Ibn Abī Mulaykah relates:

A Bedouin arrived during the caliphate of ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb (may Allah be pleased with him) and asked, “Who will teach me something of what was sent down to Muhammad ﷺ?”

A man thereupon began to teach him Sūrat al-Barāʾah and recited: “that Allah is free from the polytheists and His messenger,” rendering “and His messenger” in the genitive case. The Bedouin protested, “Has Allah disavowed His Messenger? If Allah has disavowed His Messenger, then I too disavow him!”

ʿUmar heard of the Bedouin’s words and summoned him. “Bedouin,” he said, “do you repudiate the Messenger of Allah ﷺ?” The man replied, “Commander of the Believers, I came to Madinah knowing nothing of the Qur’an. I asked for someone to teach me, and this man taught me Sūrat al-Barāʾah, reciting, ‘that Allah is free from the polytheists and His messenger.’ So I exclaimed, ‘Has Allah disavowed His Messenger? If He has, then I disavow him as well.’”

ʿUmar said, “It is not as you have been taught.”

The Bedouin asked, “Then how does it read, Commander of the Believers?” ʿUmar replied, “It is: ‘that Allah and His Messenger are free from obligation to the polytheists,’” pronouncing “His Messenger” in the nominative.

The Bedouin responded, “And I, too, disavow whatever Allah and His Messenger have disavowed.”

ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb (may Allah be pleased with him) then decreed that no one should teach the people except someone well-versed in the language, and he instructed Abū al-Aswad al-Dūʾalī to lay down the rules of grammar.

Ali ibn al-Jaʿd said: I heard Shuʿbah say, “The likeness of a ḥadīth-transmitter who knows no Arabic is that of a donkey carrying a saddlebag with no fodder in it.”

Ḥammād ibn Salamah said, “Whoever pursues ḥadīth without learning grammar—or, as he also put it, without learning Arabic—is like a donkey on whose back hangs a feedbag that contains no barley.”

Ibn ʿAṭiyyah remarked, “Parsing the Qur’an is a foundation of the Sacred Law, for through it one rectifies its meanings, which constitute the Law itself.”

Ibn al-Anbārī said, “From the Companions of the Prophet ﷺ and their Successors—may Allah be pleased with them—there have come arguments based on language and poetry to clarify the rare and difficult expressions of the Qur’an. These reports confirm the soundness of the grammarians’ approach and expose the error of those who reject it.

Among such reports is what ʿUbayd ibn ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Sharīk al-Bazzāz narrated to us. He said: Ibn Abī Maryam related to us; Ibn Farrūkh informed us; Usāmah told me; ʿIkrimah informed me that Ibn ʿAbbās said, ‘When you ask me about an unfamiliar word in the Qur’an, seek it in poetry, for poetry is the register of the Arabs.’

Idrīs ibn ʿAbd al-Karīm also narrated to us: Khalf related to us; Ḥammād ibn Zayd, from ʿAlī ibn Zayd ibn Judʿān, said: I heard Saʿīd ibn Jubayr and Yūsuf ibn Mihrān say, ‘We heard Ibn ʿAbbās being asked about something in the Qur’an. He would explain it one way and another, saying, “Have you not heard the poet who says such-and-such?”’ And from ʿIkrimah