“A letter in verifying foreign words, Ibn Kamal Basha” - A critical appraisal

Abstract

Arab and Islamic scientist has had a significant contribution in discovery and development of variety of scientific fields. This contribution was saved in the form of sketches written in Arabic language by those scientist whom were of different origins, Arabic, Persian or Turkish. One of those scientist is Ibn Kamal Basha, Turkish in origin who died in 940 (Hijriat). He published his book about verifying the foreign (non Arabic, Aajami) words to explore its use in Arabic language and to finds its root. He named his book “A letter in verifying foreign words”. In excess of 50 sketch copies were found, most of which are in Istanbul’s libraries and some others in Damascus in Aldhahiriah book store and few in the library of Om AlkuraUnivresity inMeccah.This book was published with different verifying editors, in this research I critically appraised those publications in order to ensure scientific approach in the process of verification. Also to find out to what extent the editors were careful to ensure preserving the original text without adding or dropping off some words or sentences. The editors appraised books were: 1- Dr. Sulaiman Ibrahim Al-aed. 2- Dr. HamedSadiqQunaibi. 3- Dr. Mohammed Sawaey.This research focused on finding errors made like miswording, inappropriate wording use from those copies used which came in different texts. In a nutshell this research aimed to make the reader aware of those mistakes and errors with supportive evidence of such errors.