1. The Seller of the Idols2 Before many days, very many.3 There was in a village4 a very famous man.5 And the name of this6 the man was Âzar.7 And Azar used to/would sell idols.8 And there was a very large house in this town. And there were idols in this house, very many idols. And the people would prostrate to these idols.9 And Azar would prostrate to these idols. And Azar would worship these idols.1
Chapter 1 A prophet stories
1
ما” – idols”, has fathah on the end because of nasb: it’s the object of آ”) broke”).
2
This construction is mudaf/mudaf ilayh (إ ف/ ف - possessive phrase).
3 Qabla – adverb of time (thus it’s in nasb– fathah on the end). Ayyaamin – ‘days’ – is the mudaf ilayh of qabla.
Adverbs of time are combined with isms as mudaf/mudaf ilayh structure, ism will be in jarr, the meaning is maybe
not really possessive but it has the structure of that relationship grammatically. Katheerah – ‘many’ – it describes
ayyaam and since nonhuman plurals are treated as feminine singular, it is in that form. Jiddan – ‘very’ – is an adverb
modifying an adjective, thus it is in nasb.
4 Qaryah – ‘village’ or ‘town’. Notice that the phrase ‘fee qaryatin’ together is the khabar (predicate) of kaana
(‘was’) and it should thus be in the nasb grammatical state. However, the word ‘qaryatin’ reflects jarr because it is
the object of the preposition and that structure takes precedence in what is reflected on the end of ‘qaryah’.
5
The ism (subject) of kaana comes after the khabar in this sentence.
6 Hadha (‘this’) is not visibly reflecting its jarr even though it is in jarr because of being the mudaf ilayh. There are
words in the language that experience grammatical states but do not reflect them in their endings. (This is a different
issue than words that do not reflect changes in grammatical states because of pronunciation difficulties, like
“Musaa”.) We will study these insha-Allâh… 7
Ismu hadhar-rajul is the ism of kaana; Âzar is the khabar (predicate).
8
Whenever kaana couples with the mudaari (present tense) verb, it causes past continuous tense meaning: “he
used to sell” or “he would sell”. (Recall, kaana with the maadi (past tense) produces the past perfect tense: Kaana
baa’a = “he had sold…”)
9
Question: Why doesn’t the “kaana” conjugation doesn’t match “yasjudoona”; i.e. why not “kaanoo yasjudoona”?
Answer: Every fi’l needs a fa’il in the form of a noun of a pronoun (not both). The pronouns are the endings in the
conjugation table. In this case, there is already a faa’il for kaana - “an-naasu” so it doesn't need the additional.
Chapter 1 A prophet stories
01/04/2023