Chapter 1.10 Part 2

How would you analyse ? We know straight away that it is a جملة إسمية because there is no verb in sight. So we are expecting a مبتدأ and a خبر. Would we say is the مبتدأ? The answer is no. Remember, what do the terms مبتدأ and خبر mean? مبتدأ is the subject of the sentence, the thing you want to talk about, the thing you want to give some information about. And the خبر true to its dictionary definition is the news you want to give about that entity. What is the "thing" or "entity" in this sentence you want to give information about? It is "every polytheist". You are wanting to make a statement concerning "every polytheist". In addition to this, we have the following rule:

This shouldn't be too surprising. We've already mentioned that prepositional phrases come attached (which is the literal meaning of the term we use: متعلّق) to verbs serving as an extra detail. Sometimes a verb can take an object directly such as , and sometimes a verb needs the help of a preposition: . This is what we mean by directly or indirectly. In the first example, the verb took a direct object, in the second example, it took an object indirectly.

So our rule states that a prepositional phrase will never come as a مبتدأ either directly or indirectly through some other structure or mechanism, despite the fact it might be coming first in the جملة إسمية. Therefore we have a خبر coming first with the مبتدأ delayed.

The next line is particularly interesting. As always, you should be translating yourself before checking the translation. But in case you're not, try to tackle this one on your own before showing the translation.

A common mistake here is to translate this line as, "And Ibrahim wanted to make the king understand and make his people understand." This is an incorrect translation. The translation makes "the king" and "his people" objects of the verb "make understand". But when you look at and they are both مرفوع so cannot be مفعول به. They are each in fact a فاعل for the verb , which means "to understand", not "to make (someone) understand".

Take a look at . You might at first mistake it as an اسم which is in جرّ, and maybe even consider it to be a part of an extension phrase along with . Try go through all of the phrases you have learned so far (extension or non-extension) and you will see that none of them will fit. This is actually made up of the conjunction followed by a command verb (أمر). Let's see how this was constructed.

First we have the ماضي form of the verb, which is . From our 7 categories, this is both Naaqis (ends in a Waw or a Yaa) and Mahmooz (contains a Hamza). It is therefore highly deficient and defective. Don't get confused with Lafeef, which is also highly deficient, but that is specifically when there are two weak letters both of which are either a Waw or a Yaa.

Next, we notice that it doesn't rhyme with any of our 6 Baabs. That's because of the following Sarf rule:

The verb was originally أَتَيَ, which as you can see fulfills the criteria of the rule. We have a vowelled Yaa, before which is a Fathah, so the Yaa changes to an Alif.

The مضارع is . This was supposed to rhyme with and be يَأْتِيُ. However, for ناقص verbs the weak letter on the end gets a Sukoon instead of a Dammah. Then we follow the steps as normal to create the أمر. We take off the sign of مضارع to get أْتِيْ, and since the first letter has a sukoon on it we bring a هَمْزَةُ الْوَصْل. This then becomes اِأْتِيْ. Now, remember that the Amr is مجزوم. For the 5 singulars this involves putting a sukoon on the last root letter, but in this case, the Yaa is already saakin. This is where the verb being Naaqis comes in. For naaqis verbs, when the 5 singulars become majzoom, we actually drop the weak saakin letter completely: اِأْتِيْ ← اِأْتِ. Because the conjunction Faa is present before the Amr, there is a vowel for the Amr to latch onto, negating the need for the هَمْزَةُ الْوَصْل, which gives us