The Scholarly, Educational and Cultural Significance of Abū Naṣr Farāhī’s «Niṣāb Al-Ṣibyān»

Abstract

This article analyses the scholarly, educational and cultural significance of «Niṣāb al-ṣibyān» from the point of view of historical lexicography, of the verse text used in instruction, and of the subsequent reception of the work. The research rests upon a comparison of the data of a scholarly reference entry, of a recent study and of institutional manuscript catalogues. The presentation of Arabic-Persian equivalents in verse form links the lexicographical and the educational functions of the work to one another. The comparison of the interpretations of different sources concerning prosody shows the necessity of distinguishing the original authorial purpose from the later educational use of the work. Commentary manuscripts, the acknowledgment of Farāhī in a later verse lexicon, and the catalogue descriptions of the copies preserved in Uzbekistan furnish a foundation for studying the history of the cultural reception of the work. As a result the scholarly significance is explained by the organization of the lexical material, the educational significance by the historical instructional function, and the cultural significance by the copying and the commenting of the text and by its acceptance as a model by later authors. The conclusions remain bounded by the evidentiary possibilities of the sources; no direct textual collation and no experimental verification of pedagogical effectiveness is claimed to have been carried out.