The Islamic Personality by Sheikh Taqīuddīn An-Nabahānī

The Arabic language is a convention the Arabs agreed on it, so they set specific words to denote specific meanings, as they set the expression the sky,the earth, the water" for the denotation of specific meanings, and as they set the expression al quru' for the menses and the purity, and as they set the expression al jawn for the black and for the white, and the expression al saleem, for the stung person and for the sound one, and so on. Since the Arabic language is a convention for Arabs; the way to know it is taking it from them. So if they say: "The so and so expression is set for the so and so meaning" or they say: "The so and so meaning is set for the so and so expression"; their saying will be accepted and approved, and will not be argued, because the convention is indisputable, and it is something they agreed on it, and not a mental issue nor is it related to the perception, and therefore whatever the Arabs say about the language will be approved. And what is meant by the Arabs, is the real genuine Arabs (al aqhaah) whom used to speak the Arabic language before the corruption of the Arabic (speaking) tongue and some of them remained until the fourth Hijry century, they used to live in the desert and their language did not get corrupted, therefore the language can be taken from. And the way to take from them is through the authentic narration, from here the way to know the Arabic language is the mutawaatir and aahaad transference. The mutawaatir transference is known by certainty and undoubted if suspicion exists, i.e. it does not accept doubt, like our knowledge in naming the essence (jawhar) as such, and the qualities ('araqh) as such, and the other names like tha sky (al samaa'), the earth (al ardh), the heat (al harr), the cold (al bard), and others. We perceived this knowledge through the decisive tawaator. And the aahaad is what is not known by us, and it is not transferred as the mutawaatir, so the way of obtaining the probability in it is the transference of the individuals, like the expressions narrated from the authors and researchers of the language like al Khaleel, al Asma'y, and the likes. And most of the expressions of the Arabic language are of the mutawaatir, and the least are of the aahaad. This is the way of knowing the Arabic language; it is the narration from the Arabs by either the tawaator or the aahaad, and there is no other than these ways. As for the mind; it is not beneficial in knowing the Arabic language, and it has no value because the issue is the transference from those who set the language, it is not a perception issue, and because the mind can only perform independently to proof the necessity of the existents, and the impossibility of the nonexistent.

And mind could not be guided independently to the occurrence of either of the two possibilities, and the languages are of this kind, because they are limited to what they were set for, since a specific expression was set for a specific meaning of the possibilities, and the mind could not independently perceive that the author of the language had set this or that expression for this or that meaning, because it depends on the transference from the author, therefore the mind has no role in knowing the language, but its knowledge depends on the transference from the author. And as for what was said: that it is known by the mind that the definite plural noun denotes the generality because the exception could be included in it, the matter is not like that, but it is a knowledge that came through the transference, because it is transferred to us that the exception is excluding what the text mentions, so from that we understood that the definite plural noun denotes the generality, so the mind did not independently judge that the author set this expression for this meaning, but the mind understood from what was transferred from the author that this expression brings out this meaning, it is like the understanding that the existence of Islamic states is not permissible for the saying of the Messenger (SAW): of pledge the given were khalifahs two If allegiance; do kill the latter of them" compiled by Muslim. So non permissibility of the multitude of the Islamic state is not set by the mind, but the shari'ah brought it, so it is a shari'ahi verdict, not mental verdict, and the mind only understood it from the shari'ahi text. And likewise is the language, so being the definite plural for the generality is not from the mind, but it is from the set up of the Arabs, so it is of their conventions and not from the mind. And the mind alone is not a way to know the language at all. But there are only two ways to know the language, one of them is the tawaator and the other is the aahaad, in other word the way to know the language is the narration only.