The Kasra on 'Arjulikum': I'rab, Qira'at, and a Debate Club
In a second-year Arabic grammar class, the teacher writes the ablution verse, 5:6, on the board: '…so wash your faces and your hands to the elbows, and wipe your heads and your feet to the ankles.' Two transmitted readings are placed side by side: 'wa arjulakum', with a fatha on the lam, and 'wa arjulikum', with a kasra. A student objects that the kasra reading must be a scribal slip, since 'arjul' would be joined to 'wujuh', which is mansub, and Arabic does not join a majrur word to a mansub one. A second student says the fatha reading is the slip, because the nearest noun before it, 'ru'us', is majrur. The class splits. The teacher must rule on the i'rab of each reading within the lesson, and the first student later asks whether he may use the kasra reading in a school debate to argue that the foot is wiped only, not washed.
1. Give the i'rab of each reading and name the grammatical licence or objection each one depends on.
Read the worked answer
Both readings have a place in the grammar; the disagreement is about which licence is admissible.
'Wa arjulakum' (fatha). Arjul is ma'tuf on wujuhakum, which is mansub as the object of faghsilu; the conjunction wa carries the case across. This is the plain, uncontested construal: wash faces, hands, and feet; wipe the head.
'Wa arjulikum' (kasra). Arjul is majrur. Two routes are offered:
- **
Al-jarrala al-mujawir** - joining a word to its *neighbour's* case rather than to its own grammatical slot, soarjulfollowsru'us` in jarr. The Kufans admit this, citing Arabic usage, especially in poetry; the Basrans (Sibawayh) reject it in prose except in narrow cases, judging it a licence of necessity rather than a norm. - Joining to an implied element, or treating the genitive as marking a distinct action, so that the feet are wiped rather than washed.
The teacher's ruling: neither student may call the other's reading a slip. The fatha reading needs no licence at all; the kasra reading needs one that a major school of grammarians disputes. That is the precise state of the question.
2. One student asks: 'If a reading needs a disputed licence, does that not prove the other reading is the correct one?' Answer him using the principles governing qira'at.
Read the worked answer
No - the direction of proof runs the other way.
The qira'at that are mass-transmitted are received as a followed practice (al-qira'at sunna muttaba'a), not judged by the grammarians' preferences. The rule is that a mutawatir reading is not rejected on the basis of grammatical analogy (qiyas), because the reading is earlier than the analogy and the analogy was built on the language, not the reverse. What the grammarian owes the reading is a wajh - a possible construal - not a verdict. Ibn Jinni did exactly this in al-Muhtasab: he searched for a justification for readings he found difficult, rather than dismissing them.
So the student's inference must be reversed. 'This reading needs a disputed licence' means only that the grammar of Arabic is wider than the Basran norm, and that the Kufan position has evidence. It does not mean the reading is corrupt.
The teacher should add the reason this matters: once a student learns that readings are graded by grammar, he will next grade them by logic, then by preference. The chain stops there.
3. Advise the student on using the kasra reading in the debate. What is defensible and what is not?
Read the worked answer
What is defensible: reporting a real difference. What is not: winning a ruling with a qira'a.
Both readings are mass-transmitted, so neither cancels the other and neither can be dropped for rhetorical convenience. The genitive reading is cited in the fiqh literature by jurists who held that the foot is wiped, and the student may accurately say: 'Some jurists read the verse this way and reached that conclusion.' That is a true statement about the tradition.
He may not, however, present the kasra as the better reading, or as proof that the majority are wrong, because the majority's position rests on the mass-transmitted practice of the Prophet - the very practice that shows how the verse is to be applied - and on the fatha reading, which requires no licence at all. Practice explains the text; the text is not a puzzle to be solved against practice.
Coach him on the format too: in a debate, quote the reading as evidence of scholarly breadth, not as a trump card. A student who says 'both readings are authentic, and here is how jurists reasoned from each' will be marked higher than one who claims a scribal error that no manuscript supports.