Phonological Substitution In Ibn Hubayrah’s Al-Ifsah ‘An Ma’ani Al-Sihah/ الإبدال الصّوتيّ في الإفصاح عن معاني الصّحاح لابن هبيرة

Abstract

This study investigates phonological substitution (al-ibdāl al-ṣawtī) in Ibn Hubayrah’s Al-Ifṣāḥ ʿan Maʿānī al-Ṣiḥāḥ, focusing on its role in the linguistic interpretation of Prophetic Hadith. Previous scholarship on Al-Ifṣāḥ has predominantly addressed its exegetical, theological, legal, and hadith dimensions, while its treatment of phonological substitution has not been examined as a distinct linguistic phenomenon. This study addresses this gap by identifying the principal patterns of phonological substitution in the work, examining their phonetic and articulatory bases, and determining how Ibn Hubayrah employs them in explaining lexical forms and Hadith meanings. A descriptive-analytical approach, complemented by inductive and comparative analysis, was applied to relevant passages from Al-Ifṣāḥ and compared with linguistic discussions in classical and modern Arabic sources. The findings identify recurrent substitutions involving bāʾ/mīm, zāy/sīn, hamzah/hāʾ, and sīn/ṣād. These substitutions are associated with articulatory proximity, shared phonetic features, phonetic ease, dialectal variation, and contextual factors. More significantly, the analysis demonstrates that Ibn Hubayrah treats phonological variation as linguistic evidence for explaining lexical forms and, in particular cases, for clarifying the semantic interpretation of Hadith expressions. The novelty of this study lies in establishing the interpretive function of phonological substitution within a classical Hadith commentary, thereby connecting phonological analysis directly with lexical and semantic interpretation. This finding extends the understanding of Al-Ifṣāḥ beyond its established exegetical and Hadith-oriented significance and demonstrates its value as a source for studying the interaction between classical Arabic phonological thought and the interpretation of Prophetic Hadith.