Abu ‘Abd ar-Rahmān al-Khalīl ibn Ahmad al-Farāhīdī ' onMouseout='HidePop("46625")' href="/topics/DIN_31635">DMG

DIN 31635

DIN 31635 is a Deutsches Institut für Normung standard for the transliteration of the Arabic alphabet adopted in 1982. It is based on the rules of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft as modified by the International Orientalist Congress 1936 in Rome...

: al-Ḫalīl b. Aḥmad al-Farāhīdī, Abū ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān; c. 718–c. 791), more commonly known as al-Farahidi, was a philologist from southern Arabia (modern day Oman

Oman

Oman , officially called the Sultanate of Oman , is an Arab state in southwest Asia on the southeast coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by the United Arab Emirates to the northwest, Saudi Arabia to the west, and Yemen to the southwest. The coast is formed by the Arabian Sea on the...

). His best known contributions are Kitab al-'Ayn ' onMouseout='HidePop("23824")' href="/topics/Dictionary">dictionary

Dictionary

A dictionary is a collection of words in one or more specific languages, often listed alphabetically, with usage information, definitions, etymologies, phonetics, pronunciations, and other information; or a book of words in one language with their equivalents in another, also known as a lexicon...

 of the Arabic language

Arabic language

Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...

), the current standard for Harakat

Harakat

The Arabic script has numerous diacritics, including ijam ⟨⟩ , and tashkil ⟨⟩...

 (vowel marks in Arabic script), and the invention al-'arud (the study of Arabic prosody). He moved to Basra

Basra

Basra is the capital of Basra Governorate, in southern Iraq near Kuwait and Iran. It had an estimated population of two million as of 2009...

, Iraq

Iraq

Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....

, he was Ibadi

Ibadi

The Ibāḍī movement, Ibadism or Ibāḍiyya is a form of Islam distinct from the Sunni and Shia denominations. It is the dominant form of Islam in Oman and Zanzibar...

. Sibawayh

Sibawayh

Abū Bishr ʻAmr ibn ʻUthmān ibn Qanbar Al-Bishrī , commonly known as Sībawayh , was an influential linguist and grammarian of the Arabic language. He was of Persian origin born ca...

 and Al-Asma'i

Al-Asma'i

Al-Asma'i or Asma`i, Abd al-Malik ibn Quraib al-Asma`i was an Arab scholar of the Basra school of Arabic grammar.He was also a pioneer of Natural Science and Zoology...

were among his students

Kitab al-'Ayn

Kitab al-Ayn (Ayn is the deepest letter in Arabic, al-Ayn also means a water source in the desert), while started by Khalil ibn Ahmad was probably completed by one of his students, Al-Layth ibn Al-Muzaffar. It was titled "The source" because the goal of its author was to clarify those words which were composed the original or source Arabic vocabulary. The dictionary was not arranged alphabetically but rather by phonetics, following the pattern of pronunciation of the Arabic alphabet from the deepest letter of the throat ﻉ (ayn) to the last letter pronounced by the lips, that being م (mìm).

The book was printed by Maktabah Al Hilal, having been reviewed by Dr. Mahdi al Makhzūmi and Dr. Ibrāhim Al Samirā'ì in eight volumes; there is however some reservations whether or not the book in its modern form is the original as authored by Al Khalil or is a work based on his original work.

Furthermore, Khalil ibn Ahmad collected all the 15 scales of poetry, and compared them with the Qur'an. He didn't find a single similarity.