This learned work is the accumulated harvest of more than twenty years of profound research, as shown by the inclusion in the book's bibliography of numerous publications on the subject by the author, Rafael Talmon. The subject at hand is the reconstruction of the Arabic grammatical tradition in its earliest phase up to the time of the most famous grammarian of Arabic, Sibawayh (d. ca. A.D. 796), author of al-Kitab, “the Book,” and his teacher al-Khalil ibn Ahmad (d. between 777 and 791), author of the lexicographical Kitab al-

Ayn. The discussion was triggered by Michael G. Carter in a few thought-provoking publications dating from the 1970s in which he identified Sibawayh and his immediate teachers (besides al-Khalil, Yunus ibn Habib [d. 798]) as the first real systematic grammarians of Arabic. In Carter's view, Sibawayh had a group of enthusiastic but still amateurish grammarians in mind when reference was made, twenty-two times, to naḥwiyyūn in his Kitab. Talmon could not and would not accept the idea of a sudden creation of Arabic grammar in free space and became engrossed in approaching this subject matter from various angles, analyzing both grammatical and historiographical aspects of the early history of the Arabic grammatical tradition. In his previous monograph, the voluminous Arabic Grammar in its Formative Age (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997), originally intended to be a mere chapter of the book under review here, Talmon deals exclusively with al-Khalil's role in the genesis and early development of the Arabic linguistic tradition. This was basically done to determine which parts of Kitab al-

Ayn can be positively attributed to al-Khalil in order to compare al-Khalil's views with Sibawayh's and with those of other early grammarians from both the Basran and the Kufan schools to support the “Old Iraqi School” hypothesis, which is central in the present work.

The “Old Iraqi School” hypothesis contends that the naḥwiyyūn referred to in Sibawayh's Kitab was a homogenous group of grammarians working more or less along the same lines but in various centers of learning, mostly in the province of Iraq (Lower Mesopotamia)—that is, in Basra, Kufa, and Baghdad, but probably in Medina, as well; that al-Khalil and Sibawayh opposed the teachings of this Iraqi School and introduced significant innovations to Arabic linguistic theory; and that the Kufan grammarian al-Farra

(d. 822) and his followers remained faithful to the teachings of the Iraqi School and were therefore considered to be the Basrans' opponents. To buttress the Old Iraqi School hypothesis, the author mainly limits the present study to sources from the 8th and early 9th centuries, including, besides Sibawayh's Kitab and al-Khalil's

Ayn, “several lexicographical works, a handful of Qur

an commentaries, and some other early compositions including invaluable information of the akhbar type” (p. x; one finds, among other works, al-Farra's Ma

ani al-Qur

an; Abu

Ubayda's [d. 824; Basran] Majaz al-Qur

an; al-Akhfash's [d. 815; Basran] Ma

ani al-Qur

an, complemented by the early historical biographical works by the Basran al-Jumahi [d. 846] and the Kufan Abu Hamid al-Tirmidhi [d. ca. 864]). From these works Talmon gathered excerpts on grammatical positions of pre–Khalilian scholars, both named and unnamed or unidentified, for an analysis at various levels. It is in these analyses that we see the author at his best. (For the layman, this is the right moment to warn that the monograph is very technical and assumes a firm basis of knowledge in the field of Arabic grammar.)

After an introduction outlining the genesis and general aim of the study, the book continues in two parts. The first deals with the formative period—that is, of the Old Iraqi School—and the second part focuses on the innovative character of al-Khalil's and Sibawayh's teachings. Chapter 1 of the book's first part, entitled “Grammarians and Their Teachings,” introduces the sources used for the study and the identification of grammarians—individuals such as Yunus ibn Habib,

Abdallah ibn Abi Ishaq (d. 735),

Isa ibn

Umar (d. 766), and Abu

Amr ibn al-

Ala

(d. ca. 773), as well as groupings such as ahl al-madīna, al-kūfiyyūn and al-naḥwiyyūn who could have belonged to the Old Iraqi School. The second chapter presents a survey of grammatical data attributed by the sources to early (groupings of) grammarians. The data amount to 244 items that are meticulously analyzed to identify possible pre–Khalilian elements of grammatical theory. Subsequently, in Chapter 3, the material is rearranged and discussed according to sixty-one points of similarity between the teachings of the various (groupings of) grammarians involved, thus paving the way to canvass Old Iraqi School teachings.

Part 2, titled “Khalil's forerunners and the Khalilian reformation,” comprises two chapters and aims to distinguish clearly between pre–Khalilian grammatical elements of the Old Iraqi School and innovations introduced by al-Khalil and Sibawayh. This is done on the basis of an assumption that the earliest source still extant, Sibawayh's Kitab, “primarily represents the Khalilian revolution, not the older layer of Arabic grammar” (p. 163). By focusing first on a selection of material presented thus far, which embraces elements different from Sibawayh's theories but similar to al-Farra's (chap. 1), the Old Iraqi School teaching is reconstructed as far as the source material allows. Then, in the next chapter, a full account of the innovations introduced by al-Khalil and Sibawayh in the field of grammar is given “based largely on comparison between the Old School's teaching which is reconstructed in chapter one and Sibawayh's and Khalil's thinking according to the Kitab” (p. 281).

The book ends with a list of abbreviations used, a bibliography of primary and secondary sources, and several useful indexes, including a general index and indexes of Arabic terms, grammatical themes, and Qur

anic citations. A synopsis of the database of grammatical items (pt. 1, chap. 2) and points (pt. 1, chap. 3) and a list of references to aforementioned items and points throughout the book are also provided.