Eloquent Tribes Described by Abu Nasr Al-Farabi as Having Corrupt Language: An Inductive Critical Study

Abstract

Abu Nasr Al-Farabi' statements have been met with much interest among researchers  interested in citing evidence in Arabic in the modern age. Most researchers have considered these statements as a base for judging Arab tribes in terms of degree of eloquence. In his statements, Al-Farabi judged Arab tribes in terms of eloquence, considering many of them not eloquent. The names of some of these tribes were explicitly stated, namely: Bakr, Taghlib, Thaqif and Abdul Qays; other tribes’ names were not mentioned while there was doubt about their eloquence.

This research aims at proving the eloquence and pure language of these tribes through an inductive investigation of four books which are among the most important resources of grammar, morphology and parsing, namely: Al-Ketab by Sibawayh, Ma`ani Al-Quran by Al-Fara`, Ma`ani Al-Quran by Al-Akhfash, and Al-Muqtadhab by Al-Mubarad. This is followed by extracting lines of poetry used in citing evidence by poets who belong to the tribes disreputed by Al-Farabi, and proving that these defamed tribes in their language are eloquent tribes, by the evidence of the cited lines of poetry by poets who belong to them.