The Arabic Manuscripts on Grammar from the Kahle Fonds: Some Research Proposals

The Paul Kahle Fonds, preserved at the University of Turin, gather together printed books, manuscripts and papers related to the activities of Paul Ernst Kahle (1875-1964) as an orientalist scholar. In the Islamic manuscripts section, a big number of them deal with the Arabic grammar tradition. Most of the works included in the manuscripts date back to the post-classical age (from XI to XIX century), with a particular concentration in the XIV century. Almost all the works are commentaries of first or second order to previous treatises by well known grammarians. From a point of view both chronological and structural, these works can be placed in the pedagogic stage of the Arabic grammar tradition, characterized by a change in the organisation of the topics and in the way topics relating to syntax or morphology were dealt with. On the basis of two main perspectives, some clusters are identifiable to illustrate the different relations one can recognize between the original independent treatises and their commentaries or between commentaries of the same/different order. In such a way, scholars are also allowed to check for possible and more complex inter-text relationships, to highlight mutual influences among authors and/or commentators, to investigate topics or methods peculiar to one author/commentator and to follow up their developments.