. The Key of Science by the author Seradj al-Din Yaqub f. Yusuf f. Ebi Mohammed f. Ali al-Sakkaki is a most famous encyclopedia of philological sciences, from which Hajji Khalifa drew the greatest part of his own encyclopedic work. This tripartite work deals with: 1) Etymology, 2) Syntax, 3) Rhetoric. Our author therefore reduced this third part into an equally tripartite epitome, completing all of Rhetoric in three chapters: 1) علم المعاني The Science of Meaning (on invention and arrangement), 2) علم البيان The Science of Eloquence (on expression), 3) علم البديع The Science of Ornaments (on figures of speech).

Hajji Khalifa offers fifteen commentators of this work and notes the beginnings of some works that do not correspond to our tenor. The author of this commentary seems to have been Sa'ad al-Din Mas'ud f. Omar al-Taftazani (died 792), who composed a double commentary, one greater, the other lesser. Hajji Khalifa enumerates more than thirty glossators of the former, and indeed our codex abounds with marginal glosses from beginning to end, the author of which is named on the first page as al-Jurjani. Now, al-Jurjani is the name of one of the aforementioned glossators, so that no doubt remains for us that al-Taftazani is the author of this huge commentary.

23. الوافيه في شرح الكافيه The Most Sufficient of the Sufficient in the Commentary of the Grammatical Treatise called Kafie, by the author Hajji Baba f. Sheikh Ibrahim f. Abd al-Karim f. Osman of Tus. Now, Kafie is a most famous syntactic work by the grammarian Ibn al-Hajib al-Maliki; there is an innumerable legion of its commentators, many of whom are listed in the Cassiri Library under the title of Grammar.

24. مصباح في النحو The Lamp of Syntax. A small but useful work, by the author Imam Naser f. Abdollah al-Mutarrizi (died 610); divided into five parts: 1) On the terminology of syntax. 2) On analogical verbal particles (العوامل اللفظية القياسيه). 3) On audible verbal particles (العوامل اللفظية السماعيه). 4) On semantic particles (العوامل المعنويه). 5) On the sections of Arabism.