Die arabische Sprachwissenschaft: Ein Vergleich zwischen den Basra und Kufa Schulen

Abstract

Arabic Linguistics: A comparison between the Basra and Kufa Shools

Arabic linguistics developed in the medieval period, it also has its place in the historiography of linguistics. Arabs were concerned with language and grammar such as lexicology, lexicography, phonetics and phonology; Arabic linguistics was marked by great scholars like EL Farahidi, EL Douali, Sibawayh, Ibn El Djini and other linguists. There were Arabic grammar schools like Basra and Kufa which have different opinions. There have been debates and controversies concerning both schools Basra and Kufa in order to discuss their principles of Arabic Grammar. Most scholars claimed that Basra and Kufa were the two schools permanently rivaling each other. This paper is concerned with history of Arabic Linguistics through comparative insights on the approaches adopted by the Kufa and Basra schools. They do, indeed, have two differing linguistic and grammatical approaches. The school of Basra was generally more philosophical when it comes to formulating the system of Arabic grammar while the school of Kufa based its assumptions on evidence drawn from classical texts. However, though Basra school referred more to analogy does not mean that Kufa school did not also refer to linguistic corpora in classical texts. It can be concluded, then, that the differences between the two grammatical schools were terminological at best, but mostly fictitious, the essential criterion for belonging to either school was being one's background rather than the adaptation of a particular grammatical doctrine; if not even the two schools were subsequently created as a myth that could be excellently exploited for personal purposes.