4to. 246 pp., [2 contents], lithographic text within borders, modern hard back binding, title page heavily foxed & torn without loss, paper very browned, a reading copy, al-Matba’a al-Bahiyyah, Cairo, 1318 A. H./ 1900.

Synopsis

Miftah al-Ulum (Key to the Disciplines) was composed as a pandect based ultimately on Abd al-Qahir al-Jurjani’s (d. 471/1078) two works on rhetoric, namely, Dalail al-Ijaz (The Proofs for the Inimitability of Qur’anic Style) and Asrar al-Balagha (The Secrets of Eloquence). Within his work al-Sakkaki organized al-Jurjani’s ideas into the disciplines of ilm al-bayan (figurative usage) and ilm al-maani (syntax) and he located these stylistic concerns within a wider context that included grammar, logic, and prosody. Accordingly, the Miftah represented not only a rhetorical textbook, but a complete handbook on expression in Arabic.(4) Al-Sakkaki’s work proved a popular textbook between 1300 and 1500. It attracted not only two commentaries (sharh, pl. shuruh) on its complete contents, but twenty-five on the third section of the Miftah, where al-Sakkaki considered rhetorical topics. In addition to shuruh we find other “formats” of commentary in which the author’s aim was not so much to explicate, as to facilitate in some way the students’ acquisition of material.