ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on the early Islamic grammatical, rather than the philological, tradition. It deals with what Rafael Talmon believes to be the creation of the Abu 1-Aswad tradition. The book also deals with grammatical works from the late second century up to the early fourth century A.H. The major and most influential book in this era is, of course, Sibawayhi's Kitab. The book discusses remarkable similarities between Sibawayhi's method and Immediate Constituent Analysis. It also discusses evidence which points to the importance of the earliest commentaries on the Qur'an as the original form of language study in Islam. The book describes "the earlier hypothesis of a Greek origin for certain terms was rendered inoperative on the basis of the data in the early commentaries".
