A popular ḥadīṯ, frequently cited especially in lexicographical works when discussing the word nabiyy “prophet” or the meaning of nabr “to apply the hamzah”, is I believe first attested in al-Ḫalīl b. ʾAḥmad’s (d. 170 AH) Kitāb al-ʿayn:[1]
qāla raǧulun li-n-nabiyyi –ṣallā ḷḷāhu ʿalayhi wa-sallam– : “yā nabīʾa ḷḷāh!”, fa-qāla: “lā tanbir bi-smī”
“Some man said to the prophet (peace be upon him): “O prophe’ of God”. The prophet retorted: “do not put a hamzah in my name!”
While there are versions of this ḥadīṯ with minor variations, the gist remains the same: an unnamed figure addresses the prophet with the form nabīʾ, to which the prophet objects and expresses the wish to be addressed without a hamzah, i.e. nabiyy. Of course, there is good reason to think that this ḥadīṯ was forged. It is never cited with an ʾisnād, and it is difficult to accept that in the lifetime of the prophet linguistic terminology was already developed enough for the prophet to have plausibly used such jargon.
Western scholars often invoke this ḥadīṯ in order to argue that Hijazis who had lost the hamzah in their speech would sometimes apply it hypercorrectly.[2] Zwettler[3] goes so far as to say that it is “a peculiarly Ḥijāzi pseudo-correction and a feature neither of the ʿarabīya nor of the other dialects.” This is part of a larger argument that argues against the possibility that the Quran would have ever been recited in a mode of recitation that entirely lacked the hamzah.[4] To Zwettler it is obvious that the ʿarabiyyah must have retained the hamzah in all places. But whence this certainty that the literary register called the ʿarabiyyah was so homogenous in its treatment of the hamzah? And whence the certainty that it could not have had a hamzah in the word nabiyy at any point? How can we be so certain that we can project this normative judgment of al-Ḫalīl which first appears more than a century after the standardization of the Quranic text applied in that period?
Indeed, it is not exactly obvious why we would have to assume that nabiyy is the original form and nabīʾ a later hypercorrection. After all, there can be little doubt that this word is a loanword from Hebrew or Aramaic, and in both languages this word originally had a hamzah. While the fairly late reading tradition of Hebrew no longer preserves a hamzah in the singular, it is still present in the plural nåḇi pl. nḇiʾim. The ʾålɛp̄ in the Hebrew consonantal text (נביא) leaves little doubt that the language of the consonantal text had it. As for Biblical Aramaic (Ezra 5:1), נביאה pl. נביאיא unambiguously points to a pronunciation with hamzah, despite the received pronunciation of the reading tradition having lost it (nḇiyyå, pl. nḇiyyayyå).[5]
The pronunciation nabīʾ on the face of it looks like an archaism, and nabiyy is more likely a dialectal realization. The claim that such a pronunciation is not part of the ʿarabiyyah nor part of any spoken form seems to be based on Sībawayh’s judgement, who considered the pronunciation nabīʾ and also barīʾah ‘creation’ to be rare and abhorrent (qalīlun radīʾ).[6] But despite his clear disdain for this pronunciation, which he seems to have shared with his teacher al-Ḫalīl b. ʾAḥmad, Sībawayh considers the origin of the form nabiyy to be nabīʾ (and barīʾah the origin of bariyyah). He explicitly mentions this word when discussing the dropping of hamzah when ū, ī or ay precedes, adding that in such cases the hamzah is to be replaced with a wāw and yāʾ respectively citing: ḫaṭīʾah → ḫaṭiyyah ‘sin’, nabīʾ→ nabiyy ‘prophet’, maqrūʾ/maqrūʾah → maqruww/maqruwwah ‘readable’, ʾufayʾis → ʾufayyis ‘little hatchets’, barīʾah→ bariyyah‘creature’ and suwayʾil → suwayyil ‘little question’.[7] His disapproval of the pronunciations of nabīʾah and barīʾah does not stem from a conviction that these words should have never had a hamzah to begin with, but is rather because he considered the dropping of hamzah in these words more common and appropriate. This is no different from al-Ḫalīl who lists nabiyy under his entry for the root nbʾ.[8]
Why then is there such confidence that the ʿarabiyyah always only had the form nabiyy from time immemorial until today? It seems to me that this has got to do with the fact that nabiyy is the form that the standard of Classical Arabic endorses today. It is the form we find in the Modern Standard Arabic dictionary of Hans Wehr, and this is how the word is printed in modern text editions of Classical Arabic texts. But we cannot simply backproject whatever we believe to be the language today onto a pre-Sībawayhian period. Nor can we conclude that whatever Sībawayh considered bad cannot be “proper” Classical Arabic. After all, had the approval of Sībawayh been the golden standard for what is to be considered Classical Arabic, the standard pronunciation of منه and عنه would have been min-hū and ʿan-hū, and not min-hu and ʿan-hu as the Classical standard holds today.[9]
The situation becomes even more complex if we dispense with our focus on the Basran teacher-student duo al-Ḫalīl and Sībawayh, and see what other contemporaneous scholars considered to be the proper pronunciation of نبى. The Medinan Quran reciter Nāfiʿ (d. 169 AH) is in fact famous for his recitation of this word as nabīʾ (along with barīʾah ‘creation’, and nubūʾah ‘prophecy’), something universally reported for him, and there is little doubt that it is the pronunciation he taught to his students.[10] Nāfiʿ is of course one of the seven canonical reciters, and in fact the second most popular reciter in the world today with millions of North-African muslims still following his reading in the transmissions of his students Warš (d. 197 AH) and Qālūn (d. 220 AH). Clearly, Nāfiʿ – whose reading was considered sunnah according to Mālik b. ʾAnas[11]– did not consider this pronunciation “abhorrent” in any way.
We are presented then with two diametrically opposed views on what the proper pronunciation is by two scholars from the same period. If we are to maintain that the Quranic recitations are the ʿarabiyyah, we must conclude that nabīʾ– despite Sībawayh’s misgivings – was part of this ʿarabiyyah too. This alternative pronunciation gained sufficient fame that it is still adhered to by millions of Muslims today. While it may still be true that nabīʾ is a hypercorrection, this is not obvious from the sources normally cited as evidence for it. One cannot project the modern accepted norms onto the early Islamic period, nor can Sībawayh be taken as the sole authority of what is and is not the ʿarabiyyah. As scholars we cannot afford such anachronistic oversimplifications. The negotiation on what the norms of the ʿarabiyyah were had clearly not yet come to a close in the middle of the second century AH. That a norm eventually crystallizes and settles for nabiyy in later centuries should not, and cannot, be a factor for deciding what the ʿarabiyyah would have been like in the first centuries of Islam or the pre-Islamic period.
Of course this word of caution should not be taken to only apply to the presence or absence of hamzah in this word or other words. The discussion on the history of the Arabic language all too frequently revolves around anachronistic imposition of the modern norms onto the early Islamic and even the pre-Islamic period. Our understanding of the ʿarabiyyah must be based on the evidence as presented by the early sources and we must accept the ambiguities that they entail.
[1] Al-Ḫalīl b. ʾAḥmad. Kitāb al-ʿayn. Edited by ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd al-Hindāwī. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyyah, 2003, s.v. نبر.
[2] Rabin, Chaim. Ancient West-Arabian. London: Taylor’s Foreign Press, 1951, pp. 131-3; Fischer, Wolfdietrich. A Grammar of Classical Arabic, Third Revised Edition. Translated by Jonathan Rogers. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2002, p. 26.
[3] Zwettler, Michael. The Oral Tradition of Classical Arabic Poetry: Its Character and Implications. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1978, pp. 179f., n. 71.
[4] I believe there is good reason to believe that the Quran was originally recited in such a manner. See Van Putten, Marijn. “Hamzah in the Quranic Consonantal Text.” Orientalia 87, no. 1 (2018): 93–120, but already Nöldeke, Theodor. Beiträge zur semitischen Sprachwissenschaft. Strassburg: Karl J. Trübner, 1904, p. 11, and Rabin Ancient West-Arabian, p. 4f.
[5] Presumably the connection has been so readily accepted because Syriac has lost the hamzah in this position, thus having ܢܒܝܐ nḇiyyā. But the Syriac form is certainly a later development within Aramaic. As Aramaic loanwords in early Classical Arabic are consistently more archaic than Syriac, there is no reason to expect Arabic to descend from the innovative Syriac form in this case either.
[6] Sībawayh, ʾAbū Bišr ʿAmr. Al-Kitāb. Edited by ʿAbd al-Salām Muḥammad Hārūn. 5 vols. Cairo: Maktabat al-Ḫānajī, 1988, vol. III, p. 555.
[7] Sībawayh, al-Kitāb, vol. III, p. 547. Sībawayh also explicitly endorses a base with hamzah in his discussion of the formation of the diminutive, claiming that for bariyyah and nubuwwah the only diminutives are burayyiʾah and nubayyiʾah, whereas for nabiyy/nabīʾ there are two options: nubayy and nubayyiʾ; see al-Kitāb, vol. III, p. 460.
[8] al-Ḫalīl b. ʾAḥmad, al-ʿAyn, s.v. نبأ.
[9] Sībawayh, al-Kitāb, vol. IV, p. 189.
[10] Ibn Muǧāhid, ʾAbū Bakr. Kitāb Al-Sabʿah fī al-Qirāʾāt. Edited by Šawqī Ḍayf. Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1973, al-Sabʿ, p. 157f., 693.
[11]Ibn Muǧāhid, al-Sabʿ, p. 62. Ibn Muǧāhid also brings out another narration that attributes this claim to one of Mālik b. ʾAnas’s most famous students, Ibn Wahb (d. 197 AH), instead.