Academic Illuminations III: A Grammatical Oxymoron

The Problem

A hal, according to Hans Wehr's definition, is a circumstantial expression or phrase, like the word, "running" in the expression, "I saw Zaid running." It explains the state of Zaid at the time you saw him, and usually indicates that this state existed before your act of seeing him. The problematic issue is the existence of an intrinsic (Ar. lazimeh) hal in Arabic grammar. How can something that is circumstantial be intrinsic? Even a friend who is fairly advanced in grammar, and teaches it professionally, found the issue problematic. He said that the intrinsic hal seemed to be very close in meaning to an attribute (Ar. na't). Attributes are, after all, intrinsic to an entity while a hal is circumstantial. Yet the hal, whether intrinsic or not, is not inflected in the same way as an attribute. Furthermore, it is unlikely that grammarians would identify it as a circumstantial expression if it was, in fact, an attribute.

The Illumination

According to Abbas Hassan's Al-Nahw Al-Wafi, the intrinsic hal is limited to three cases:

1. The affirmative hal (Ar. hal mu'akkideh), which takes three forms:
1. When the sentence consists of two, non-derived nouns and the hal is an affirmation of the sentence's upshot, such as if one says: أنا حاتم جوادا, meaning, "I am Hatim, being generous." "Generous" is an affirmative hal since it merely affirms the upshot of the sentence, for saying, "I am Hatim" implies one is generous.
2. When the hal is an affirmation of the very action that it is the circumstance of (i.e. it affirms the verb that renders it accusative), such as the statement of Jesus (peace be upon him): ويوم أبعث حيا, meaning, "And the day I am resurrected alive." "Alive" affims the ressurrection.
3. When the hal is an affirmation of of the noun it describes, such as, جاء كلهم جميعا, meaning, "All of them came, altogether." "Altogether" affirms, "all of them."
   
2. The renewed intrinsic hal, such as خلق الله الزرافة يداها أطول من رجليها, meaning, "Allah created the giraffe with its front legs longer than its hind legs." The hal here is describing each giraffe at the point of it being created.
3. The most difficult (and hence most interesting) case, is when the instrinsic hal is limited to cases that have appeared in the canon of Classical Arabic, and cannot be expanded upon. (That Abbas Hassan says they cannot be expanded upon is indeed significant, for he often criticizes the Basrans -- who interdicted post-classical usage of certain classical idioms -- for trapping themselves in their own grammatical prescriptions.) An example of this is:
   
   شهد الله أنه لا إله إلا هو والملائكة وأولوا العلم قائما بالقسط
   
   meaning, "Allah, while maintaining justice, the angels, and those of knowledge bear witness that there is no god but Him."

The affirmative hal doesn't fit the usual definition of a hal at all, as it does not expose the circumstances surrounding x when y occurred, but rather, reiterates them. The renewed intrinsic hal is intrinsic with relation to the class of things it is describing but circumstantial relative to each individual instance.

As for the the final case, Allah's maintenance of justice is intrinsic. However, this is not affirmed by the sentence nor is there any renewal. Rather, the intrinsic nature is known through external factors that are not directly mentioned in this passage. So in what sense can such an intrinsic factor be considered the circumstance of an event? The point here is that Allah is bearing witness that He is One while maintaining justice, and it is specifically because of this that we must accept His testimony. It is like someone who is always truthful saying, "Now listen to me, because I'm telling you the truth." The truthfulness of the said person may be intrinsic, but it is also the circumstance relating to his admonition, and the reason for attending to it carefully.

Another example of the third case is:

قل بل ملة إبراهيم حنثفا

meaning, "Say, [we follow] the path of Abraham as he turned away [from idolatry]." We know from external factors that Abraham's turning away from idolatry (peace be upon him) was an intrinsic state. However, it is this state that we bring to mind when following him.

These are cases where Qur'anic exegetes concur that the hal is intrinsic. However, it is also useful to examine a case which they reject as being a hal:

فالله خير حافظا

meaning, "Allah is the Best in terms of preservation." Exegetes explicitly reject that it is a hal, which would render the meaning closer to, "Allah is the Best while preserving." That the exegetes reject the suggestion that this is a hal -- because it would limit the "bestness" of Allah to the case when He is preserving His creation -- shows that the hal, even if intrinsic, is indeed tied to the circumstances of sentence it exists in.

And Allah knows best.