Home / Scholars index / Sibawayh
Language & Literature
Sibawayh
Imam of grammar — 760–796 CE / Basra
Author of The Book (Al-Kitab), the first comprehensive scientific grammatical study of any language in the world: about 5,500 issues with phonetic and semantic evidence. Scholars counted him the imam of grammar altogether, and its 19th-century Latin translation astounded European linguists with its conceptual precision.