THE SEMANTIC STUDIES OF AL-QADHI EYADH IN HIS BOOK "MASHARIQ AL-ANWARALA SIHAH AL-AATHAR"

Abstract

Al-Qadhi (The Judge) Eyadh made every effort in his book “Mashariq Al-Anwar Ala Sihah Al-Aathar” in demonstrating the expressions and their meanings, derivations and their grammatical use as well as displaying the most correct version of narrations and selecting the suitable meaning in the context. This is not an easy mission as is requires from the author a vast awareness of the secrets and details of the language and immense knowledge in Prophetic Tradition. In this book, Al-Qadhi Eyadh collected so many prophetic traditions that have been mentioned in Imam Malik Bin Anas’ book “Al-Muatta’” (179 A.H.), Imam Al-Bukhari’s book (256 A.H.) and Imam Al-Nesaboori’s book (261 A.H.) trying to find the compatibilities among the traditions of these three books semantically even if literal meanings are different. He may give his opinion in these traditions and choose what is most suitable and may describes others with wrong, faked or mispronounced. He may describe them according to the most renowned in Arabic and the Holy Koran.

Before that tremendous amount of prophetic traditions, Al-Qadhi Eyadh’s identity appears in explaining and demonstrating the derivations and meanings of these traditions as well as stating the compatibilities among them. During the explanation, Al-Qadhi Eyadh made clear his attitude towards some of the linguistic problems like homonyms, synonyms, opposites, expansion of meanings or transiting them from physical meaning into metaphorical one.

In this simple study, I enquire some of these linguistic problems to give us a clear picture of Al-Qadhi Eyadh’s attitude of the linguistic semantic studies that he pointed out in his above-mentioned book.