“And inform them that the water is to be shared between them.”
(Sūrah al-Qamar, 54:28)

And His words:
“For each of them a gate, there is an allotted portion.”
(Sūrah al-Ḥijr, 15:44)

And His words:
“It is We Who have apportioned among them their livelihood in the life of this world.”
(Sūrah al-Zukhruf, 43:32)

From this usage also comes the legal chapter entitled “Division,” discussed by the jurists with respect to inheritance, spoils of war, and fay’, whether real estate or movable property, that is shared by partners, so that each receives a concrete share distinct from that of the others.

Jābir (may Allah be pleased with him) reported:
“The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) ruled for the right of pre-emption in property that has not yet been divided; once the boundaries are set and the roads assigned, there is no pre-emption.”

For this reason the early grammarians used to say, “Speech is divided into noun, verb, and particle,” as stated by more than one of them—among them Ibn Jinnī and al-Zajjājī, the author of Al-Jumal. Some later scholars, such as al-Kazzūlī, author of Al-Qawānīn al-Naḥwiyyah, objected, saying: “Whenever a genus is divided into its species or into the individual instances of those species, the higher term being divided must apply to both the species and the individuals; otherwise, they are not its ‘divisions.’”

Abū al-Baqā’ the grammarian raised the same objection against Ibn Jinnī, but replied that what he meant concerned the parts of speech and the like.

This objection, however, carries no weight, for what those scholars had in mind pertains to rational division—the division of a universal whole that exists in the mind into its species and the individuals of those species—whereas sensory division, which exists outside the mind, is the division