Kifāyat al-Atfāl by Abdullah bin Abdul Rahim: A Critical Editing and Analytical Study

Abstract

Arab heritage is rich and abundant with scientific works and manuscripts covering all sciences across various aspects of life. The efforts of textual critics and scholars remain ongoing in dusting off the grime of time from many of these works. Driven by our belief in the significance of editing and studying texts, we chose to edit a unique manuscript in grammar titled Kifayat al-Atfal (The Sufficiency of Children). Among the difficulties we encountered in editing this manuscript was that it is a unique sole witness (unica), and its author is obscure, whose biography we could not trace in biographical dictionaries. However, given the manuscript’s scientific importance, we relied on Allah and undertook its editing along with an analytical study. The nature of the research required dividing it into two sections: the first explores the study of the manuscript, while the second contains the edited text, followed by the conclusion and the bibliography."