The Sharḥ al-Kāfiya is a commentary on the Kitāb al-Kāfiya, “The Sufficient”, a short manual dealing with syntax written by the Egyptian Māliki scholar Jamāl al-Dīn Ibn al-Ḥājib (d. 646/1249). At the time, Arabic linguistics was focused on pedagogical treatises that were to be learned by heart (like the famous Alfiyya of Ibn Mālik, d. 672/1274). Consequently, the Kāfiya is so concise that it begs elucidation. Among the many commentaries that have been written, the Sharḥ al-Kāfiya by Raḍī l-Dīn Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Astarābādhī (d. c. 688/1289), an Arabic grammarian of Iranian descent, is the most prominent. The work is famous, and is praised for its simultaneous profundity and subtlety – and it is no easy read. Contemporary research has addressed a number of topics treated in the works of al-Astarābādhī, but none so far has deciphered “the distinctive features that set RDA apart from other grammarians and make his writings difficult to deal with” (p. 4). Beata Sheyhatovitch has taken on the daunting task of a systematic study of the terminology used in Sharḥ al-Kāfiya, taking as her point of departure the claim that al-Astarābādhī's uniqueness comes from borrowing from other Islamic sciences, notably logic and philosophy.

After an introduction to the book's objective and structure in Chapter 1, al-Astarābādhī's terminology is analysed over the four following chapters. Chapter 2 treats general tendencies, including more accurate formulations, abstract terminology, and the use of Kufan versus Basran terms as well as terms from other Islamic sciences. We learn how al-Astarābādhī distinguishes between what is used in ordinary language on the one hand and technical terminology on the other, but he does not always succeed in being consistent in that respect (illustrated by, e.g., his mixing two senses of the term ḥāl as present tense and as a circumstantial qualifier, pp. 17–18). We also learn how al-Astarābādhī brings the use of abstract terminology, derived from grammatical and non-grammatical terms, to new heights by introducing, for instance, khabariyya (function of predicate), zaydiyya (“Zaydness”), or the untranslatable faṣliyya (being ḍamīr al-faṣl; cf. p. 26 n. 98). (Along the way, the author herself coins the abstract term “diptoteness”; p. 25.) A discussion of Kufan grammatical terms and concepts used by al-Astarābādhī (like kināya, pronoun; ḥurūf al-iḍāfa, particles of annexation) and of terms from the realms of Arab philosophy (such as mansūb/nisba, ascription; muqaddima, premise) and Islamic jurisprudence (istiḥsān, speakers’ or grammarians’ preference) positions the Sharḥ al-Kāfiya in the broader context of the Arabic Islamic sciences.

Chapter 3 is devoted to the term waḍʿ (literally, laying down, establishing) and its derivatives (e.g. waḍaʿa, wāḍiʿ, mawḍūʿ, waḍʿī), a term central to the discussion about the origin of language, or language as an invention: (components of) utterances (alfāẓ) are deliberately assigned to meanings (maʿānī), whether by God or by humans. The term has been translated in several different manners in the context of its use in Arabic linguistics (such as imposition, institution, assignment), but the author argues for her choice of translating waḍʿ as “coinage” since it better captures that ideas exist before their verbal expression and utterances are invented to express these ideas, as she interprets al-Astarābādhī's views on language creation (p. 74). What follows is an in-depth analysis of al-Astarābādhī's use of the term, revealing how it developed from sparsely used references to the coinage of separate words (Sībawayhi), to coinage of syntactical structures or of speech (Ibn Yaʿīsh), to an explicit technical term in Sharḥ al-Kāfiya. As such, al-Astarābādhī is to be considered a precursor of ʿilm al-waḍʿ, the science of the founding of language as developed in ʿAḍūḍ al-Dīn al Ījī's (d. 756/1355) treatise al-Risāla al-waḍʿiyya (Epistle on Coinage) and its commentaries.

Chapter 4 treats derivatives of the roots ṭ-r-ʾ and ʿ-r-ḍ. Ṭāriʾ is a term used by fourth/tenth-century jurists to indicate an element that changes a generally accepted rule. In a study of Ibn Jinnī's use of the term, Michael Carter translates ṭāriʾ as “adventitious” (Ibn Jinnī's axiom “The adventitious determines the rule’’, in A. Kaye (ed.), Semitic Studies in Honor of Wolf Leslau on the Occasion of His Eighty-Fifth Birthday, I, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1991, 199–208). Sheyhatovitch opts for “pouncing” to highlight that al-Astarābādhī uses the term to explain linguistic phenomena that “attack” and modify existing forms (p. 128). For instance, a foreign word that is used in Arabic takes on Arabic case markers because the “pouncing factor” – the word's use in Arabic – changes the original state of affairs (pp. 137–8). “Pouncing” is at work in many different grammatical contexts (e.g. declension, definiteness, grammatical agreement) and although the term partly overlaps with ʿaraḍ, the Arabic translation of the Aristotelian “accident”, derivates from ṭ-r-ʾ usually affect grammatical rules.

Terms referring in Sharḥ al-Kāfiya to the form–meaning discussion are not unique to al-Astarābādhī. In chapter 5 Sheyhatovitch focuses on five such terms: maʿnā, meaning; dalāla/madlūl, signification; musammā, referent; maḍmūn, content; and waqaʿa ʿalā, referred to. Of these, the first two are the most widespread in the Sharḥ al-Kāfiya and though closely related and presenting overlap, maʿnā is used mainly to refer to abstract ideas while dalāla/madlūl often denotes concrete entities. As al-Astarābādhī puts it, for instance, in treating adjectives: al-dalāla ʿalā dhāti maʿa l-maʿnā l-mutaʿalliqi bihā, “signifying an entity together with the meaning linked to it” (p. 184). An elaborate discussion about the differences between these terms results in a picture of the subtle treatment of semantics in the work of al-Astarābādhī.

Sheyhatovitch is to be lauded for her thorough and systematic investigation of the technical vocabulary of al-Astarābādhī's Sharḥ al-Kāfiya, a widely used and cited work in scholarship on Arabic linguistics. Two remarks in conclusion: the study would have greatly gained in clarity and understanding through the incorporation of examples from Arabic language usage; and, I wonder if it would not have been more appropriate and useful to position al-Astarābādhī's linguistic theory not so much in logic as in pragmatics.